Can jobs still provide a pathway to the American dream?

[lordsummerisle]

Jon Talton, The Seattle Times


Pay is dropping and anxiety rising in our new workplace.

WHEN I ENTERED the American workforce more than 40 years ago, it would have been familiar to a time traveler from four decades before.

People still worked on typewriters or assembly lines. The telephone, installed by Ma Bell with a wire into the wall, was a primary tool of communication. Paper invoices continued to be sorted into tickler files from which they would be entered, often by hand, into double-entry accounting ledgers. More women were working, but otherwise the visitor from 1935 would have felt at home.

One key difference was welcome. Even though the economy was coming out of a recession, jobs were abundant compared to the heart of the Great Depression. Pay had never been better, especially for the large middle class.

http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/can-jobs-still-provide-a-pathway-to-the-american-dream/

[Hoyt]

1. Looks like this article is first of a series, and is well worth following. Thanks.

[raccoon]

2. As someone who's been working about 40 years, ITA with this:

A secure, full-time job with benefits was seen as an American birthright 40 years ago. Now it is much more difficult to find, with more people consigned to temp work or acting as private contractors.

[madville]

3. They mean the white middle class of yesteryear

These nostalgic articles about how awesome things were 40 or 50 years ago usually fail to mention they are talking specifically about how awesome things were for the white middle class, minorities weren't really included in that.