Going to work may never be the same again.
The Great Recession has reshaped the American workplace and work force in ways that will last years, if not longer.
The work force is graying as college graduates can’t find jobs, young workers get laid off and older workers delay retirement. People in white-collar jobs are feeling increasingly vulnerable to economic downturns, an insecurity that blue-collar workers have known for years.
Perhaps the most enduring change is the permanent loss of millions of jobs across the manufacturing, services and retail sectors.
For textile factories and service sector employers like customer service call centers, the next wave of significant job creation will occur abroad, where labor is cheaper. That trend was under way before the recession and will accelerate, according to labor economists. Americans who would have held these jobs will have to retrain themselves for other jobs, such as assembling microchips and medical devices.
For retailers, growth will be limited by more cautious consumer spending, in part because the days of easy credit are over. That means fewer retail clerks milling about stores around the holidays, and fewer merchandise buyers and other staff jobs at headquarters.
“We’re in a very deep jobs crisis, and we’re not coming out of it,” says William George, professor of management at Harvard Business School. “It’s too glib to say that jobs are a lagging indicator” and that hiring will return to normal once the economy does, he says.
The national unemployment rate, now 9.7 percent, is forecast to rise above 10 percent before the end of the year and isn’t expected to return to a “normal” level near 5 percent until 2014.
Of course, layoffs aren’t the only thing transforming the workplace.
The need to cut costs deeply and quickly has forced businesses to get creative — not just go the easy route of…