The passage discusses the erosion of middle-level jobs and its multiple root causes. Demographic shifts from the 1970s baby boom and increased female workforce participation initially depressed wages. Globalization also contributed as manufacturing jobs moved overseas for lower costs. Technological advances further reduced needed workers and drove wages down. While these factors all impacted jobs, middle-level positions ultimately disappeared as technological gains were not distributed to benefit displaced workers, instead concentrating financial benefits among firms and consumers. This lack of mechanism to share gains led to economy-wide loss of worker purchasing power.

1. Cause and Effect
A Method of Paragraph and Idea
Development
Meyer
Minguillo
Quiddaoen
10A

2. The Linking of Events
Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg was most
famous for his ability to link one event to another — in
outrageous fashion.

3. Cause and Effect
 A cause and effect paragraph analyzes the
causes or effects of a certain situation.
 Although you can focus on one cause and effect,
frequently you’ll find that a single cause
generates many effects or that one effect is the
result of multiple unrelated causes.

4. The erosion of the middle of the labor market is easy
to misinterpret, because its roots are multiple. During the
1970s, the entry into the work force of an unprecedented
number of women and of young adults born during the
baby boom resulted in too many workers for the jobs
available, and depressed wages. The decline of the
middle also has something to do with the explosive
growth in world trade since 1960. As manufacturing
technologies have become more mobile, and
multinational firms more footloose, production jobs have
migrated from the U.S. to countries where wages are low.
In addition, technology itself has helped to provoke the
shifts in the job market. For example, fewer American
workers would have been needed to make steel in 1980
than in 1960 even if the pressures of global competition
had not been a factor, because new machines have
made many of their tasks redundant. Finally, the high rate
of unemployment caused by these trends has tended to
drive wages down further, especially at the low end, since

5. Although demographic shifts, stepped-up
world trade, unemployment, and especially the
advancement of technology all have had an effect
on the shape of the job market, middle-level jobs
have been disappearing ultimately as a result of
the ways in which technological gains are being
distributed. When a machine replaces a
production worker, both the firm and consumers
as a group benefit. The loss falls mainly on the
worker who is displaced. If that loss is generalized
to millions of high-paid workers, they suffer as a
group, and the economy as a whole suffers a loss
of worker purchasing power. Thus the lack of a
mechanism to distribute some of the financial
gains from technology to the work force comes
back to haunt the entire economy.

6. Chain Reaction
 an effect is brought about by a cause-after-cause
Smoking can cause emphysema. The deterioration of
the lungs causes a person to slow down as he lacks oxygen.
With fewer activities, he gains weight. Excess fats go to the
bloodstream resulting into heart disease.

7. Transitional Expressions Presenting
Causes
 the first cause (second, third)
 the first reason (second, third)
 yet another factor
 because
 is caused by
 results from

8. Transitional Expressions Presenting
Effects
 one important effect
 another result
 a third outcome
 as a result
 consequently
 then
 Next
 Therefore
 Thus
 so

9. Avoiding Problems
1. Do not oversimplify
2. Do not confuse time order with causation
3. Do not confuse causes and effects

10. References
 http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu
 http://www.essaywritinghelp.com/causeandeffect.
htm