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Preface
Jobs matter everywhere. For all but a small slice of the
world’s active adult population, working is the only way to ensure that
food and shelter will be there everyday. But while this holds true for
most Americans as well, our relationship to the working world remains
distinct, since Americans, more so than people in other countries, define
ourselves by what we do. Adults quiz younger people repeatedly on what
they want to be when they grow up, and when adults meet as strangers, the
first step in a polite conversation is often to find out how the other
person makes a living. For people elsewhere, such a topic might be
broached only later, since it could be misinterpreted as questioning, for
example, the person’s social or economic class. But for Americans,
professions are the primary stamps of identity. In many social situations,
we are shoe store managers or truck drivers or nurse’s aides first. Only
once that is clear do we acknowledge being Republicans, Methodists, former
gymnasts, and experts at making hummus.
The fluid paths many Americans follow over the course of
their careers also sets us apart from others. Our educational systems tend
to favor general knowledge over specialization—particularly in terms of
developing vocational skills—and there is a broad sense among many
Americans that education and training matter less than experience or
certain generalized qualities, such as communication or leadership skills
or simply hard work. Teenagers routinely leave high school knowing only
that they have strong skills in some area, such as math, and use their
college years to pick and choose from a variety of more specialized
studies that others would have been pursuing since their early teens. Even
once a person takes a degree as relatively focused as, say, mechanical
engineering, few would be surprised if that same person eventually went on
to law school and forged a new career as, to imagine only one possibility,
an administrator of government contracts for a military machinery company.
The combinations are endless, and our awareness of how one path might
branch into another has almost made a high-flown political career seem
like the logical extension of a successful stint as an actor. All the
while, percolating in conversations and perched at the front of many
people’s thoughts is a sharp awareness of the general wage each profession
is likely to command. In that sense, Americans are remarkably serious job
consumers. From a very early age we learn to play The Price Is Right with
our nine-to-five lives.
This book is about some of the many ways that the
virtually universal need to work meets our particular fascination with the
subject. The first chapter, “American Workers and the Health of the U.S.
Economy,” considers American employment as a broad political issue,
looking at the quantity and quality of jobs available to Americans,
offering differing points of view on whether the economic well-being of
Americans is improving or declining, and suggesting how American women and
minorities are faring in the workplace. The second chapter, “The Role of
Governments in the Job Market,” considers what governments are or could be
doing to ensure that Americans find rewarding employment and enjoy a
reasonable standard of living. Two issues addressed in this section are
skills training and wage regulation, but the bulk of the chapter takes up
the question of how governments can create more jobs—perhaps the single
most common concern local and state-level politicians feel called upon to
address. The third chapter, “American Jobs and the Global Economy,” covers
three controversial topics: immigration, outsourcing, and the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed more than a decade ago by
the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The fourth chapter, “The Working
World in Transition,” suggests how changing business practices and
shifting social, technological, and demographic factors are remaking the
American working experience. Articles in this section provide information
on telecommuting, the use of temporary workers, trends among retirees, and
the ways technology is being used to screen job applicants and monitor
employees. The appendix reproduces a section of the U.S. Department of
Labor’s 2006–2007 Occupational Outlook Handbook and provides detailed and
carefully researched suppositions about what professions might be in
particularly high demand over roughly the next decade.
The many writers and publishers who granted permission
to reprint their work have my sincere appreciation. Thanks are also due to
the other people who contributed to this book, particularly my H. W.
Wilson Company colleagues Jennifer Curry, Lynn Messina, Mariellen Rich,
and Richard Stein.
David Ramm
August 2006
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