The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin
Food For Thought For Our Future
The most significant domestic issue of the 2004 elections is
unemployment. The United States has lost nearly three million jobs in the
last ten years, and real employment hovers around 9.1 percent. Only one
political analyst foresaw the dark side of the technological revolution and
understood its implications for global employment: Jeremy Rifkin.
The End of Work is Jeremy Rifkins most influential and important book.
Now nearly ten years old, it has been updated for a new, post-New
Economy era. Statistics and figures have been revised to take new trends
into account. Rifkin offers a tough, compelling critique of the flaws in the
techniques the government uses to compile employment statistics.

The End of Work is the book our candidates and our country need to
understand the employment challenges-and the hopes-facing us in the
century ahead.
Personal Review: The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin
Middle management is vulnerable to job loss in the event of restructuring.
Typically a reconfigured company sheds forty percent of its jobs. The
computer revolution is most pronounced in the manufacturing sector. A
world with fewer and fewer workers is a disturbing trend.
In the early years of the Great Depression the link between labor-saving
and overproduction was discerned. By 1932 shorter hours of work was
supported by the rationale of economic justice. In 1963 a triple revolution
was identified by J. Robert Oppenheimer and others, cybernetics,
weapons manufactures, and human rights concerns. The issue presented
was the possibility that previously disfavored groups could become
outcasts in the new cyber economy. Norbert Weiner warned of
technological unemployment. Labor leaders decided not to fight
automation, the use of labor-saving devices, but rather to push for
retraining. Unfortunately too few jobs were created and the union began
losing membership and clout.
Modern management began with the railroads in 1850. Now
organizational hierarchies are being deconstructed. There is a connection
between biotechnology and automation resulting in rapid changes in
farming practices.
Service work has been absorbing losses of manufacturing work in the past,
but service work is being automated and can no longer be depended upon
to create jobs. Productivity gains and increased profits are being made
with fewer workers. Electronic inroads highlight the advent of the
paperless office in the insurance and banking industries. Paper in a
service business has been compared to cholesterol in the bloodstream.
A lot of retailing has gone electronic and wholesale functions are being
eliminated. In the meantime cashier productivity has increased greatly
through the use of bar code technology.
The author terms the current state of affairs the third industrial revolution.
The work force, though, is in retreat in nearly every sector. Trickle-down is
a chimera.
The newest victims of re-engineering are apt to live in affluent suburbs. A
fading middle class is described. There is gross disparity between high
wage earners and low wage earners. The pace of work due to automation
has increased resulting in worker stress. There are more temporary jobs
and fewer full-time jobs available in the re-engineered business
environment. Technology displacement produces an increase in crime

statistics. Hardship and stress lead to spontaneous upheavals. One cure
for unemployment is a shorter work week.
In the future the market sector and the public sector will be less important
than the third sector embodying volunteerism. Notes, bibliography, and
index follow this enlightening text.
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