"Work in Progress"-Risk In The Workplace
Thursday, May 25, 2006SUSIE GHARIB: From temp work to technology to immigration, for the last two weeks, we have been bringing you stories of how work is changing in America. Tonight, we wrap up our "Work in Progress" series by asking whether those changes are good or bad for most workers. Joining us now is our Washington bureau chief Darren Gersh. Darren.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Susie, it`s a key question: is our changing economy making workers feel more or less secure in their jobs? To find out, we went to Madison, Wisconsin, and visited with one low-wage worker trying to make ends meet. Leeann Tiedt has been a home healthcare worker for a year. She`s a single mom, working part-time to support three children. She makes about $9 an hour. That`s if her clients aren`t sick or out of town.
LEEANN TIEDT, HOME HEALTH CARE WORKER: Oh, yes, it`s very difficult, very difficult right now. It`s a struggle sometimes. You have to omit certain things or stuff like that.
GERSH: And one of those things this home healthcare worker is now omitting is health insurance. Premiums have doubled in the last five years, and could soon cost her employer, Independent Living, more than it pays out in wages.
RITA GIOVANNONI, CEO, INDEPENDENT LIVING, INC.: It`s a tragedy, it`s wrong, it isn`t what should be happening in a community.
GERSH: To some analysts, the erosion of benefits is a sign the American workplace has become more insecure and employees are shouldering more economic risk on the job. Another sign -- over the last five years, temporary work accounted for 10 percent of all private sector job growth. JARED BERNSTEIN, ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE: One of the things we see employers doing now is treating their workforce more like inventory. We call it "just-in-time inventory employment." That is, you staff up when demand is spiking and you staff down when demand falters.
GERSH: It`s one of the odd outcomes in our economy. Economic growth is higher on average and recessions shorter than they have been in decades, but many people feel more insecure. To many economists, it doesn`t make sense.
BERNSTEIN: Unless you want to argue that it`s that very insecurity that`s fueling the growth in the flexibility; that by dint of deregulating, globalizing, we have a more insecure workforce, but those very insecurities drive faster growth. I don`t think that`s the kind of economy we want to build.
GERSH: But we`re not, say other analysts. They agree health insurance is a crisis, but it`s a crisis caused by rising healthcare costs, not employers pulling the plug on job security. And if you look closely at job security, you`ll find average job tenure in this country is basically unchanged over the last 20 years. Yes, layoffs have become more common at big publicly-traded companies, but private firms, which employ twice as many people as publicly-traded companies, are more stable.
STEVE DAVIS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: We tend to focus more attention on the big, brand-name, well-known firms -- and there is something going on there, quite different than the rest of the economy. If they lay off a bunch of workers, it`s big news. It gets attention. But the increased stability among privately held firms gets a lot less attention, because it`s much less visible.
GERSH: And let`s look closer at Leeann Tiedt`s situation. Her flexible schedule may seem insecure, but it allows this busy mom to keep working at a job she likes.
TIEDT: I find it very fulfilling doing what I am doing, and I love getting out there and helping people, caring for people.
GERSH: Flexible arrangements can be considered a strength of the American economy. Other countries may offer lifetime employment with secure benefits, but in those countries, it`s much harder to find work. In the U.S., unemployment is lower and job satisfaction is high, in part because people can leave jobs they don`t like and find others.
DAVID AUTOR, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, MIT: So there are tradeoffs. It would be great to have both complete employment security and always be able to find a new job when you need one, but by and large, those two don`t seem to go together. The upside of flexibility is that it makes it easy for people to find jobs. The downside is they may not keep them as long as they would like.
GERSH: But that doesn`t mean everyone has the same job security they used to have. A college-educated man certainly faces more competition, including overseas competition, than his father might have a generation ago. But a college-educated women today has a much more stable career than her mother could ever have dreamed of.
DAVIS: Part of this sense about the rising insecurity of jobs is that the people who thought they had a secure, stable job -- many of them found out-- no, they didn`t. And so there`s that failure to meet expectations.
GERSH: So what`s the expectation going forward? There`s no reason to think the pace of change and the anxiety it brings to our workplace, is about to slow down. Susie?
GHARIB: Darren, that`s been a fascinating series. Thank you so much. Darren Gersh, reporting live from Washington.
