So first of all, I actually love my job. It's meaningful and I won the lottery in terms of boss and coworkers. HOWEVER…
Even if my own job has tons of upsides, there's no way not to be affected by the massive understaffing and scrambling to function in absolutely every industry around us.
Example: Lately our printer ran out of ink. We've been putting off replacing it as long as we can because the price gouging is INSANE (printer company takes measures to actively stop users from buying any other brand of ink).
I finally ordered it, but it is on backlog. Then it finally said “delivered”, but we didn't get it, and it was signed for by someone whose name we don't recognize and doesn't work here. I called the delivery company (which is different from the company I bought the ink from, which is different from the manufacturer of the ink). The person on the phone is clearly overwhelmed and is not sure how to help me. She has to escalate it to somebody else. I still haven't heard back. Now, because of the ink shortage, our work has become harder to do and is taking longer (and even though, as I said, I love my job, our industry is still starved for funding so we are still stuck sometimes doing the best we can under not ideal circumstances).
It just made me think about how interconnected all the different jobs around us are. Even if somebody is perfectly content with their own work situation, they don't exist in a vacuum – they can't NOT be effected by the corrosion of industries all around them. When so many people are struggling to keep up with their work, because the company understaffs, trying to maximize profits, putting too much on everybody's shoulders, etc – it has a ripple effect.
No matter how we're doing individually, it always still matters how we're all doing collectively.