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I feel like the authors or researchers of this paper purposefully misinterpret what most think of when talking about men in the workforce. It's not that men do work continously throughout their life. It's that men are generally expected to work continously.
Given the study didn't look into why the men didn't work continously, and even point to layoffs and other external factors, I'm not sure the value of what they've found.
You might be misinterpreting the focus of papers like this.
Going off of how they describe their findings, this was a cross-sectional study of 4500 people. They likely asked demographic questions (age, ethnicity, geolocation, occupation(s) and so on) and quantitative questions (eg “Were you unemployed for two or more consecutive weeks between the ages of 27 and 45?”). You have to come up with the questions ahead of time and they have to be the same for everyone in the study. Studies using text responses are done on smaller groups and require a lot more manual processing (although modern NLP might be helping with that - the tech wasn’t there when I was doing this kind of thing).
In any case though, they do make some inferences from the data. Some are statistical correlations (like higher education), and some are unsupported speculations (jobs moving overseas), at least in the context of this write up. It probably is meant to queue up further studies (say, looking at counties that had major industries relocate to another state or country during the study period, or look at modeling the impact of specific government or industry policies).
In any case, I’m a bit surprised by their choice in cohort (boomers, really?) since we know that the steadiness of employment has plummeted during that period. I’m from and have lived and worked in relatively urban areas, and I cannot think of anyone that I know who have not spent more than two weeks unemployed from their 20s to their 50s, and most have done so on multiple occasions. I doubt the Gen X numbers would be higher than 20% or so, with the younger cohorts being even lower.
It might be higher in a rural company town (where the main employer is a Rubbermaid factory for example), or in an industry like agriculture or mining.
In any case, they’re using the results of their study to make claims for causality (unsubstantiated by the data presented in some cases) and to recommend policies to address it (again, unsubstantiated in most cases). They’re very sympathetic to the plight of workers and want things to change. The only stronger position I have seen made by economists is the government acting as “employer of last resort,” which is a public works program like the WPA was during the depression. There are several economists working actively on those models, and those would play nicely into this kind of study as well.
That's very possible, I think the problem is I'm confused by their use of the word "myth".
When I hear full-time employment and men, I'm not aware of any myth that men are continously employed I think the of the societal standard that men must be continously employed. Rereading the paper, it still seems like they're sorting conflating things because they explicitly compare the men's employment to the fact that women "opt-out" of the workforce.
So to be clear, I'm not questioning the merit/validtiy of the study, but the way they've phrased their finding is odd (at the very least).
I’m Gen X, so I’m part of the crossover generation.
My father’s father worked for the same company from the age of about 14 (by lying about his age) until retirement. He started as a kid sweeping glue residue off the top of shipping crates and ended as a union shop foreman. My other grandfather was a career soldier who moved from combat duty to overseas stationing in Germany and Japan to training officers in universities. My father worked in a single career for a single firm all of his life.
I, on the other hand, have had probably a half dozen different careers. Not employers - careers. I couldn’t even recall the number of employers I’ve had. And I’m even thinking about making one more switch before I call it done.
My grandparents (commercial or military) retired with full pensions that allowed them to live comfortably until the ends of their days. My partner and I are going to be relying on our retirement and other savings.
I think what the authors are talking about is generationally skewed. If you have an empty weekend and can suppress a gag reaction against racism, I suggest reading the Crichton novel Rising Sun. The movie is an alternative, but doesn’t really capture the existential terror that the novel does. Its value is in providing an insight into the American perception of reality at the time, as the economy transformed from lifetime employment at a company to what became the modern version of hopping around, either voluntarily or because the companies themselves are seeing employees as temps. I think the authors, whether or not they harbor the outdated insights to whatever degree, are speaking to that phenomenon. I just think you’re right in pointing out it’s outdated by about 20 years.
The 80s were like 20 years ago, right?
We don’t know exactly why these men followed such a wide range of work patterns during what economists call their “prime earning years.” But we think increasing labor market precarity – which researchers say is driven in large part by increases in layoffs and decreases in unionization – played a big role.
For example, we found that men who worked as “operators, fabricators and laborers” or in “precision production, craft and repairs” were at greater risk of unemployment. These are jobs that provided our own grandfathers with good, well-paying work, but they are also jobs that have become increasingly rare since the 1970s.
worked steadily and continuously, which we defined as working almost every week of the year between ages 27 and 49.
Wow, sounds fucking miserable. I take as much time as I can afford between jobs. I highly doubt when I die I'll be thinking "Damm, I wish I had spent more time working".
In our research as experts in the study of people’s employment over time
On the one hand, I think that this would be a terrible job to get fired from. On the other hand, you would be able to write a ten page paper well supported by citations to explain the gaps in your resume.