In recent weeks, Congress has responded with unaccustomed speed to enact a $700 billion rescue plan for America's financial sector. Americans whose own economic meltdowns have been ignored for years were stunned and outraged by what many saw as a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Now that a lifeboat has been provided to the country's largest financial institutions, Washington policy makers should be rushing to fund a "Rescue Plan for American Workers."
The volatile global economy of the 21st Century has transformed the entire structure of work in the United States, as rapid changes in technology and finance sweep aside small and giant corporations and upend whole industries. Workers at all skill levels now find themselves unemployed, searching frantically for new job opportunities where their particular talents might still be in demand.
For many Americans, today's economy is a nightmare of rising foreign competition and changing job requirements. Young jobseekers face higher entry-level expectations. Older workers lucky enough to have health and retirement plans are postponing retirement as those benefits are rolled back or eliminated. In other cases, employees who have spent entire careers in manufacturing or finance must now find jobs in new industries. Many are going to need help.
The pessimistic mood of America's workers was captured in The Anxious American Worker, a nationwide survey of 1,000 adults conducted in May 2008 by the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. Among its findings:
- Over a third of Americans report having trouble making ends meet.
- One worker in three acknowledges concern over personal job security.
- Four in 10 workers reported that, in the last three years, they or a fellow worker was laid off from their job.
- Only half are working the number of hours they want to work.
The vast majority of Americans in the labor force now believe it is government's responsibility to prevent jobs from moving overseas (80%), provide health care for those who lose their jobs (78%), and assist people with training or education when they are laid off (73%). This is a significant shift from surveys conducted during the previous decade in which most workers reported that the task of finding the next job was mainly the employee's responsibility.
Job insecurity is the new reality for millions of American workers at all skill levels. Unlike the 1980's, when blue-collar manufacturing workers were at greatest risk of job loss, today's white-collar workers and college graduates are increasingly caught up in the backwash of corporate mergers, acquisitions and "right-sizing" schemes.
The average worker who loses his or her job today faces a much longer period of unemployment than they did 30 years ago. In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that only 36% of the 2.1 million full-time workers displaced in 2005-2007 found new jobs with the same or higher pay by early 2008. In other words, the majority of displaced workers who do find new work are forced to take pay cuts.
What Should a "Rescue Plan for American Workers" Look Like?
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