Tag Archives: white-collar workers

Offices along I-88 helped Naperville become a boomburb; current mayor says they are ripe for redevelopment

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What might the parts of Naperville along I-88 look like in the future? The current mayor has some thoughts:

Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

“There is no doubt that the I-88 corridor will be the largest and most significant redevelopment opportunity in our city’s history,” Wehrli said.

A new study calls the corridor the only “opportunity area” of its scale left in the city. Much of the corridor in Naperville — once known as its “Innovation Corridor” — was developed with single-use, low-density office space and is underused and “underperforming relative to its potential,” according to the report by AECOM, a consultant hired by the Naperville Development Partnership.

“Nearly half of the city’s existing jobs are located in the corridor, which the report noted was an ideal location for certain high-growth industries,” Wehrli said. “Sectors like: ag and food tech, biotech, pharma, life science, energy, fintech, quantum and advanced computing, tourism, sports and hospitality.”…

Among its recommendations, the study suggests developing a new corridor brand identity and creating a special zoning district along I-88 that would allow for a more dense, mixed-use, pedestrian- and transit-friendly environment.

“The study sets aspirational goals that add 15,000 high-paying jobs in the corridor by 2045 if we target these industries,” Wehrli told a business-friendly audience.

Three features of this report strike me:

  1. The emphasis on quality jobs is not a surprise. The jobs that came in the 1960s with Bell Labs and then other companies helped provide Naperville with a solid jobs base and a higher status. For a community that is used to having these jobs, it sounds like they want more of the same.
  2. The mention of mixed-use development is intriguing. Naperville has limited the amount of housing in this corridor in the past. How much housing would they allow? What residents are they hoping to attract? How many large-scale mixed-use developments do they think the corridor can handle?
  3. There is mention of zoning and branding unity that would be more “pedestrian- and transit-friendly.” Could this become a kind of linear neighborhood linked by mass transit and walking/biking paths? For decades the corridor was marked by proximity to a busy interstate that grew from two lanes in each direction in the late 1950s to four or more lanes each direction today. Could these new developments have significant connections to each other that go beyond cars and driving?

Average full-time work week is 47 hours; median is around 40 hours

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A number of headlines have screamed about a recent Gallup finding that the average American full-time worker works 47 hours a week. Yet, the median appears to conform to the typical 40-hour work week:

Adults employed full time in the U.S. report working an average of 47 hours per week, almost a full workday longer than what a standard five-day, 9-to-5 schedule entails. In fact, half of all full-time workers indicate they typically work more than 40 hours, and nearly four in 10 say they work at least 50 hours.

Average Hours Worked by Full-Time U.S. Workers, Aged 18+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 40-hour workweek is widely regarded as the standard for full-time employment, and many federal employment laws — including the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare” — use this threshold to define what a full-time employee is. However, barely four in 10 full-time workers in the U.S. indicate they work precisely this much. The hefty proportion who tell Gallup they typically log more than 40 hours each week push the average number of hours worked up to 47. Only 8% of full-time employees claim to work less than 40 hours.

These findings are based on data from Gallup’s annual Work and Education Survey. The combined sample for 2013 and 2014 includes 1,271 adults, aged 18 and older, who are employed full time.

Is the average the best measure here? This is a classic case where the median and mean give you different conclusions. The median tells you that not much has changed from the standard: half of full-time workers work 40 hours or less. The average, on the other hand, is pulled up by those people working 50+ hours. As the Gallup analysis goes on, it notes that there is a difference between salaried and hourly employees with salaried workers working more of those 40+ hour weeks. These salaried workers are likely white-collar and professional workers, people who may be working more but likely have more credentials, are getting paid more, and have higher-status jobs.

So, perhaps the headlines might be more accurate by saying “Salaried full-time workers have higher [47? 50?] hour work week.”

Quick Review: Cubed

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The book Cubedtackles what has become a ubiquitous space in today’s America: the white-collar office. Here are some thoughts about the book:

1. While the book might appear at first glance to be about office spaces, it is largely about the development and evolution of white-collar workers in the United States. This shift from farming and manufacturing in the late 1800s to office and clerical work was a profound shift in American society that affected everything from women in the workplace to educational aspirations to what it means to be middle class to what urban downtowns look like. It isn’t just about cubicles or desk chairs; it is about a shift toward knowledge workers increasingly laboring for big corporate America. It may seem normal now, but it is a remarkable shift over roughly 100 years.

2. While this shouldn’t be surprising given the field of architecture and design, it is still remarkable how much of office design was about trendy ideas and theories than on-the-ground information about what makes offices work. Thus, a history of American offices includes Taylorism, Le Corbusier, and Peter Drucker. Have a new idea about the intersection of work spaces and human interaction? If it is popular enough, it is likely going to going to be translated into office designs. Unfortunately, some of this theorizing comes at the expense of workers who were guinea pigs.

3. The book does well to include plenty of sociology, particularly picking up after World War II as sociologists like C. Wright Mills noticed the big shifts in society. At the same time, it strikes me that there isn’t enough well-known sociology about office life and American businesses more broadly. This may change in the near future with more economic and organizational sociology but it seems like a missed opportunity in the past from a field that focused on other topics.

4. This is the sort of book that would benefit from more pictures and architectural plans. There are some scattered throughout the book but I could easily imagine a coffee table companion book with rich photos and designs of iconic office arrangements. It can be hard at times to visualize the major patterns.

All in all, the book is a nice overview of American offices in the last 100+ years. There are numerous places where this book could have ballooned to many more pages but it doesn’t feel like the author is painting with too broad of strokes. Indeed, if we want to understand America in 2014, perhaps we should look less to Washington, glittering skylines, and the entertainment industry but rather examine what millions of Americans experience regularly in their offices.