2021年经济学人 为何人们对职场总是如此悲观(2)（在线收听）

It is harder to tell whether workers enjoy their work more than they did.

很难判断工人们是否比以前更喜欢自己的工作。

Gallup, a pollster, has kindly supplied Bartleby with a smattering of job-satisfaction surveys from the 1960s and 1970s.

盖洛普民意调查公司好心地向巴特比提供了一些20世纪60年代和70年代的工作满意度调查结果。

Certainly there is little to suggest that workers back then were any happier than they are today.

当然，没有什么迹象表明当时的工人比现在的更幸福。

More comparable data, also from Gallup, from the early 1990s onwards show gradually improving job satisfaction.

同样来自盖洛普的更具可比性的数据显示，自上世纪90年代初以来，工作满意度逐渐提高。

Last year 56% of American employees said they were “completely” satisfied with their job, an all-time high.

去年，56%的美国员工表示他们“完全”满意自己的工作，创历史新高。

A growing “precariat” of insecure workers gets a lot of headlines.

越来越多没有安全感的“不稳定无产者”成为头条新闻。

But 90% of American employees said in 2020 that they were completely or somewhat satisfied with their job security, up from 79% in 1993.

但在2020年，90%的美国员工表示，他们对自己的工作保障完全或多少感到满意，高于1993年的79%。

If the jobs-are-bad narrative falls down on the facts, why is it so pervasive — and so intuitive?

如果“工作很糟糕”的说法与事实不符，那么为什么它如此流行又如此直观可感呢？

Partly it is because no one has bothered to look at the evidence.

部分原因是没有人费心去查看证据。

Other observers just don’t like the constant change and churn which has always been part and parcel of capitalism.

其他观察者只是不喜欢资本主义的不断变化和变动，而这一直是资本主义的一部分。

More still may subscribe, perhaps subconsciously, to what Friedrich Hayek, a philosopher, called an “atavistic” view of markets.

或许还有更多的人会潜意识地认同哲学家弗里德里希·哈耶克称之“返祖”的市场观点。

The very notion that people must sell their labour, for cash, in order to survive may violate some deeply held notion that humans are a fundamentally co-operative species, rather than a competitive one.

为了生存，人们必须出卖自己的劳动来换取现金，这一观点本身可能违背了某些根深蒂固的观念，即人类从根本上是一个合作的物种，而不是竞争的物种。

Yet perhaps the most important reason is that people dislike acknowledging trade-offs.

然而，也许最重要的原因是人们不喜欢承认权衡取舍这个事实。

Mill seemed unable to square his concern about the stultifying effects of capitalism with his argument that the division of labour had massively increased living standards.

密尔认为，劳动分工极大地提高了人们的生活水平，但他对资本主义使人呆滞的担忧，似乎无法与这一观点相吻合。

People often make similar errors today.

如今人们经常犯类似的错误。

The decline of trade unions may have hurt some workers’ wages; but it is less commonly acknowledged that this has also made it easier for less “traditional” workers, such as ethnic minorities and women, to enter the labour market.

工会的衰落可能损害了一些工人的工资；但很少有人承认，这也让少数族裔和女性等不那么“传统”的工人更容易进入劳动力市场。

Sedentary office jobs can make people fat; but people are far less likely to die on the job than they once were.

久坐不动的办公室工作会让人发胖；但人们在工作中死亡的可能性比以前小得多。

A relentless focus on the problems of labour markets still has its uses.

对劳动力市场问题的持续关注仍有其用处。

It encourages people to think about how to make improvements.

它鼓励人们思考如何改进。

The evidence suggests that on average managers have got better in recent years but clearly some firms have a long way to go.

有证据表明，平均来说，经理们近年来有所好转，但显然有些公司还有很长的路要走。

Many people are still exploited by their employers.

许多人仍在受到雇主的剥削。

Today’s world of work is far better than its critics would like to admit.

如今的职场比批评者们愿意承认的要好得多。

But there is every reason to try to make it better still.

但我们完全有理由努力让它变得更好。