The midcentury lifetime-employment contract was dismantled across white-collar America

Evidence

A half century later increased competition in the global marketplace, improved information technology, greater focus on short-term financial returns, and new management techniques have combined to make virtually all jobs more “contingent.” Perhaps the most telling statistic is this: One of the fastest-growing industries in the 1980s was “outplacement” services. These firms’ revenues grew from just 35 million in 1980 to a whopping 350 million in 1989. As management scholar Peter Cappelli sums up more than a decade of research on changing employment practices, particularly among white-collar workers, “The old employment system of secure, lifetime jobs with predictable advancement and stable pay is dead.” — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 287

Categorization

• XREF: The outplacement-firms revenue statistic (10x in a decade) resembles other ‘measured by its own consulting industry’ symptoms of structural change — echoes the gold-rush logic seen in the diamond-grading and certification industries. — connects to: The public corporation collapsed as employer, halving US public-firm employment between 1970 and 2000 — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 129; Financialization may erode the postwar capital-labor social pact — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 142; US public corporations were dismantled in the 1980s as capitalism shifted toward financial speculation — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 128

Broader Connections

• The public corporation collapsed as employer, halving US public-firm employment between 1970 and 2000 #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 129
• US public corporations were dismantled in the 1980s as capitalism shifted toward financial speculation #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 128
• Financialization may erode the postwar capital-labor social pact #corroborates (0.75) — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 142