Nationally Representative Survey on Financialization, Work Organization, and Job Training

美国劳动力市场最近出现了收入不平等加剧和低薪工作激增的现象。一些人认为，这些发展背后的驱动力是经济金融化程度的提高。这一观点认为，来自股东、金融机构和金融化管理策略的压力已经改变了公司和管理者安排工作的方式，潜在地减少了公司在人力资本上的投资，降低了工作质量，有利于增加利润。因此，短期财务考虑取代了对工人和公司都有利的更有远见的管理方法。尽管这些断言频繁出现，但支持数据却很少。本项目通过对三个行业的商业机构进行具有全国代表性的调查来评估这些论点。这些数据将用于检验工作结构和质量的变化是否与金融化措施的变化有关。该项目反映了社会对经济不平等的关注，以及美国经济中高工资和低工资工作分配的变化。这些信息将对关注全国、州和地方各级就业和经济增长的政策制定者很有意义。该项目将对三个行业的企业进行具有全国代表性的调查，这些企业是受到或多或少金融化程度的匹配企业的一部分，目标样本量为1,200-1,600家企业。这些行业包括：1)专业、科学和技术服务；2)计算机及电子制造业；3)零售。这种行业选择允许集中关注金融化压力如何影响科技工作者，以及这些压力与其他行业的压力有何不同。该调查将询问有关工作质量和结构的详细问题，包括工资、临时劳动力、技能要求、工作任期、培训和晋升政策。目标受访者是随机选择的商业机构雇用的人力资源经理。建立调查将与从先前研究中使用的几个商业数据库中提取的金融化、公司治理和股东所有权等滞后的公司一级指标联系起来。调查数据的独特性将有助于分析公司一级指标与机构一级工作成果之间的关系。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The U.S. labor market has recently seen both increased income inequality and proliferation of low-wage jobs. Some contend that a driving force behind these developments is increased financialization of the economy. This argument holds that pressures stemming from shareholders, financial institutions, and financialized management strategies have altered the way firms and managers structure jobs, potentially diminishing firm investments in human capital and eroding job quality in favor of increased profits. Thus, short-term financial considerations have displaced more far-sighted management approaches that are beneficial to both workers and firms. Despite the frequency of these assertions, supporting data are scarce. This project evaluates these arguments by conducting a nationally representative survey of business establishments across three industries. The data will be used to test whether variation in job structure and quality are related to variation in measures of financialization. The project speaks to societal concerns regarding economic inequality and changes in the distribution of high- and low-wage jobs in the U.S. economy. This information will be of interest to policymakers concerned with job and economic growth both nationally and at the state and local levels. This project will construct a nationally representative survey of establishments in three industries that are part of matched firms that have been subjected to greater and lesser levels of financialization, with a targeted sample size of 1,200-1,600 establishments. These industries include: 1) professional, scientific, and technical services; 2) computer and electronic manufacturing; and 3) retail. This choice of industries allows for focused attention on how financialization pressures affect science and technology workers and how these pressures differ from those found in other industries. The survey will ask detailed questions about job quality and structure, including questions about wages, contingent labor, skill demands, job tenure, training, and promotion policies. The target respondents are human resource managers who are employed at the randomly-selected business establishments. The establishment survey will be linked with lagged firm-level indicators of financialization, corporate governance, and shareholder ownership drawn from several business databases used in prior research. The uniqueness of the survey data will allow analyses of relationships between firm-level indicators and establishment-level work outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.