Unemployment in the High-Pressure Capitalism of the 21^st Century: Introduction

Abstract

The transition from an industrial to knowledge economy created many stressors that exacerbated the excesses of four decades of neoliberal economic policies culminating in a high-pressure capitalism that is reducing the effectiveness of the social contract upon which its success was based in the first place.

KEYWORDS::

• Unemployment
• underemployment
• IT revolution
• knowledge economy

Notes

1 The unemployed are those who would like to work but do not have a job; nonemployment refers to those who are not working but many of them are not counted because they are not actively looking for a job; underemployment means that people are not working at their full capacity either because they are not using all their skills or because they are not working as many hours as they would like.

2 The Declaration of Independence also asserts the unalienable Right to “Life”; http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html, accessed May 13, 2023.

3 “The preservation of life is the bound duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work” (Leo XIII, 1891, Paragraph 44).

4 From the Preamble to the French Constitution of 1946 which is still in force today. http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/root/bank_mm/anglais/cst3.pdf, accessed May 13, 2023. See also the work of the Internationl Labour Organization whose stated goal is “to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all…” (Muqtada, 2010, p. iii). These values were already annunciated in the ILO’s Constitution including the Declaration of Philadelphia of 1944 (ILO, 2008). A recent UNDP report asserts that “Universalism… also applies to labour markets—ensuring that everyone has access to decent opportunities for paid employment” (2014, p. 92).

5 To be sure, globalization and competition from abroad has put pressure on the Scandinavian model. Nonetheless, it has remained a paradigm for the rest of the developed world (Bergh, 2014; Freeman et al., 2008; Park, 2005; Steinmo, 2002).