The Guilded Sweatshop
The Buzz on the Toxic Workplace

"At any time some people are unemployed, they may be looking for their first job, re-entering the labor market after an absence or quitting one job and searching for another. Even if there were enough jobs to go around, it would take time for the unemployed to find them and in the meantime, they would be unemployed. Such unemployment is called frictional unemployment because it involves mismatches or friction between the available job openings and the unemployed."1

"…statistics undercount the true amount of unemployment because they do not include what we can call the "hidden unemployed"…no distinction is made between full- and part-time work…Many (people) work part time because they cannot find full-time jobs or because their hours have been cut back. These workers are called "involuntary" part-time workers. There are more than 5 million involuntary part-time workers in the labor force today.…When people want and need to work full-time in order to survive but can only find part-time jobs, it is legitimate to consider them "partially unemployed."2

"When a person stops looking for work, he or she is categorized as a "discouraged worker" and put in the category "not in the labor force." …We know that people are willing to work when work is available: if they weren't, there would be many more jobs waiting to be filled. The trouble is that jobs are not always available."3

"The unemployment rate actually falls when unemployed people stop seeking work!…This means that the official (U.S.) unemployment rate increasingly understates unemployment as the economy's performance worsens."4

"The other side of the emerging techno-utopia-the one littered with the casualties of technical progress-is only faintly hinted at in official reports, in statistical surveys, and in occasional anecdotal tales of lost lives and abandoned dreams. This other world is filling up with millions of alienated workers who are experiencing rising levels of stress in high-tech work environments and increasing job insecurity as the Third Industrial Revolution winds its way into every industry and sector."5

1-4 -"Longer Hours, Fewer Jobs: Employment and Unemployment in the United States," Michael D. Yates, Cornerstone Books, 1994.
5 "The End of Work," Chapter 12 - "Requiem for the Working Class," Jeremy Rifkin, Putnam, 1995.

(back)(forward to more on the "Toxic Workplace")(back to front page)