Job Insecurity

Are we more insecure in our jobs than previous generations? Harold Meyerson points to a study that says we sure do feel more insecure in our jobs. Russell Roberts took exception to this in a kind of hamfisted way, basically saying that people shouldn't feel much job insecurity because they're more likely to be able to find a job in a short amount of time. But, his argument falls a little flat because he has tenure and is in a job that would be easy for him to find elsewhere. That leaves the rest of us who don't have tenure and compete with thousands of other professionals for the same job.

Sebastian Mallaby takes a better approach than Roberts. He uses real world statistics that show that job insecurity had risen temporarily around 1990 but fallen again. Also just about the same percentage (just over 50%) of men who neared retirement in 1969 and 2002 had been with a single employer for at least 20 years.

Now, there seems to be a disconnect between what is actually happening in the United States employment picture with how Americans feel about their employment situation. I think a big portion of that comes from the way offshoring is portrayed in the media. It certainly seems as though everyone's job, particularly those in IT, are up for grabs by Indian and Chinese companies. However, while some jobs certainly are disappearing, that number is almost trivial in the grand scheme of things and other jobs are being created to pick up the slack.

Another factor may be that employees are more empowered to take control of their careers than in previous generations. Younger people are no longer conditioned to think that they will be with their company for their entire career. They're responsible for continuing to find jobs to further their career. This empowerment may cause some people discomfort and worry that their current jobs won't exist in 5 years. That's probably true, but that is a function of a dynamic economy.

As I mentioned in my review of Cowboy Capitalism I'm always leery of studies that draw conclusions about a state of affairs by using opinion surveys instead of real world data. Of course sometimes real world data is hard to come by, but, employment data is not. And the employment data backs up the fact that Americans have as much job security as they have in past generations.

Russell Roberts also has a follow up post.