Eli Ginzberg - The Changing U.S. Labor Market

The Changing U.S. Labor Market

Studies in the New Economy

The Changing U.S. Labor Market, edited by Eli Ginzberg

Employee Training and U.S. Competitiveness: Lessons for the 1990s, Lauren Benton, Thomas R. Bailey, Thierry Noyelle, and Thomas M. Stanback, Jr.

The New Suburbanization: Challenges to the Central City, Thomas M. Stanback, Jr.

Skills, Wages, and Productivity in the Service Sector, edited by Thierry Noyelle

Does Job Training Work? The Clients Speak Out, Eli Ginzberg, Terry Williams, and Anna Dutka

New York's Financial Markets: The Challenges of Globalization, edited by Thierry Noyelle

Immigrant and Native Workers: Contrasts and Competition, Thomas R. Bailey

Beyond Industrial Dualism: Market and Job Segmentation in the New Economy, Thierry Noyelle

Computerization and the Transformation of Employment: Government, Hospitals, and Universities, Thomas M. Stanback, Jr.

Technology and Employment: Concepts and Clarifications, Eli Ginzberg, Thierry Noyelle, and Thomas M. Stanback, Jr.

Edited By
Eli Ginzberg

First published 1994 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1994 by The Eisenhower Center for the Conservation of Human Resources, Columbia University

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Changing U.S. labor market / Eli Ginzberg, editor.
p. cm. (The Eisenhower Center for the Conservation of Human Resources studies in the new economy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-2163-8 (Cloth)
1. Labor marketUnited States. 2. Human capitalUnited States.
I. Ginzberg, Eli, 1911 . II. Series.
HD5724.C485 1994
331.12'0973dc20 94-3994
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29072-6 (hbk)

The Eisenhower Center for the Conservation of Human Resources, Columbia University, has been engaged since shortly before the outbreak of World War II in the ongoing study of the nation's changing labor force and labor market.

In more recent decades it has focused much of its research efforts on changes in the nation's demography, in particular blacks, immigrants, and older workers. A second focus of the research staff has been on the transformation of the U.S. economy from manufacturing to business services, particularly within the context of parallel changes in city-suburban locational issues affecting both where people live and where they work.

A third area of concern has been in interaction between the changing urban labor market and the educational system that has the task of preparing children and young people for adulthood and work. Finally, The Eisenhower Center has devoted a great deal of its resources and efforts over the past several decades to evaluating the striking changes that have been taking place in the nation's health care system, including the explosive growth in its health care labor force.

The present volume provides the Eisenhower staff's best judgment of some of the most striking and important changes now under way in the nation's labor market. The volume does not pretend to be comprehensive but is focused on cutting-edge issues, most of which have escaped study in depth.

We are deeply appreciative of the ongoing support of the Ford Foundation, whose three-year grant made it possible for us to explore many new lines of investigation and further enabled us to prepare this volume.

Sylvia Leef and Shoshana Vasheetz oversaw the many details involved in turning authors' drafts into a publishable manuscript; we are greatly in their debt.

Eli Ginzberg, Director
The Eisenhower Center for the
Conservation of Human Resources
Columbia University

Eli Ginzberg

This volume, a collaborative undertaking by the senior staff of The Eisenhower Center for the Conservation of Human Resources, Columbia University, is our most recent effort to explore new dimensions of the role of human resources in the American economy, an effort that has inspired our research program since it was first initiated in 1939. As has been true of much of our prior research, the current themes selected for study and evaluation have on the whole escaped close attention, both because the data are hard to come by and because the import of such data as do exist are difficult to assess. But we have long believed that there is more to be learned by focusing on emergent issues rather than those that have long been the center of attention.

The chapters in this volume concentrate on the following aspects of the changing U.S. labor market as the twentieth century nears its end: the implications that follow upon the continuing outmigration of people and jobs from the inner city to the near and more distant suburban locations; the role that the export of advanced business services from the United States plays in the increasing globalization of the world's economy; the demographic trends in the labor force which are transforming the structure and functioning of the U.S. labor market; an assessment of the effect of the steady and increasing flow of new immigrants into the United States on the nation's economy and well-being; the many facets of literacy; the ability of the public educational system in the nation's major cities to adjust to the changing skill requirements of their local changing economies; the labor market lessons to be drawn from the workers in the health care sector; and the reemergence of national employment policy.

Clearly, these issues reflect important new developments in the U.S. labor market about which our knowledge and understanding must be expanded. This opening chapter will provide an overview of the major transformations that have characterized the U.S. labor force and labor market over the past several decades so as to provide a framework for the chapters that follow. Since most Americans spend about two decades preparing for adulthood, followed by about forty years at work, it is essential to assess the changing U.S. labor market from a long-term perspective. Accordingly, we will seek to evaluate at least briefly these major transformations in the U.S. labor market that have occurred since the end of World War II, many of them precipitated by the war itself.

It is hard for young people to appreciate that up until World War II an employed woman who was single was frequently under pressure from her employer, private or public, to stop working once she married. The only women unaffected by such strictures were those at the bottom of the occupational structure, such as black domestics, mill workers, and an occasional independent professional, most of whom were likely to marry late, if at all, after they had established themselves.