In this article, I dare to raise a taboo topic — Jobs. In particular, everyone’s favourite: the 9-5. In the modern world, students seem to be focused on their future employment more than ever. A frightful indication of this, I was recently asked about ‘Spring Weeks’ at a club. Even 10 years ago, when one left university, it was the norm to enter a 9-5 with relative ease. But now the graduate job market is an unstable arena, and no one knows what to expect. So, where does the 9-5 stand in today’s world?
The previously ‘safe’ career route straight out of uni has become fraught with uncertainty, with UK students facing the toughest job market in decades. The death of graduate jobs has created an illusion of desirability surrounding 9-5s; employment is the real pull. So, what was once an unremarkable result of study is now a rare and precious achievement. A recent article published in The Times expressed despair at the fact that many Oxford graduates remain unemployed. In a seemingly cruel joke, it reminded me that a good degree isn’t enough to get a job nowadays. This leaves many graduates longing for a simple 9-5 straight out of uni.
By contrast, for a growing number, the 40-hour week can seem…too little? From what I gather, the most desired jobs often do not have a set working week. The coveted job in a financial firm offers 1 am home times and no work-life balance, but does provide the crucial attraction: money. The ambition to become incredibly rich has many 20-something-year-olds sacrifice standard hours, suggesting a move away from the 9-5.
For this reason and others, many see the 9-5 potentially becoming a thing of the past. Since the pandemic, working from home has become a fixture in the corporate world. Now that everything can be done remotely, many have started to question why they should come in at all, according to The Guardian. Furthermore, Forbes has declared that the 9-to-5 workday is facing extinction, citing how traditional office roles are being taken over by AI.
The flexibility of office hours has created a non-uniform setting for 9-to-5s: no one follows the same routine anymore. Data gathered by The Times indicates that, despite the trend of working from home, undergraduates typically prefer to work in the office, provided they have Friday at home.
However, is this a bad thing? The new 9-5, which is highly personalised and somewhat irregular, can enable greater work-life balance, according to Forbes, who suggest that ‘microshifting’ is the new normal.
However, employees who don’t manage their days effectively may end up mirroring these ludicrously laborious jobs; the lack of rigid office hours means employees could also be finishing work at 1 am. In a world where working all the time is the new normal, can everyone truly say that remote working is the best thing for them?
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash.