Jane Jones’ grandfather, a high-school dropout, worked in a steel mill all his life.
Her father, a college graduate nearing retirement, has worked for one firm for 30 years.
But Jones-not her real name-is only 23 and already has had two employers since her graduation from college two years ago.
“I was highly recruited for my first job out of college as an assistant account specialist for a large and highly respected advertising agency,” Jones said. “Clients liked me and asked for me, but something was wrong. I felt as if they were trying to eliminate my job.”
Jones was worried, so-outside of business hours-she got another entry-level job in her field. Though Jones is relieved she found another job so quickly, she learned from the trauma surrounding her first job that there is “no such thing as job security.”
Jones knows she must be prepared-no matter how good things look-for the likelihood that her current job can disappear, too. In this brutal era of business owners’ focusing solely on the bottom line, Jones says she already has learned two lessons:
– Employers no longer are loyal to employees.
– Employees must be loyal to themselves and their opportunities to move ahead.
She also knows she may never make as much money as her father or grandfather and will not have the same health and pension benefits. Taking inflation into account, U.S. workers are making less money that their parents or grandparents, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. With low raises, this trend is expected to continue into 2000.
Jones is anxious about her employment future, and well she should be. And, it’s little comfort to her that she is not alone.
Millions of employed Americans face the same realities and feel as vulnerable as Jones. There are so many, they have a name: the “anxious class.”
That’s the phrase coined by Robert B. Reich, U.S. secretary of labor, to describe a majority of very worried American workers who have jobs but are rightfully concerned about downsizing, de-jobbing, smart machines, outsourcing, part-time and temporary workers, salary freezes, loss of benefits, stalled career paths, foreign competition and corporate bankruptcy.
“Anxious” workers are middle-income employees caught between more fortunate employees in the “overclass,” who are highly educated and highly placed in their companies, and less fortunate workers in the “underclass,” who have no skills or training and little opportunity to move ahead.
“Ominous forces in the way American labor issues are handled have divided the country,” Reich said in September in a talk to urge employers to teach workers needed skills and to shore up employees’ flagging sense of security.
Despite progress in the economy, downsizing continues: The American Management Association says that 50 percent of its 7,000 member corporations report discharging workers in 1993 and do not rule it out.
Unlike the lifelong job security that followed World War II and benefited Jane Jones’ parents and grandparents, she faces a different playing field.
Being an anxious worker, edgy about your future and worried about your job, isn’t exactly like being between a rock and a hard place, but it feels like it.
And, the squeeze is on for the foreseeable future.
“As long as businesses see downsizing and `flexible’ human resource policies as the way they’re going to compete, no job will be secure,” said June Lapidus, economics professor at Roosevelt University. “People have jobs today, but they’re not sure they’ll have jobs next year.”
“We have the most skittish work force I can remember in 30 years of personnel work,” said John R. Sibbald, president of John Sibbald Associates, an executive search firm. “It’s no longer a question of your capabilities or talent but how expedient it is for an employer to cut costs by dumping you.”
Sibbald, author of “The New Career Makers,” (HarperCollins, $28), adds: “You have to be much more greedy and selfish to get what you can while you can.”
LaTosha Campbell is still in college, but she’s worried about her career. A communications major at Columbia College and intern at WBBM-Ch. 2, Campbell says she knows her job hunt will be harder when she gets her bachelor’s degree this year.
“I think it will be wiser for me to get a master’s degree first, because it will make me safer,” she said. “Today, a bachelor’s degree is more like what a high-school diploma was 10 years ago. I’m anxious and know I’ll have to go that extra mile.”
“If you’re a member of the `anxious’ class, you have to create a plan of action and build on your strengths,” said Mary Ann Jirak, career consultant and coordinator of Harper College Career Center in Prospect Heights. “You have to think of yourself as a business within the organization-and market yourself.”
Some of the things to do to create a modicum of security, Jirak says, include “volunteering for projects, joining professional organizations, going back to school and being up to date in your field.”
Another essential: “You have to have a broad career base. Instead of only being skilled in your specialty, you also have to be a generalist in your specialty so that you’re more marketable,” Jirak said.
Michael Moran, 23, is an assistant vice president at Bank One/Chicago. A Notre Dame grad, he’s studying for his MBA at Northwestern University.
Though he doesn’t expect to work for one employer his entire career, as his father and grandfather did, Moran isn’t anxious about his future.
“Things are going well,” he said. “I have so many different opportunities here. And I don’t think I’d have a problem finding employment if I needed to.”
But economist Lapidus believes the federal government must legislate damage control to prevent “ill effects on productivity and consumerism” from an anxious work force.
“We need to reduce economic incentives to hire contingent labor, mandate prorating of benefits and pass laws that regardless of employment status, people doing the same work should be paid the same.”
