The Empathy Advantage

Part IRethink Your Workforce

It was bound to happen. Fifty years of the Friedman Doctrine – economist Milton Friedman's 1970 proposition that the sole purpose of a corporation was to return profits to its shareholders – had drained the workforce dry.

By 2019, the US federal hourly minimum wage had been stuck at $7.25 for a decade. Had the minimum wage kept pace with inflation, hourly workers would be making $24 an hour. Had wages kept pace with productivity, the hourly rate would be $26. But wages didn't keep pace. Working a 40‐hour week at minimum wage in 2019 didn't earn enough pay to peek above the federal poverty line, and it certainly wouldn't afford reasonable living accommodations.

Salaried workers didn't fare much better. The average full‐time employee across any salary level was working nearly 9 hours a day.¹ In exchange, workers took home a median income of $69,560 that year.²

Meanwhile, corporate profits surged to more than $2.3 trillion dollars.³

Americans were working longer and harder and getting less for it. The Gini Coefficient – a measure of income inequality where 0 represents perfect equality and 1 perfect inequality – climbed to .484,⁴ continuing the upward trend it had been on since the early 1990s⁵ to reach the highest level of income inequality since the 1920s.

The Covid‐19 pandemic was simply the last straw. By March 25, 2020, more than 3 billion people across 70 countries were sent home from work⁶. A weary workforce had to juggle their now work‐from‐home ...