They Don’t Know (Part 5)

[A series of posts which critique common misconceptions about the rural poor and working poor, held by media, politicians, and ordinary citizens.]

With the employment rate at an 18-year low in Michigan and plentiful job openings, plus a bull market now entering its 10-year mark, why do people still turn to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for public assistance? You will encounter this question quite often from certain people, though more often whittled down to the condescending demand: “Why don’t they just get a job?”

The people who ask this question need to know a few things. They need to know about how employment really works, especially in Northern Michigan. And they need to know these things, not only because they should care about what their neighbors are experiencing, but because they need to understand the current fragility of our whole economy.

Let’s look at a real case story recently profiled in the Northern Express. It is a remarkable story that illustrates the demands made on today’s workers, and why many of them still turn to the DHHS, even while working. It’s remarkable, because it’s typical.

Lisa is a mother of two who lives in Cheboygan and works at Walmart. But she doesn’t work at the Cheboygan Walmart: instead she works at the Walmart in Petoskey, a 76-mile round trip commute. Why would someone make this commute to work at a neighboring Walmart — even in the winter, for heaven’s sake!?

There’s a simple reason why many people in Cheboygan make the 76-mile commute to Petoskey. As discussed in Part 4, Emmet county is one of the wealthiest counties in Michigan; the median home price in the Petoskey zip code is $194,900. Meanwhile, the real estate in Cheboygan is much cheaper, where the median home price is $90,000. (In the city of Cheboygan, you can still find homes listed below $50k.) Simply put, many people cannot afford to live in Petoskey.

And there’s another rational explanation behind that commute, as Lisa explains. When tourism slows in Northern Michigan during the winter, it’s not just hotels and restaurants that are affected. Even Walmart cuts the number of hours that its staff work. In order to work as many hours as possible, Lisa commutes to the Walmart in Petoskey, where there are more working-hours available than in economically-distressed Cheboygan.

These days, workers aren’t just working for the man: they’re also working for the algorithm. Big corporations such as Walmart, Amazon and other retailers employ complex tracking of their employees and logistics to save costs on labor. Employees have very little warning about when they will be asked to work and how many hours they can expect. While we typically think of corporations overworking their employees in order to generate larger profits, these days there is a parallel threat from underwork. Big employers prize flexibility and the ability to use labor like they would a faucet: turning it on — and off — as needed to maximize corporate profits, without concern for the lives of the people who work for them. Employees work at the whim of big employers, and that can send them on and off public assistance.

Such is the case with Lisa, who saw her hours cut from 40 hours to less than 18 hours in a short period of time. As a result she turned to the DHHS for help with purchasing family groceries, and later heating assistance, but then ran up against a department that was severely overwhelmed and understaffed.

Let’s pause and take in the situation here: Lisa wants to work as many hours as possible — driving a daily 76-mile roundtrip in order to do so! — and works at the largest corporation (by revenue) in the world, yet still must turn to public assistance at the DHHS in order to support her family. She needs help buying food, despite working at our region’s largest grocer. And let’s not forget about those two kids that she supports. Because as any parent knows, we clock in for a second shift when we come home after work. We love those little buggers — but it takes work to raise a kid right.

Keep in mind that while Lisa is trying to predict next week’s hours, and how it will affect her family’s budget, someone is profiting. One of those people is Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton and heiress who enjoys a net worth in the billions of dollars. Do I even have to explain where she got that wealth? It comes from corporate stock, inherited from her father. Between October 2017 and March 2018 her net worth rose from $38.2 billion to $46 billion, all based on the profitability of Walmart stock — which, in turn, derives from the kinds of algorithms that cause chaos in the lives of workers like Lisa. At the risk of stating the obvious: dear Alice earned over $7 billion dollars last winter, all without lifting a finger. Some people win the lottery. Every. Single. Day.

By the way, Alice seems like a very interesting person, and is a great patron of the visual arts. I would gladly join her for tea, or Manhattans. The inequalities discussed here are not about good people versus bad people. And there’s nothing wrong with making a buck. But when almost all of those bucks go to a single person, while hundreds of thousands of workers must turn to public assistance because the pay is so miserable, you’ve got to admit: something is rotten in our current economy.