Parental leave

• Avangrid, Inc. (NYSE: AGR), a leading sustainable energy company and member of the Iberdrola Group, is continuing to prioritize their employees’ financial security and health by joining The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative by JUST Capital and PayPal.
• The Initiative, established in collaboration with the Financial Health Network and Good Jobs Institute, offers resources to help companies assess and improve workers’ financial health.
• The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative will cement us as a benefits leader and help us continue to enhance our programs and resources.”
  The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative was launched in 2020 and engages directly with corporate leaders to promote the business value of financial health investment and empower them to perform worker financial health evaluations.
• Today, the initiative includes companies such as Chipotle, Chobani, Even, Prudential Financial, Synchrony, and Verizon, representing one million American workers.

• CHARLOTTE, N.C., Feb. 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- JELD-WEN Holding, Inc. (NYSE: JELD), a leading global manufacturer of building products, has been recognized on Forbes' list of America's Best Employers in 2024.
• The list highlights the top American companies and institutions most recommended by workers.
• "We continuously strive to provide an inclusive environment where individuals contribute to meaningful work, feel valued and have the opportunity to grow their careers."
• To support its U.S. employees, JELD-WEN offers competitive pay and health benefits, paid parental leave, company-sponsored 401(k) match, flexible hours and tuition reimbursement.

• So why are people still working so hard for so long?
• Output per worker increased by almost 300% between 1950 and 2018 in the U.S.
• But shouldn’t more productive work be rewarded with more time free from work?

Keynes misses the mark

• However, in the past, many economists assumed that people’s need for more stuff would eventually be met.
• In fact, one of the most famous economists of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, confidently predicted in 1930 that within a century, the normal workweek would decrease to 15 hours.
• Yet Americans in their prime working age are still on the job 41.7 hours per week.

• Why was Keynes wrong?
• Obviously, people’s needs or wants were not fully met.
• In a consumption-saturated society, time spent neither producing nor consuming goods increasingly appeared as wasted time.

Forced labor

• Some jobs are more precarious than others, and many workers even forego earned vacation time for fear of losing promotions.
• Rather, it’s the result of a hard-fought political battle that culminated in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the standard 40-hour workweek, along with a minimum wage.
• Pressed by a labor movement that was far more powerful than today’s, the government implemented a range of progressive economic policies during the 1930s to help the nation emerge from the Great Depression.
• Labor leaders had initially proposed a 30-hour week, which government officials resoundingly rejected.

• They might be working long hours, but they could afford television sets, cars and homes in the suburbs.
• Many families could live on the wages of the full-time work of the father, making the 40-hour week seem reasonable, since the mother had time to care for the family and home.
• It’s almost as if the 40-hour week has been replaced by an 80-hour week – at least in terms of hours worked per household.

Separating economic growth from well-being

• Most Americans will not abandon their work ethic and their insistence that most people work.
• It doesn’t help that elected leaders continue to insist that well-being be measured mostly by economic growth, and when the U.S. media breathlessly reports quarterly economic growth data, with increases deemed “good” and decreases deemed “bad.” Why shouldn’t free time and its benefits be included in the equation?
• Why aren’t figures on the social costs of unlimited growth publicized?
• Does it even matter that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has doubled in less than a decade when economic security is so fragile and so many people are overstressed?

Gary Cross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Boost Insurance , the leading insurance infrastructure platform, today announced that it had secured over $130 million in new reinsurance capacity to sit behind its MGA, insurtech, and embedded insurance programs.
• Boost also specializes in building specialty products, along with the risk capital to back them, to address emerging risks and markets.
• Through its subsidiary Boost Re, the company can also provide efficient, reliable risk transfer vehicles that allow fast capacity deployment for both the risk capital partners Boost works with and the MGA and insurtech programs it supports.
• Additionally, Boost recently released Portfolio Insights, the industry’s first real-time data reporting tool for reinsurers.