The Labor Market, Then and Now: Changing Realities in the 21st Century

Skyrocketing unemployment is only one of a number of profound changes transforming the U.S. labor market, workforce, and education system in the first decade of the 21st Century. The new realities affecting jobs, careers, and retirement are transforming Americans' attitudes toward work. This research brief, capturing the changing perceptions of workers between 1999 and 2009, was prepared by Carl Van Horn and Nicole Corre of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, a research and policy center at Rutgers University. The brief summarizes workforce mega-trends by drawing upon the most authoritative sources available and from the Heldrich Center's Work Trends series of two-dozen nationwide worker surveys that began in 1998. (The complete set of Work Trends surveys is available at www.heldrich.rutgers.edu)