Too easy, some economists argue: The balance between employers and their workers has gotten out of whack, with knock-on effects for the whole economy.
“The general suppression of peoples’ ability to earn a good wage is part of what is leading to slower overall growth, what some people call secular stagnation,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. “It contributes to the ornery politics that we have now.”
On the campaign trail, candidates promise to bring back old-style jobs and spend less time talking about how to make the new kind work better for more people. One politician who’s addressed the issue recently is Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts: She said last month that health and retirement benefits, and labor laws, need an update.
In the new world of work, those stabilizers are being eroded -- a sense that comes across in the titles of books on the topic: “The Precariat” and “The Tumbleweed Society.”
Adam Cobb, an assistant management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, says the change is largely driven by financial markets, which reward companies that hold as few assets as possible -- including workers.
Economic statistics alone can’t capture the loss. “We take pride in what we do and a good job gives our life a narrative,” Cobb said. “There are consequences for how we think about ourselves and our place in society once we lose that connection to our work.”