Description
At the end of the twentieth century, with the economy booming and unemployment at historic lows, the American economy was a job-producing marvel. Opportunities for workers seemed endless; college students were getting bonuses from companies before they started working, and older workers were planning early retirement. The first decade of the twenty-first century was entirely different and a whole lot tougher. From the 9/11 terrorist attacks to surges in oil prices to bank failures and financial losses on Wall Street and in the housing market, millions either lost their jobs or feared they would. They watched helplessly as the value of their houses and retirement savings declined. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States endured the Great Recession, the worst economy in seventy years. In less than a decade, Americans experienced the best and the worst of times.
American workers are frustrated, angry, and scared. Already reeling from a decade of uncertainty and rapid labor market transformations, the Great Recession came along and crushed the lives of tens of millions of workers and their families. It forestalled careers, scrapped hopes for a college education, delayed retirements, and foreclosed family homes. As this book is published, the U.S. economy is still struggling to fully recover. Hopes for rapid economic growth and a return to full employment have evaporated. If robust labor market health does not return for five years, American workers will have endured an entire lost decade of high unemployment, stagnant or declining incomes, and anxiety.
The United States has undergone several significant economic transitions since World War II, but the decade ahead presents more troubling questions about the capacity of the economy to create and sustain broad-based growth and job opportunities. During this second decade of the twenty-first century, the nation confronts historic challenges in restoring economic growth and opportunity.
Working Scared (Or Not at All): The Lost Decade, Great Recession, and Restoring the Shattered American Dream presents findings based on over fifteen years of research that will help citizens, policymakers, educators, and business, union, and community leaders reach sounder decisions in the near future. Working Scared draws on nearly twenty-five thousand national random interviews with employed and unemployed Americans, conducted from 1998 to 2012, during one of the most volatile periods in U.S. economic history. Americans from all regions and in all occupations were interviewed, including unemployed and underemployed recent college and high school graduates, long-term unemployed workers with decades of work experience and no job prospects, out-of-work manufacturing union workers hoping to retrain for new careers, laid-off schoolteachers worried about budget cuts,
anxious middle managers fearing new rounds of corporate layoffs, and real estate agents with no home buyers.
The entire set of over thirty research reports, including questionnaires and descriptions of survey methodology, from the project Work Trends: Americans’ Attitudes about Work, Employers, and Government, is available on the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University’s website (http://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu). Data from these surveys are also archived at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut (http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu).The depth and range of survey data reported here are of substantial value to researchers, policymakers, journalists, and human resources executives. This is the first publication to make full use of the comprehensive data available from the Work Trends project, which was funded entirely by the Heldrich Center.
Collectively, the findings and observations from these surveys present a powerful witness to the anxieties and agony that swept the nation during this era. They provide one of the most comprehensive social science research portraits ever developed about the views of American workers about their jobs, the workplace, and government’s role in the labor market. Also included in the Work Trends research is a special sample of workers who were laid off during the Great Recession. Their experiences and views were recorded during repeat interviews conducted in August 2009, March 2010, November 2010, and August 2011.
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