In short
The Culture Journalist Podcast
Episode Summary
Jobflation is Real
Host: Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick Episode Description: In this episode, the hosts delve into the concept of "jobflation," introduced by Emilie, which reflects the increasingly demanding nature of job roles today, especially within the "laptop job" market.
Key Concepts
- Jobflation: A term that describes the phenomenon where job responsibilities have expanded significantly, often combining multiple roles into one, akin to how inflation decreases the value of currency.
- Corporate Trends:
- Ghost Jobs: Positions that are advertised but not intended to be filled.
- Quiet Hiring: Employers filling roles internally without publicizing job openings.
Discussion Overview
- Defining Jobflation:
- Emilie describes her transition from a traditional job to freelancing and how this shift led her to notice a trend in job descriptions.
- Job descriptions are increasingly convoluted, often encompassing duties of multiple roles but offering part-time compensation.
- Example of Jobflation:
- Emilie shares a story of a job listing for a part-time editor that required responsibilities typically expected of several full-time positions, highlighting the absurdity of the expectations.
- There’s a disparity between the tasks assigned and the compensation offered, forcing potential employees to seek additional income.
- Responses from Job Seekers:
- Listeners shared experiences confirming the trend, including:
- Job titles being consolidated.
- Senior roles being downgraded to junior levels without a change in responsibilities, accompanied by a drastic reduction in pay.
- Discussion on "juniorization," where companies hire less experienced personnel at lower wages for the same tasks.
- Underlying Issues:
- The conversation sheds light on how companies are adapting to economic pressures by stretching the roles of employees while simultaneously cutting costs.
- Concerns about the impact of AI on job roles and hiring practices, suggesting that companies may use AI advancements as justification for reducing the need for experienced workers.
Key Takeaways
- Inflated Job Descriptions: Many job listings now reflect unrealistic expectations that combine the work of multiple roles into one, often for inadequate pay.
- Impact on Workers: The phenomenon of jobflation is leading to dissatisfaction and instability among workers, contributing to a challenging job market.
- Corporate Strategy: Companies are shifting their hiring practices and employee expectations in ways that may not align with fair compensation or logical workload distribution.
- Future Implications: The episode hints at deeper discussions about the role of AI in the workforce and its implications for job structure and employee value.
Conclusion
The episode concludes with a recommendation for listeners to subscribe for further insights into jobflation, its hidden costs, and the evolving landscape of work influenced by AI. Emilie and Andrea encourage ongoing discussion around these pressing topics in the modern job market.
For more insights and to support independent journalism, listeners are invited to become paid subscribers at [The Culture Journalist](http://theculturejournalist.substack.com).
Social Media
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This summary encapsulates the core discussions and insights shared in this episode, focusing on the implications of jobflation and the changing landscape of employment.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:24Hey guys, it's Andrea here with The Culture Journalist. of The Culture Journalist. I'm Andrea Dominick here with Emily Friedlander. Hello. And today we are talking about a topic that we've mentioned several times on this show and that's pertained to a few of our episodes we haven't really dug into yet, which is Emily's theory of jobflation. Emily, what is jobflation? A term that you've coined that I'm a really big fan of, though not a fan of the thing itself. I don't know if I've coined it. Like I've seen the phrase maybe a couple of times before, but often referring to different things. So it was just like my interpretation of that phrase.
1:07But jobplation. So I recently transitioned from working somewhere with an anchor gig to freelancing. And somehow the fact that I've been like looking for work has been broadcast out into the world. I guess I've tweeted about it, but I've been getting hit up by recruiters now and again for positions. And back a couple of months ago, I was hit up. I'm not going to call out the publication by name, but I was hit up by a recruiter who was hiring for a Philadelphia-based editor for a culture website. And I was like, oh my God, this seems so cool. And I was like, looking at the job description and it was like okay seeking an editor part-time editor and I am looking for part-time so that's cool but they're seeking a part-time editor whose responsibilities are editing like all of the long-form features for the site and evergreen content but also doing breaking news but also acting as like the lead reporter for the website but then also like doing social media for the website and I was like wow uh that's a lot of stuff like this sounds like three to four part-time or maybe just full-time jobs together or you know you could even say it would be like multiple people working each of those roles like it's very distinctive the really comical part to me when you first described this to me was the fact that like ambitial part-time like yeah it was like we believe that you can get this done in 20 hours a week so it's like not just many jobs layered on top of each other which is something that like probably a lot of us in media and like entertainment culture industry roles have experienced but also like and you can get it done in half the time that you would a full-time job and the money like the The hourly rate, it was an hourly rate worked out to not even like, oh, this will cover like my baseline expenses.
