Roaming Workforce: A review of Nomadland

Where do temporary e-commerce workers come from?

I noticed that Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland, a book I enjoyed reading earlier in November, was listed in the NYTimes 100 Notable Non-Fiction books of 2017.  Well-deserved recognition for the book.

I recommend the book review by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild, who has written several deeply informative books on the nature of work and life in America. Here is an excerpt from Dr. Hochschild’s review.

 Moving “like blood cells through the veins of the country,” Jessica Bruder writes, a growing number of older people, post-recession refugees from the middle and working class, are, like Linda, crossing the land in their Jeeps, campers and repurposed buses in search of work.

… Other nomads “pick raspberries in Vermont, apples in Washington and blueberries in Kentucky. They give tours at fish hatcheries, take tickets at Nascar races and guard the gates of Texas oil fields.”

Bruder spent more than three years traveling with Workampers – “mobile travelers who take temporary jobs around the U.S. in exchange for a free campsite”.¹

Even from an admittedly narrower perspective as an Operations researcher, I was fascinated by the nature of experience and observations made by Bruder, when she spent time working at Amazon Fulfillment center (and other places).

Here is a puzzle.

It is well known that retail sales are highly seasonal², as there is often a predictable spike in sales that occurs during the Holiday Season. (Hence, originating the term “Black Friday” when retails firms hope to move from “red” to “black” after Thanksgiving sales).

Staffing for such seasonality is hard.  As a result, there is often planned hiring of “temp” labor. Brick and Mortar retail businesses often employ young grads/students working as temps during this season.³  Seasonality is also important for internet businesses such as Amazon, which needs a significant supply of temp labor temporary labor to ship goods in time for Holidays.

Given that warehouses are often located in far-flung locales (i.e., not in cities),  how does Amazon get the large temporary labor that it needs for the holiday season?

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Ms. Bruder finds an answer that will surprise many readers, I think.   Amazon hires using Camperforce – A large group of retirees roaming the American landscape in their “recreational” vehicles (RVs).  So, it is very likely that it was not a young person that picked, packed, or shipped the gift that you bought online this Holiday season.  Instead, it is very likely that it was an old retiree like Linda, Chuck, or Don in the book.

Jessica Bruder spends some significant time working with the campers, including a stint at an Amazon factory with Kiva robots. Bruder talks about pickers happily signing up to jobs that require lifting up to 50lb weights and walking more than 15 miles a day.  (She mentions a worker who logged 820 miles in 12.5 weeks on Fitbit. pp.53).

Bruder sheds light on the nature of work that goes behind fulfilling every order of internet consumers – a process that very few consumers know or understand. It is safe to say that much less is known about warehouse jobs than retail jobs, even in exploding e-commerce space.

For example,  consider Random Stowing.

Identical items are not often stored together in warehouses, unlike in a bookstore where all books by Pynchon or Ferrante would be arranged together. Instead, in a warehouse, items that arrive in the same shipment are spreads across different boils and shelves, “spreading them out”. This seemingly haphazard process is efficient for faster picking operations. It amazes people when they hear that “Brake Fluid, Baby Formula, Eyeshadow, a book, a tape…it’s all in there” in the same bin.

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To be sure, the book is more than about temporary warehouse labor.

Using personal interviews and thoughtful reflections, Bruder covers the trials and tribulations in the lives of retirees who never retired.

Nomadland is a sympathetic ear to the voiceless margins – a thoughtful exploration of what it means to get old in modern-day America. It is also a deeply sympathetic exploration of a uniquely American subculture of camping travelers. Highly recommended.

See here for other books that I read in 2017.

 

Endnotes:

1. Workampers profiles by Bruder reveal widely different personalities. My favorite person among those covered in the book rigged up his Toyota Prius in his efforts to live as a camping nomad.
2.  Census Data reveals that December sales in 2016 to be 14% more than than the average monthly sales. Interestingly, the seasonality factor in December has been showing a downward trend over the years. In 1992, December sales were 22% more than the average monthly sales.
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows the median age of employees in Clothing Stores is about 29 and in shoe stores is about 23. My estimate is that temp employees (with lower tenure) will have a lower median age.