Volume 51, Number 2 · February 12, 2004
The Underworld of Work
By Andrew Hacker
The New Ruthless Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age
by Simon Head
Century Foundation/Oxford University Press, 222 pp., $28.00
Downsizing in America: Reality, Causes, and Consequences
by William J. Baumol, Alan S. Blinder, and Edward N. Wolff
Russell Sage Foundation, 321 pp., $29.95
Low-Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace
edited by Eileen Appelbaum, Annette Bernhardt, and Richard J. Murnane
Russell Sage Foundation, 535 pp., $45.00
Downsizing in America opens with excerpts from mid-1990s articles in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal telling of longtime workers from firms like Kodak, General Motors, and IBM who had recently lost their jobs. But, the authors ask, was this a fair account? 'Did companies actually reduce the size of their workforces?' After an exhaustive analysis, supported by more than a hundred tables, William Baumol, Alan Blinder, and Edward Wolff conclude that 'media attention lavished on downsizing may have left people believing that job insecurity had increased more than it actually had.' In fact, they say, 'the creation of new jobs always overwhelms the destruction of old jobs by a huge margin.'
Review, 3383 words
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