Job Anxiety Is Real--and It's Global

Publication Date: April 2004

Publisher: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Author(s): Sandra Polaski

Research Area: Economics; Labor

Type: Brief

Abstract:

These are not normal times. Two changes in the past decade have produced a huge global oversupply of labor and intense competition for an expanding array of jobs. First, the Cold War's end threw millions of workers, who formerly produced only for the socialist bloc, onto the global labor market. And second, that market has become integrated by technological change that now permits outsourcing of service as well as manufacturing jobs. The current economic recovery will not solve the resulting global mismatch of supply and demand, and it cannot be addressed by the United States alone. Many current policies aggravate the problem.

This paper proposes that the Unites States revise its policies and devote a concerted effort to get the major countries to work together to expand employment at that global level.