Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Effect of the Loss of Stable Career-Paths on the Professional Middle Class

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SES-1602568John EvansLindsay J. DepalmaUniversity of California, San DiegoOver the last few decades, major structural changes have resulted in the replacement of stable career-paths with part-time or contractual labor and the general fragmentation of professional career paths. This market economy demands flexible workers and creates work that is uncertain and unpredictable. These changes, characterized by the relationship between employer and employee transitioning from relational to transactional, is generating an unprecedented form of precarious work in the professional middle class. This project analyzes how professionals negotiate contradictions between cultural narratives about lovable work, success, and agency, and unprecedented levels of precarious work. The research conceptualizes two broad experiences of professional work, one in the market economy and one in the organizations economy. Work within the market economy is characterized by instability, risk, flexibility, and precariousness, while work within the organizations economy is characterized by stability, low risk, rigidity, and security. This project compares professionals who experience work as precarious to those who do not, holding occupation constant by analyzing three occupations that have positions in both the market and the organizations economy? engineers, designers, and nurses. In total, the investigators will interview 72 professionals. These data are needed in order to understand the new problems professional workers face, and to develop cultural and institutional solutions. This research will contribute insights that will help to build a new social contract that grants employers the flexibility that the market demands and employees the securities and cultural coherence that they need to thrive in a market economy.