Every once and a while, a ‘dream job’ ad appears that temporarily blows up social media, and creates something of a mini media storm.
Take, for example, a recent job ad from last year, offered by a mysterious billionaire owner of a private island in the British Virgin Islands.
The nameless owner sought a “courageous couple ready to take on the challenge of a lifetime” to manage the island and promote it via various media platforms. The purpose? Starting the process of building up casual tourism there. Yep, that’s right – living on a Caribbean desert island – oh, and receiving £160,000 for the pleasure too.
It follows a similar 2018 job ad, to open and run the world’s most remote bookshop, in the luxury eco resort of Soneva Fushi in the Maldives no less – (“pay derisory, but the fringe benefits are unparalleled,” claimed the ad), and numerous others have appeared in a similar vein.
But there’s one current job ad, from right here in America, that’s caught TLNT’s eye.
For not only does it offer the chance to do something similar very similar for a lucky person (offering a minimum of a year away from the daily grind, to seemingly have a whale of a time), but according to the man who devised the job, businessman Joel Holland (below), it’s a ad that also says a lot about the way work is being viewed right now.
Harvest Hosts seeks ‘chief retirement officer’
Let’s start from the beginning.
The ad in question comes from Harvest Hosts – the national membership organization that offers RV holiday makers/tourers, safe, and interesting overnight stays across a network of more than 5,000 farms, wineries and breweries with no camping fees.
What’s unique about the job however, is that the person who gets the job will immediately be asked to retire.
You read this correctly.
In an exclusive interview with TLNT, Holland explains what he’s doing.
The advert is wanting to find the company’s first ever ‘chief retirement officer’.
It’s a position that – according to the job ad in question – intends to “send someone into early retirement…but in a good way” – by basically having them hit the open road, to explore what North America has to offer.
With just a $90,000 RV, and by only using its network of overnight stay locations – the lucky candidate will be tasked with “uncovering the best ways to maximize your retirement.”
In return for their ‘retirement’, the person that secures the job will have to create content showcasing Harvest Host locations, across different social media channels.
The quirky job that’s got a big message about work right now
In explaining the job, Holland describes the role as “kitchy, a bit of fun, and an opportunity for someone to take time out, hit the road and have fun.”
But in many ways, he agrees the job is symbolic too of something much bigger – of how people are questioning the traditional 9-5; how they’re questioning how long they want to work for; and why there might be a trend for people taking lots of ‘mini-retirements’ throughout their life, rather than leaving it right until the end, when their health might not be so good.
Oh, and this last reason is particularly pertinent, because it harks back to Holland’s own personal experience of over-work, ‘burn-out’ and despondency – which saw him take his own ‘mini-retirement’ before coming back the workplace feeling brighter, and more invigorated.
People are re-evaluating their priorities
“We’ve been blown away by the response to this job,” he says [several hundreds at the time on interview in July] – and if I were to hazard a guess as to why it’s really resonating with people, it’s because I think we’ve all – post Covid – completely re-evaluated our priorities.”
He adds: “It’s no surprise people are questioning what’s ‘normal’ about work. The traditional 9-5 isn’t interesting to people anymore. More people are saying they want a less well-paid job, but one that makes them happier.”
In the same way that Harvest Host’s ‘chief retirement officer’ can be someone that wants to “retire at any age” [ie Holland isn’t seeking older people only, but anyone who can discover what a retirement experience could look like on the road], Holland says more people are choosing to quit, change what they do entirely, or just pull out of the workforce for a few years, to have a mini-retirement, before coming back refreshed again.
“This is exactly what happened to me,” he recalls. “I founded Storyblocks (a stock photography, video and media company to rival the likes of Getty Images), that I spend 13 years working non-stop at. But having taken it from nothing to a 100+ plus people operation on the East Coast, I was drained, burned out, and just finished. From being someone who has quite high energy, I was suddenly just empty. I didn’t care anymore; I didn’t want to do stuff; I had apathy bordering on depression.”
It was due to this – at just the age of 28 – that Holland decided he had to break free.
He got his own RV and toured America for a few years, just to recharge his batteries.
It was also this experience that introduced him to the culture of RV-ing, and staying at different over-night stops. When he knew the time was right to come back into the world of work, that’s when he found a small company offering RV stays for people, run by a husband and wife team. He bought it there and then, and has turned it into what Harvest Hosts is today.
