The Great Jobs Deception: Why More Workforce Education Will Not Solve the Problem of Inadequate Jobs
Have you ever wondered why the more you improve yourself the harder it is to find decent employment? For most of us, work is not working. It is not just a matter of working harder for less, year after year, but of losing things that matter--socially useful work that gives us purpose, self-esteem, and a place in our communities. While some people don't have enough work to live, others are working so much they barely have a life.
When work is unfulfilling and careers stagnate, a typical reaction is to go back to school for more skills and credentials. We are led to believe that if we only make ourselves better--work harder, learn new skills, network with the "right" people--that we will find work that fulfills us. The system exhorts us to continually scrutinize our own shortcomings, yet no one applies the same level of critical scrutiny to the system and structures that make work unrewarding, exhausting, or unfulfilling.
The Great Jobs Deception is based on a doctoral dissertation that analyzed underemployment among professionals in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), health care, legal and academic occupations. These were individuals who had a minimum of a college degree, and many who had post-graduate or professional degrees. The survey sample was comprised of a demographically and geographically dispersed population--that is, they were not all recent graduates looking for their first professional job, nor were they atypical of the American population as a whole. Yet, 60% of the individuals in this group experienced underemployment at some point over their career. The statistics and stories that came out of this study bolster the evidence that structural features of the job market create an oversupply of multiple skill reserves. This professional reserve army is good for business because it operates to cheapen and disempower even professional-level workers.
The Great Jobs Deception exposes the fallacies of the so-called knowledge economy and the propaganda of the skills shortage crisis, which keeps all of us on a constant treadmill without questioning the broader forces that keep us there. We cannot--and indeed should not--expect the corporatocracy to create "jobs." Instead, the Great Jobs Deception advocates for the creation of livelihoods that are designed to fulfill human needs and serve our communities.
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