and other occupations became less common or completely disappeared. As a result of these changing opportunity structures, fewer children could follow in their parents’ footsteps or inherit occupations from the previous generation. By the late nineteenth century, geographic mobility and social mobility became more common, as children ventured farther from their home communities to find work (Thernstrom 1980). Class still mattered, however, because it affected one’s access to resources such as education, skills, and connections that determined access to work in an economy where jobs no longer were inherited.
The existence of class also affects the structure of workplaces. Marx felt that the antagonism between labor and capital inevitably produced antagonism at work and led to the development of hierarchical, top-down managerial structures designed to control workers and ensure that the interests of employers predominated. Although the polarized workplaces envisaged by Marx may not be the dominant organizational form, managerial efforts to control labor reflect a strong desire to respond to class antagonisms. They reflect the reality that the workplace is a zone of contested terrain, one in which class conflicts take place, with each side using the weapons at its disposal—including layoffs, speedups, technology, strikes, and even sabotage (Edwards 1979, Montgomery 1979).
Throughout this book, we argue that social class remains one of the most powerful forces shaping employment opportunities and access to resources in the new economy. We examine how a changing economy has altered the reality of class and the extent to which changes in class structure have led to a fundamental restructuring of workplaces away from the familiar patterns of industrial America. We also examine how gender and race matter and how they interact with class to shape complex, contemporary structures of opportunity and workplaces. We focus on social class most directly in Chapter 3, but throughout we emphasize that other social markers (such as gender, race, or age) intersect with class in important ways.
Job Markets and Job Demands
Mike’s (the disadvantaged youth) and Tammy’s (the manufacturing worker) problems involve not simply finding work, but also finding work that pays a reasonable income and work that they have been prepared to perform. Meg (the trader), on the other hand, possesses highly marketable skills and can command a handsome salary. For her, the problem is securing a job that matches her personal resources. For Emily (the contract worker), the problem is locating new opportunities that enable her to navigate from one job to the next. Rain (the restaurant worker) understood that few opportunities that would allow him to provide for his family existed in his rural village in China, which in turn led him to migrate to where he believed job opportunities existed. All of these workers have concerns that are structural in nature and involve the way opportunities are configured. All have to adapt themselves to the existing range of jobs and the prevailing ways in which jobs are organized. Their personal problems reflect the fact that workers—especially those laboring in times of economic change—face challenges in locating and adapting themselves to opportunities. For many workers, and for those left involuntarily out of the labor force, the most recent economic recession has significantly compounded these problems. Tammy’s job loss and failed venture into real estate speculation amply illustrate this concern.
The Industrial Revolution of the early nineteenth century was clearly a watershed, one that profoundly reshaped the types of jobs available to workers. The most obvious consequence of industrialization was that far fewer people were employed in agriculture and many more were employed in factory work. However, the changes were not limited to the shift from agriculture to industry. Traditional occupations outside of agriculture were also transformed, as new technologies and new ways of organizing work pushed older approaches aside. For example, the mechanization of weaving during the Industrial Revolution completely removed this work from the home and introduced new skills that fit factory labor. Similar stories can be told about many other traditional occupations, including hat making, shoe production, tanning, and tinsmithing (Thompson 1963).
Is the range of employment opportunities available to American workers changing again? It certainly seems that way. Some jobs that used to be plentiful in America (such as the office typing pool) have virtually disappeared, and the skills needed to obtain jobs are changing as well. In the old economy, for example, it was common for children to follow their parents into the mill or factory and receive good wages for performing jobs that required little education. Today, few young people aspire to hold the type of factory job that Tammy used to occupy, largely because many of these jobs have disappeared. As steel mills and factories closed in the 1970s and 1980s, the impact reverberated throughout industry-dependent “rust belt” communities, forcing their residents to rethink long-standing beliefs about jobs, futures, and how one makes a living (Bartlett and Steele 1992, Bluestone and Harrison 1982, Buss and Redburn 1982).
One way of considering the changing opportunity landscape is to consider the process of creative destruction, a phrase introduced by economist Joseph Schumpeter (1989) to describe the tendency for old methods of production to be replaced by newer, more efficient approaches. In some cases, new technologies make old needs obsolete, as when the automobile extinguished the need for buggy whips. In other instances, technological innovation can replace workers with machines, as was the case with cigarette rollers (Bell 1973). New methods of organizing work can also be used to reduce production costs, for instance, by moving jobs to locales where labor costs are lower (Cowie 2001). And in the case of computers, technologies have not only replaced workers, but also introduced entirely new markets and jobs.
The drive to create ever more efficient and profitable enterprises is influencing the distribution of work opportunities around the world, as we observed by introducing Kavita and her job in a call center. Production now occurs on a global scale, and the forces that disperse work to far-flung locations such as Indonesia (where athletic shoes are assembled) and Bangladesh (clothing) shape the life chances of workers both at home and abroad. Understanding the reasons why work is being dispersed, and the impact on workers’ lives at home and abroad, is essential to revealing the trajectory of work and opportunity in the new economy. Throughout the twentieth century, the United States held a dominant position in the global economy. But in the new economy, lower-skilled production jobs previously held by Americans such as Tammy are increasingly being exported to countries such as China, India, Mexico, and Vietnam. While it is important to consider the impact on American workers, we suggest that this is too narrow a focus, as analysis of the functioning of a global economy should not be restricted to the interests of any particular nation and its workers.
Changing employment opportunities also have redefined skill needs, reshaped job demands, and introduced new rewards. They also impose new burdens on workers’ lives. Consider the large number of jobs available in various kinds of interactive service work that emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century. These jobs require a different type of work than that performed in the factory, in that the employees typically do not manufacture anything. Workers such as teachers, therapists, or servers provide a service for someone else with whom they are in direct contact. Sociologists have noted that this kind of work places different demands on the worker. He or she must learn interaction skills—how to make others feel comfortable, how to produce the desired kind of social setting, how to deal with various kinds of difficult social situations—because the interaction is a significant part of the product being sold. Research on airline flight attendants performed in the 1980s offers a compelling illustration of how interactive service work is performed. At that time, flight attendants were trained to make customers feel safe in the rigid and sometimes frightening environment of an airplane. To do this, they were coached on techniques to change their internal emotional states to generate the display of warmth required by their employers. As a consequence, however, these types of workers were especially prone to experiencing emotional numbness or burnout (Hochschild 1983). However, today, much less emotional labor is expected from flight attendants, indicating that the definition of how service work is to be performed is open to social negotiation.
New jobs demand new sets of skills, and new technologies and organizational systems also are transforming many familiar jobs. An administrative assistant’s job,
