What if a paycheck is not enough?

I have been doing workforce development for some 22 years, but one question I have asked myself for much of that time is why work readiness training doesn't work for some of the brightest young people in my programs. If you are in the field, you probably know the scenario I am referencing.  A young person prepares for months to get a good job only to quit it a month later.  Another gets a paid internship but leaves money on the table by not doing all their hours.  The reasons are often vague. "The boss didn't respect me.  They wanted to make me work too late.  The other staff were talking about me."  Why would young people from a low income community throw away good money?

I feel like traditional work readiness is missing something -- especially when it comes to young adults.  Maybe there is something deeper that young people are not getting from us. 

In college I was taught about Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  The lowest level is basic survival needs followed by security, significance, and self-actualization or meaning.  Only when lower-level needs are met, do we have the will to seek the satisfaction of meeting higher level needs. Since I entered this work of fighting poverty, I figured my job would be simple.  Find people in poverty, give them skills to get their basic needs met, and they will love me for it, and move on with their lives.

But it didn't work.  Too many quit their jobs or left the program.

One of my college professors hinted at it, and I have been thinking.  Maybe there is a level below the lowest of Maslow's hierarchy.  Maybe Mother Theresa was on to something when she said, "Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat." Could it be that even in the grinding poverty of Calcutta, "meaning" still matters?  Is there some need that if not met, makes the survival needs irrelevant?  Why do people commit suicide from the many bridges here?  Why is Anorexia sometimes fatal?  Why do some sleep under a bridge instead of the homeless shelter?  Why does the alcoholic drink away his opportunities?   All of these can be described as simply diseases, and that is a component to be sure, but I find it to be too convenient of an explanation, a sterile explanation designed for us to reduce everything to a controllable science.  Something existential is going on as well.  I am convinced that there are some things more universally necessary even than the need for survival. Maybe its love, maybe its dignity, respect, a gentle touch, purpose, or meaning. Maybe it is all of these things.  At a minimum, people need a reason to live before survival is relevant. 

Back to my work readiness challenge.  Traditional work readiness assumes that the participant is at the point of needing the first of Maslow's hierarchy of needs met.  We think that a job is the best solution to our basic survival needs.  In fact, that is what job seekers come to us for, but could it be that a job only for survival sake isn't that different from slavery or work in a concentration camp?  Borrowing from Victor Frankl's observations in a Nazi concentration camp, I think work for the purpose of survival doesn't actually lead to survival.  Frankl observed that many gave up.  Others persisted.  The ones who persisted had a greater sense of meaning; they had a reason to survive.  

My young people similarly need meaning, a reason to believe that survival is relevant.  They are too smart to buy into the survival myth. As educated professionals, we have settled into the daily grind of  living from paycheck to paycheck, and we wonder why young people don't buy it?  It's not that they want more than survival. Survival is only relevant if the basic spiritual need for meaning is met.  For the semi-depressed young adult disrespect from a boss is a bigger deal than a paycheck, and why shouldn't it be?  Jay-Z described it this way, "The burden of poverty isn't just that you don't always have the things you need, it's the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you'd do anything to lift that burden." Helping a young person find a reason to hold their head up high, a belief that they matter, a reason for hope, a self-respect that is greater than any disrespect  -- this is what we do. This is what we need to be truly work ready. 

Its not easy. To quote Mother Theresa again, "The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."  Issuing a stipend or doing rapid attachment job placement is relatively easy work in contrast to the deep task of meaning development. Its not easy to do this work, but when working with young people it might be the only way.

What do you think?