BY: JESSICA BURDE
What makes a good job offer? In a Tower Watson Global Workforce Study, 32,000 employees were surveyed about what they look for in a job offer. The results of the survey were released in July: Job security comes second only to pay rate. This isn’t a surprise to anyone familiar with the current job market, but it is a sign the U.S. workforce is dangerously behind the curve on how the new economy works. Here is the hard truth: From now on, job security will never be more than temporary.
At-will Employment
More than 60 percent of the U.S. workforce is employed “at-will.” At-will employment means your job can be terminated at any time, for any reason that is not unlawful or discriminatory. It means your hours, pay, and benefits are entirely at the discretion of your employer. The sad truth is when private-sector unions lost their grip on U.S. industries, the vast majority of employees lost their bargaining power.
For a long time, at-will employment worked to the benefit of the company and the employee. Employees were free to leave a job any time they wanted, and companies didn’t need to jump through hoops to fire an employee who caused them problems.
Everything changed in the Great Recession
A New Way to Show a Profit
Barring intervention by the government, job security traditionally moves with the stability of the economy. So the way the Great Recession destroyed job security across the country isn’t all that surprising. What is surprising is the way many corporations responded to the recession.
The “traditional” corporate responses to a recession are to fire workers when the economy is down, and rehire them when the economy improves. In the early recession of the 1980s, 20 percent of layoffs were considered temporary. Twenty-first century corporations found a new and better way to bounce back from hard times: Instead of increasing profits, cut costs. Payroll is the largest ongoing expense for most large corporations. Cost cuts resulted in corporations shedding jobs like water. During most recessions, payroll costs decline at the same rate as the GDP. During the last downturn, payrolls dropped by 1.8 percent more than the GDP.
In 2006, and again in 2009, corporations saw their cost-cutting policies pay off. Profits rebounded quicker than a celebrity romance. The job market, on the other hand, has barely rebounded at all. Cost cutting meant millions of jobs moved off shore, cut from full- to part-time or replaced with temp staffing. In 2010, an article in Bloomburg Businessweek predicted, “When employment in the U.S. eventually recovers, it’s likely to be because American workers swallow hard and accept lower pay.” They weren’t wrong, but it hasn’t been just lower pay U.S. workers have swallowed.
Read Full Article Here: The Truth About Job Security
