The Political Economy of Work in the 21st Century: Implications for an Aging American Workforce (review)

In this book, Martin Sicker, a political scientist who has written extensively on the Middle East, Judaism, and Islam, delves into the world of economics, apparently taking to heart the quote he cites by Paul Ormerod that "economic policy is far too important to be left to economists."

Although the subtitle creates an expectation of a strong concentration on the aging American workforce, the book primarily focuses on the changing economic environment and the implications for the number and quality of jobs available to the entire U.S. workforce. The picture Sicker creates is one of an economy that cannot produce enough good jobs to sustain a decent standard of living for all its citizens. Contrary to Department of Labor predictions that the United States will soon be facing labor shortages, independent analyses indicate that we are instead facing dire excesses in the supply of labor, due to automation, technological advances, globalization, and corporate behavior.

Writing during the last years of Clinton's "boom economy," Sicker refutes the notion of a tight labor market with a fairly thorough examination of a reconfigured, increasingly "flexible" workforce in which a minority of workers will be "core" or "permanent" within the next twenty years. He also challenges the well-worn mantra that the United States has a shortage of skilled workers. Citing statistics about the increasing education levels of American workers, he endorses the Urban Institute's contention that the availability of skilled workers has contributed to keeping wages low.

Sicker spends a fair amount of time discussing the severing of the social contract, manifested by rampant downsizing, a culture of narcissism in business which uses profit as the single standard by which a company is managed and measured, and the influence of CEO self-interest on corporate behavior.

Challenging the belief in economic determinism and the deification of "the Market," Sicker asserts that our economic policy must reflect our national values. He argues that the goal of a national economic policy should be to improve the lives of its citizenry, ensure that working people can earn a living wage, and help them deal with the consequences of economic change. While Sicker does not lay out a new imperative, he does offer some specific policy recommendations, including raising the minimum wage and committing to a policy of full employment, which would include using the government as an employer of last resort.

Although this book is not as hard hitting as some might wish, it would be useful for mixed audiences such as open-enrollment credit classes in labor studies, particularly classes on the political economy. The writing is rather tedious at times, with numerous citations of studies and statistics, some of which seem contradictory. The book could benefit from more charts and graphs.

There is little mention of the role of unions in addressing the problems posed, and only a passing comment on the need for labor law reform. Sicker is clearly not anti-union, but it may be that he does not view labor as having sufficient power to alter the dynamics of our global economy enough to affect the economic and working conditions of the majority of workers in the United States.