For those salaried employees that hunkered down during the pandemic leaping into the new year with increased costs and a diminished sense of self-worth demands compensation.JENNIFER GAUTHIER/The Globe and Mail
Rafael Gomez is a professor at the University of Toronto and director of its Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Relations.
Should workers be entitled to a pay increase during a leap year? This question has entered popular discourse in a way that I can’t recall in any leap year past. In fact, it goes well beyond anecdotal perception. A look at Google Trends reveals that compared to early 2020 (i.e., our last leap year), searches for “leap year” and “pay” were up roughly 30 per cent in both Canada and the United States.
Interestingly, this concern is moot for those paid hourly or daily wages. As an hourly/daily wage earner, you would naturally be paid for work on Feb. 29. So really, the increased interest in leap year pay is occurring among salaried workers. The question is why, especially since salaried workers tend to have greater job security, less income volatility and better benefits as compared to their hourly-wage counterparts?
Several long-term trends related to demographics and changes in the structure of work are clearly at play. Take for example the exit of baby boomers from the labour market. By 2024 all baby boomers will be 60 or older. Typical retirement age in Canada is 63.6 years of age, meaning most boomers have already left the building (at least as it relates to work). The work styles of boomers differ markedly from other generational cohorts. The emphasis on “work” as a central pillar of life and boomer identity was reflected in the “work hard, play hard” ethos of the 1980s and 1990s – a time when boomers were entering their prime-age working careers.
Well, that period is in its generational denouement. The replacement ethos present among later birth cohorts reflects a more transactional relationship with work.
Relatedly, shifts in the structure of work – the movement from manufacturing to services and toward the knowledge economy, etc. – have made hourly jobs (where leap year pay is essentially a non-issue) less common. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, the proportion of hourly wage earners in the total labour force is now 55.6 per cent, its lowest rate since 1979 and far lower than the 1995 peak of 62.1 per cent. This means that more workers than ever before are salaried – which may explain why the issue of leap year pay is more relevant and hence more prevalent than in years past.
Yet, notwithstanding these two secular trends, I believe one of the major reasons for 2024′s increased consternation over leap year pay is residual fallout from the pandemic. Specifically, we can ascribe changes to the meaning of work and increases in the cost of living as the true proximate causes of our fascination.
Let’s start with the meaning people ascribe to work and the term “essential worker.” It was applied to those who were not subject to stay-at-home orders throughout the pandemic – e.g., grocery workers, skilled trades, nurses, warehouse workers, delivery workers, etc. Well, what most of the workers on the essential list have in common is that they are also hourly wage earners, as opposed to those like me, who worked from home and earn a salary.
At the start of the pandemic, those of us subject to work-from-home orders certainly did not envy those performing in-person work. But the pairing of “wage earning” and “essential work” created an automatic “default” category: the “non-essential, salaried worker.” An unintended consequence, then, of labelling some workers “essential” was the devaluation of huge swaths of salaried employees who were unable to work from their shuttered bank offices, schools, newsrooms, theatre houses and hotels. The psychological effect of being labelled (albeit by default) a “non-essential” worker has largely gone unnoticed, but it has permeated our society and psyches, nonetheless.
The second issue is that life has simply become much more expensive. Lockdowns shattered not just supply chains but also accelerated the plans of many younger boomers and near-boomers (Gen Xers) to retire from the labour market. The shortage of labour at the start of our societal reopening shone a light on the importance of work, but also on the scarcity of workers. Those that were left to pick up the slack once businesses reopened felt like fair compensation (and not just gratitude for having a job) was required. Although employment rates in Canada have rebounded from early post-COVID lows, the number of hours worked is still far lower than it was before the pandemic and more people than ever before are absent from work and/or taking paid sick leave.
These are indications that workers are not happy and that the “meaning” of work for many has shifted. For those salaried employees that hunkered down for almost two years and whose work was deemed non-essential, leaping into the new year with increased costs and a diminished sense of self-worth demands compensation. The collective concern over “missed pay” during this leap year is therefore a symptom of a greater malaise. The question is whether these underlying concerns are being accurately recognized.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that all baby boomers will be 65 or older this year. It is widely accepted that boomers were born in 1946 to 1964, which means the youngest members of this cohort will be 60 in 2024. This version has been updated.