Employment in America has become a depressing subject. The recession has been officially over for years, yet almost 15 million people remain without jobs and many more would work if they thought they could. Neither political side is getting anywhere with the problem, and Washington has almost stopped discussing it, let alone implementing anything to solve or even improve it. Work's New Age: The End of Full Employment and What It Means to You is the first full-length book since recession's end to address this massive national concern. It explains, in terms of numbers, trends, and social patterns that we can all understand and relate to, why the connection between workers available and work needed has changed permanently. Using a wide variety of examples, personal experiences, and extensions of work of multidisciplinary observers and thinkers from Thomas Paine and William Julius Wilson to Jeremy Rifkin and Bill James, it provides a comprehensive view of America's employment crisis. It shows why the gap between workers and jobs will get ever larger, and what we can—and cannot—do about it.
The book describes a wide variety of social and personal changes this historic shift, Work's New Age, has already caused and will cause soon. It continues by assessing 28 suggestions from the press, naming which are good, bad, and indifferent and why, and goes on to consider guaranteed citizen income. The book concludes by showing us how we can adjust to our new work reality, and issues a final challenge, especially pertinent and provocative in these partisan times. If we can, as Huntington suggests, adjust accordingly and have the "objective, level-headed national dialogue" we need, we have the potential to transform this crisis into a new American golden age. Overall, Work's New Age is well documented and thoughtful but easy to understand. This incisive, timely book clearly presents the truth about American employment. Whether you are working, "between jobs," or safely retired, it will alert you to changes that will affect you and your loved ones in the years and decades to come.
