Insecurities for the Bottom 90% of the US Population – part 2 – Jobs

February 16, 2025 Capitalism, Economy, Inequality

This is part of the series on the insecurities produced by American capitalism for most Americans.

The Insecurities of Jobs

Employment insecurity1 is the first insecurity that comes to mind. It is historically one of the original products of the capitalist revolution.

Harvard political science professor Kathleen Thelen gave an address as the American Political Science Association President in 2019 titled, “The American Precariat: U.S. Capitalism in Comparative Perspective.”2  She describes the increasing forms and character of insecure employment in the US.3  Following British economist Guy Standing4, she identifies several forms of labor security that characterized the standard industrial job relationship that ruled until the 1980s:

(my summary)

  1. Employment security – protection against arbitrary dismissal
  2. Job security – ability and opportunity to find an occupational niche – opportunities to move up in status and income
  3. Work security – protection against accidents and illness at work
  4. Skill reproduction security – gaining new skills through work
  5. Income security – adequate stable income – “living wage”
  6. Representation security – a collective voice in the labor market – unions
  7. Labor market security – government policies to achieve full employment

The new gig contingent work economy produces insecurities in 1 through 6. Neoliberal government policies have undermined 5 and 7. Labor insecurity is a significant driver of the other forms of insecurity.

An NPR Marist survey from 2018 found:

” 1 in 5 jobs in America is held by a worker under contract. Within a decade, contractors and freelancers could make up half of the American workforce. Workers across all industries and at all professional levels will be touched by the movement toward independent work — one without the constraints, or benefits, of full-time employment. Policymakers are just starting to talk about the implications.”5

As of 2022 more than 36% of workers in the US were in temporary, part-time, contract, or gig jobs.6

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the insecurity story. Keep in mind what a Federal Reserve report, “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2020” showed:

“More than one-fourth of adults were either unable to pay their monthly bills or were one $400 financial setback away from being unable to pay them in full.”7

A key element of an adult’s self-perception is occupational identity. This is frequently expressed as “What career am I engaged in or headed toward?” And further, how do I progress up the career ladder? For example, when I started as a machinist in 1973, I was just a run-of-the-mill production machinist. I had visions of achieving the top rank of being a tool and die maker. I ended my machinist career as an R&D machinist. Earlier, I had been at the beginning of an academic career in graduate school at Cornell. At the time, there was a clear track of finishing a PhD, followed by a post-doc job, then a run up the ladder to a tenured position. Today, we have a situation in which Jeff Bezos’s vision of a universe of temporary employment means that people largely work in jobs below their educational achievement with little or no opportunity for advancement or even job security.

 

Footnotes

  1. A note about the terminology – academics mostly use the term “precarity” to refer to what I am calling “insecurity”. If you want to do further research on the topic of insecurities you should start with the term “precarity”. I prefer insecurity becuase it is a widely used word that is on target in its meaning.
  2. Kathleen Thelen, “The American Precariat: U.S. Capitalism in Comparative Perspective,” Perspectives on Politics 17, no. 1 (March 2019): 5–27, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592718003419.
  3. Precarity is not a new phenomenon in the capitalist world. The current state of affairs is an intensification of past insecurities generated by capitalism.  Juan Sebastian Carbonell, “Precarious Work Isn’t New — It’s Part of How Capitalism Functions,” Jacobin, April 21, 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/04/precarity-french-labor-market-gig-economy-precariat.
  4. Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, 2021. P. 12
  5. Yuki Noguchi, “Freelanced: The Rise Of The Contract Workforce,” NPR, January 22, 2018, sec. The Rise Of The Contract Workers, https://www.npr.org/2018/01/22/578825135/rise-of-the-contract-workers-work-is-different-now.
  6. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/future%20of%20america/freelance%20side%20hustles%20and%20gigs%20many%20more%20americans%20have%20become%20independent%20workers/freelance-side-hustles-and-gigs-many-more-americans-have-become-independent-workers-final.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
  7. “The Fed – Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2020 – May 2021,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, accessed April 4, 2022, https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2021-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2020-executive-summary.htm.