3:21Like you would have to work another job on top of it. Right. The numbers don't work out well. And so the term like jobflation popped into my head because just like with inflation, each dollar is worth less money, essentially, like your dollar goes less far. this is like each working hour or something goes less far than it did before like you have to work more to get what you used to have if that makes sense totally and it's like literally the responsibilities of the job title are becoming inflated that too said it's just more of what used to be several positions is now one position like there's kind of a a constant and happening like a never-ending list of add-ons and ands it seems totally and this has been going on for a while like for years I've like always been very sparing with um the full-time jobs that I apply to which is why I've probably why I've like been freelance for a long time or like a part-time worker because so many of the roles I see, especially in media, have always been like, oh my God, you want me to do so much and this sounds like only a machine could do this job, not a person.
4:43I think I wrote a blog post about that that I never published a while back about how the ideal media employee would just be a machine, which honestly does kind of feel eerie in light of recent developments with AI. But yeah, I just thought that it was a handy term for describing this. And then I posted about it on Twitter and got some responses. Okay, so what were some of the responses then? I heard from a few people who like wrote these like pretty significant accounts and DMs of like what they've been experiencing. And one person whose name I will keep anonymous gave me permission to kind of read what they've been experiencing.
5:24These are people who have like, you know, there's been a lot of layoffs lately, people who are job seekers. So they said, I saw your post about jobflation and I 100 % agree. This is in April. I've been on the job hunt since October and I've noticed a lot of things in terms of listing jobs and hiring. Some jobs are getting consolidated into one title. For example, I'm seeing a lot of community slash social jobs being lumped into quote unquote growth. Before I was seeing social growth or community growth, but now I'm just seeing growth. But social and community are part of the job function. Yeah, I definitely growth is something that I'm seeing, like it's becoming pretty ubiquitous or just sort of like vague, like marketing terms are being applied to like a lot of new job titles or jobs that I'm like, didn't this used to be called that?
6:15Like engagement is another really big one And I'm seeing that just sort of like the subtext being like, help us, help us grow and survive, please. It seems to be what's being said there. Like director of audience engagement. I feel like I've seen that. Yeah. Or like engagement producer, which is like, what does that even mean? You know, and then you read it and it's like these really like Swiss army knife positions where you're just being asked to do like a little bit of everything, you know? Totally. and I just want to share a little bit more of what this person shared because it gets like even more upsetting.
6:49Yeah what else did they have to say? They said another thing I've personally experienced as well as other friends is applying for a senior role and halfway through the interview process they change the title to a junior role and ask if you're interested in the role. Essentially the role is going from like 150k a year down to$25 an hour but the tasks are the same or similar yikes that's one of those things that makes you just be like is that even legal like not a great sign about whatever those companies or organizations are or it's like juniorization or something I think that's the term for it where you hire less and less experienced people oh yeah to do the same stuff.
7:33And again, this is coming up a lot in relation to AI where people are saying, oh, this will be really great for entry level people because they'll be able to use these tools to catch up to the more senior people. And you know that the subtext there is, and then you don't have to pay the more experienced people. But I don't know if we'll talk about that later. I don't know if that's actually going to work. And that's it for the free preview of this episode. There's lots more good stuff we get into ahead, more on jobflation, why it's happening, what its hidden costs are, and of course, what AI has to do with all this.
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From the publisher
In this week’s subscriber-only episode, Andrea and Emilie introduce listeners to Emilie’s concept of “jobflation,” based on her observation that more and more of the “laptop jobs” on the market now actually seem like three or four jobs rolled into one. In other words, just like with the decreased spending power of the U.S. dollar, it can feel like every task we perform at work is suddenly counting for “less.” We discuss some of the nightmarish role descriptions that have been circulating on job sites of late (want to be an “AI editor” publishing 200-250 articles a week?), the macro factors contributing to this corporate divestment in knowledge work, and how jobflation and related phenomena like “ghost jobs” and “quiet hiring” are creating a perfect storm of disfunction for workers and employment-seekers alike.
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