Jobs: Lessons from the Great Recession

businessweek.com ^ | 8/26/09 | Chris Farrell

[Kartographer]

Thanks to the Great Recession, another corporate taboo has been shattered: large-scale pay cuts. As a general practice, companies typically resist slashing worker pay during downturns, especially for their white-collar employees. The preferred response to falling profits has long been layoffs. The main reason both managers and workers prefer layoffs to pay cuts is that pink slips seem to concentrate the pain while pay cuts spread the distress.

"Employers are reluctant to cut the nominal rate of pay," says Daniel J.B. Mitchell, professor emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the School of Public Affairs. "It causes morale problems and antagonizes the workforce."

[Kartographer]

"More green shoots please"

[LibFreeOrDie]

If you work for a multi-national corporation, whether the pay cut can be imposed depends on where you work.

For example, I work for a Fortune 500 corporation headquartered in the US, but with the majority of its 30,000+ employees outside of the US. We got a pay cut in May: US salaried employees had no say about it, but it was optional in some other countries because of local law. Those salaried individuals could choose to reject the pay cut.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Here’s to many, many CONGRESSIONAL lay-offs come 2010! :)

[sportutegrl]

The proportion of high school graduates enrolling in college following graduation was 49% in 1980, and today most people who graduate from high school go to college.

Wow. An increase of at least 2%

[central_va]

This paper examines two questions: how will the labor force change over the next 20 years, and can social policy significantly alter its size and shape. In the last twenty years, the overall labor force grew by 35 percent and the so-called prime age workforce those aged 25-54 grew by a remarkable 54 percent. The number of college educated workers more than doubled, and increased as a fraction of the labor force from 22 percent of the total to over 30 percent.

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