Employment

Families have for too long struggled to make their jobs fit their family life as the institutions around them continue to assume that the typical worker has a stay-at-home spouse and that the typical caregiver has a full-time breadwinner for income support. more »

n terms of total jobs displaced, California was first, with 370,000 jobs lost, followed by Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida, which all lost more than 100,000 jobs." more »

High unemployment has attracted much attention, but there has been less consideration of how older workers have fared. In past recessions unemployment has remained relatively low for older workers, whose seniority often protected them. However, age might not protect older workers as well as it once did, because workplaces are now less regularized and labor unions are less powerful. For women, the 2009 unemployment rate was 6.0 percent at age 55 to 64 and 6.1 percent at age 65 and older. The aging population will increase the number of workers age 55 and older by a third over the coming decade. more »

"If the United States continues on its present course, it will face a united Europe that has made great strides toward providing family-support laws and institutions — and less developed countries where work-family conflict for professional-managerial and often even middle-income families is muted by the availability of extremely cheap domestic labor. To ensure the United States provides quality care for the next generation of workers, while at the same time utilizing effectively the human capital of its mothers, fathers, and all caregivers, we need to get serious about work-family public policy." more »