“I was the lucky one,” he says. “I had the ability to break out of the workplace, because I had money behind me. If people do feel trapped in their job – and burned out doing it – that truly must be awful.” But he continues: “What’s great about the economy at the moment is that if you have skills it’s never been easier to change and do something different – and I think it’s this that Americans are tapping into; wanting just to break out of what they’ve been doing, because it’s not making them happy anymore.”
Applicants have to write a ‘resignation’ letter
Another quirk of this particular job, is that applicants apply by literally ‘resigning’ from their current job, and it’s how people’s resignations are couched that form a judgement as to their suitability for the role as much as their skills.
In one person’s ‘resignation’, an applicant wrote: “It is with absolute giddiness that I submit this letter of resignation. I have chosen, at the ripe age of 34, to transition to a life of retirement. The years of mind-numbing spreadsheets, stomach-churning corporate jargon, crappy office coffee, and anxiety-inducing ice breaker exercises have completely burnt me out.”
This applicant continues: “I’d love nothing more than to never “circle back”, “connect”, or “align” with any you ever again. You are all lovely people, but life is not meant to be lived in a temperature-controlled, artificially lit-building in need of more windows, while typing away at a tiny screen that leaves my eyeballs burning and my head pounding at the end of each day.”
It’s strong stuff!
According to Holland, there are these, quite critical letters about the world of work, but others that are more poignant.
One applicant, he confides, has terminal cancer, and wants to travel while they can. Another wants to travel as a couple, because the pair of them are in their advancing years. At the other end of the age spectrum, there is an application from a 30-year old biologist, who’s reached a point where they feel they need to try something different, and every age group inbetween.
Is there a growing FIRE generation?
What unites these very disparate groups of people, is that work as they know it is not working for them.
They’ve hot a ceiling; they’ve realised there’s more to life, and they want out. And it seems more HR chiefs are dealing with just this sort of sentiment.
Currently (as of June 2024), the labor force participation rate is just 62.7%. It is down from 63.3% in February 2020 and 67.2% in January 2001 (see below):
It’s at a near historic low, but it’s being fuelled by there being record numbers of Americans not in work, but not actively seeking work.
This is a new(ish), but troubling trend. In May 2022, the US Chamber surveyed unemployed workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic to find out if they would ever be coming back into the workforce.
Significantly, more than a quarter (26%) of these people said it would never again be essential for them to return to work. At the time, the extra few hundred dollars a week they were getting from enhanced unemployment benefits (which ended in Sept. 2021), meant 68% of claimants earned more on unemployment than they did while working.
But it seems many people just don’t need to work. Nearly one in five said they had already altered their livelihood to survive being jobless; 17% have retired completely, and 19% have transitioned to being homemaker. Another 14% said they were working part-time instead of full-time.
Add all this up, and the result is stark: if the labor force participation rate today was the same as it was in February of 2020, there would have more than two million more Americans in work.
Could more retire early?
For those who just don’t see a need to find work, academics are calling them part of a growing FIRE movement – short for ‘Financially Independent, Retire Early’.
Currently, only1% of Americans aged 40-44 are officially retired, and it’s only 2% amongst those aged 45-49.
But after the age of 50, the proportion of retirees jumps significantly (6% of those aged 50-54 are retired), with more than one in ten (11%) retirees now being between the age of 55-59.
For many, Covid has certainly accelerated this.
Data finds around 2.4 million additional Americans retired in the first 18 months of the pandemic than would have been expected to. While some of these have since returned, around a million are still retired to this day.
“My feeling is that yes, while some people are checking out of the workforce entirely, the majority are simply wanting more balance,” says Holland.
“There’s people that I meet who tell me they’re willing to work longer, but that they want to work ‘less hard’ and with mini-breaks along the way.”
This, he argues is where the notion of having lots of ‘mini-retirements’ will gain in popularity.
As for he own ‘retiree’, the aim, says Holland is to find his ‘retirement officer’ soon, with the aim of them starting (or is that finishing?) in the fall.
The deal as it stands, is to be retired for a year, but already he says that if people are enjoying their retirement too much, he’s open to extending this.
They certainly have a good reason to. The successful applicant keeps the RV forever, and they get $200 a day to cover food, fuel and the basics. The rest is driving, and seeing what America has to give. What’s not to like?