What’s A Labor Digger And Why Does The Internet Think They’re Worse Than Gold Diggers?

The internet has identified a new genre of man: Meet the “labor digger.”

In a viral TikTok video from last month, Shay Walker, who goes by @shaythethey online, said a labor digger is someone ― usually a straight man ― who digs for ambitious women. While gold diggers look for a partner whose wealth is already established, the labor digger plays the long game instead, Walker explained.

“Men will see a woman who maybe doesn’t have everything she wants in life but she has a drive that will get her there,” Walker says in the clip. “A lot of women who are driven … will be very expressive about sharing their dreams, their skill set and intellect.”

To the right audience, a woman who’s disciplined and hardworking would inspire them to invest in a relationship. “To the wrong audience, that will show them that they can exploit from you,” Shay says.

In an interview with HuffPost, Walker said they made the video because they got tired of seeing video after video of men on TikTok complaining about women who only want them for their bank account, or if they’re “high-value men.”

But these days, most women contribute, too. Walker thought it was high time to give a name to the type of man who seeks out that labor, whether consciously or unconsciously.

“Men greatly benefit from being married,” Walker said. “They tend to have higher incomes if they’re married and live longer lives if they’re married, whereas it’s the complete opposite for women. Women’s lifespans are often shortened when they’re married, their career outlook is often limited when they get married or the more they invest into a man.”

Some of that difference comes down to men’s opportunities: Men do tend to have access to higher-earning industries. But it’s their wives at home who give them the peace of mind and household support they need to earn that promotion and be a star at work.

Oftentimes, those women are working, too. The so-called “second shift” takes hold for working women as soon as they walk through the door from their day job, especially when they have kids.

Then there’s the mental labor that goes into being a partner and parent (sometimes called emotional labor): It’s mom who, more often than not, is tasked with doing the seemingly invisible jobs no one in the family acknowledges, including making dentist appointments, sending holiday cards, managing temper tantrums.

Let’s be clear: Performing domestic and care work for a partner isn’t the issue here.Putting in effort and looking after your partner is a requirement for any healthy, loving relationship.

Supporting a person in their personal or professional growth is not an issue, either, said Laura Danger, a domestic equity coach and author of the upcoming “No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More.”

“It all becomes an issue when one party’s well-being is prioritized over the other’s, or the depleting sacrifice of one party is the glue that keeps their relationship together. The issue is extraction,” Danger told HuffPost.

All that said, sometimes women are way too willing to let their labor be dug.

Danger said she’s talked with plenty of women who have been their boyfriends’ alarm clocks so they didn’t miss work. Women who’ve packed lunches, wrote resumes and researched how to get jobs. Women whose partners weaponize their incompetence, to borrow another therapy-speak buzzword.

“There’s a deeply-ingrained belief among women that what’s good for him is good for them,” Danger said. “Or that sacrificing is what ‘good’ partners do.”

As for the men, in some cases, they may be intentionally seeking out someone they think will put them first. For them, a relationship is more about personal gain rather than genuine partnership. But oftentimes, labor digging emerges from something less sinister, Danger said.

“In many cases, young couples will plan for their futures and with the mindset that an investment in a man’s education or training will open more earning potential ― benefiting the whole family ― but women will work, pay bills, and manage the home while their husbands and partners earn degrees or complete training,” Danger explained.

This lopsided dynamic is framed as an investment in the future of the family, but as time goes on, the wife’s “turn” to have similar support as she pursues her own goals never materializes.

That’s what happened to Kiki Bryant, who wrote about “labor diggers” on her blog Uppity Negress this summer. Rather than contributing equally to the relationship, Bryant wrote, “a labor digger expects their partner to act as a maid, manager, therapist, or caregiver, while they provide minimal labor themselves.”

“I’m divorced now but as a stay-at-home mom with my oldest, I always resented the expectation that all things domestic were my inherent or default responsibility,” she told HuffPost. “If my partner contributed, they were ‘helping’ as opposed to simply contributing, and it was looked at as something I should be grateful for.”

When the couple’s child turned 3, Bryant also started working outside the home. She expected the gender expectation to naturally adjust, but it never did.

Bryant’s lived experiences convinced her that “what men are taking from women is much more valuable than gold because it takes away our lifelong earning potential, our overall life happiness.”

Labor digging may seem like a dynamic that occurs primarily in traditional marriages with rigid gender norms, but Danger said progressive, left-leaning men often get away with labor-digging behavior, too. (And women can be labor diggers, as well.)

“Men may have feminist beliefs but look how often they willingly settle into imbalance and demand disproportionate labor from the women they partner with,” she said.

“You can claim to support gender equality, but if you fail to carry your fair share of the load, you’re benefiting both from the labor itself and the social currency of being perceived as progressive,” she added.

There’s plenty of high-profile examples of labor digging: We see it in MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Jeff Bezos, quitting her job in 1994 to help her then-husband start what would become Amazon. (Scott spent her free time working on a novel — her own dream.)

Or, Danger said, consider Michelle Obama, who resigned from her leadership position at the University of Chicago Medical Center to support her husband, Barack Obama, in 2009, the year he became president. (Earlier this year, the former first lady admitted there were “moments when I was resentful, moments when I was mad, there were moments when I didn’t feel like I got enough attention.”)

Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady are another good labor-digging example, Danger said. “Gisele put her life on hold while he dedicated himself to his career, admitting that he missed almost all birthdays and holidays.” (Like the Bezoses, Bündchen and Brady are now divorced.)

Of course, some married couples are on the same page, striking a traditional-looking work-home balance that works for both parties. There’s nothing inherently exploitative about that if it’s agreed upon.

“It’s not labor digging if it’s mutually beneficial: He agrees to provide financial resources, and she agrees to make the home a haven,” said Allison Daminger, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life.”

“I’d probably label something like that ‘specialization,’ which has been around for a long time,” she said.

Daminger’s own research on household labor inequity suggests that most couples intend to divide work equally but drift toward inequality.

“That’s not to say ‘labor digging’ doesn’t happen, just that I think it’s important to note that it’s not the only route to the kind of inequalities we see so often in cis-het couples,” she said.

The exasperation young women are voicing today about labor-digging men isn’t new. It reminds Danger of the “wages for housework” international campaigns of the 1970s, when feminists argued for recognition of the economic value of housework.

These conversations also call to mind the work of theorist bell hooks, who, in “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” and in other books, wrote about men who “head” the household while pocketing money and time.

“As hooks explained, these men skirt responsibility and feel entitled to the benefits of the domestic labor and the wealth and power accumulated with their jobs,” Danger said. “They protect their time and even their space ― man caves, for instance ― without protecting their partners’ time or space.”

Danger is glad the term “labor digger” is popping up so much lately, if only to combat harmful narratives about gold-digging women.

“Some online groups and influencers build platforms on blaming ‘gold-digging’ ex-wives who they deem undeserving of spousal maintenance or child support,” she said. “Meanwhile, their careers and families would be impossible without the labor, coordination, relationship maintenance ― dragging them to therapy, for instance ― of their partners.”

Given how long these conversations have been simmering, it’s past time, said Danger, “to confront how women’s work is extracted, exploited and rendered invisible.”