Each day’s news reinforces what we already know: The old social contract surrounding employment is dead in the United States. Loyalty and good performance are no longer likely to be rewarded with long-term employment and retirement security. The signals are clear and seem never ending: large-scale permanent layoffs of white-collar as well as blue-collar workers, wage cuts, corporate bankruptcies that lead to terminations of pension plans; shifts from defined-benefit pensions to riskier and less generous defined-contribution pension and 401(k) savings plans; cuts in promised retiree health benefits; and the outsourcing or offshoring of jobs previously believed to be secure.
The impact of these actions will be felt in the United States for generations to come. Nearly 30 years of stagnant real wages for many employees mean that most young people entering the work-force will start at lower real wage levels than they would have a generation ago. Moreover, today’s young adults can expect their earnings to grow at a slower pace than their parents’ did. The United States is sitting on a ticking time bomb, which, if not defused, will explode when the new generation of employees realizes that the only way for them to achieve the American Dream is to work longer and longer hours, a cost that an increasing number of young people, including newly minted MBAs and other professionals, are beginning to... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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