Why are you broke? page 2 of 5
economy and what's ahead
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If Things Are So Great, Why are you broke? page 2 of 5 |
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The truth about the economy and what's ahead |
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Doug Henwood | |||
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4.4 percent of workers were employed at "contingent" jobs (by their definition, jobs that aren't expected to last more than a year),
down half a point from 1995*. And third, the turbulence of worklife
hasn't increased anywhere near as much as you'd guess from reading the papers. Since the early 1980s, there has hardly
been any change in the number of years people stay on the job*.
Why have these untruths become so popular? It may be because the old elite of the workforce -- middle-aged white male executives -- suffered a round of downsizings in the early 1990s, exposing them to the nastiness that had long been regular fare for the rest of us shlubs. Suddenly it became a problem worthy of The New York Times' attention*. I don't mean to cheer, or even minimize, the distress of the downsized, but it does need some perspective. The reason, it turns out, that we're not bringing home huge amounts of bacon is because -- counter to the cybertopian view in which all tomorrow's jobs will be for experts at Perl programming or discounting a cash flow -- a large portion of the jobs being created are of the low-wage variety. In some cases low-paying jobs are replacing higher paying jobs. Shown on the accompanying chart are the 30 job titles the BLS projects will provide the most growth over the next decade. These 30 alone account for nearly a third of employment today and nearly half of projected job growth*. Reading through this list is a lot less rosy than, say, perusing an issue of Wired. The number one area of job growth? Cashiers. |
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Web Lab |
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