The American Worker in Transition: Insecurity, the Individualization of Work, and Job Values in the 1990's

This dissertation examines changes in work values during the 1990's in the United States. The 1990's represented a critical time period for American workers, where widespread changes in the labor market profoundly affected the way work was organized and the way individual workers felt about their work. Previous research has argued that as traditional job rewards became less available, workers adopted a more individualized strategy for pursuing other, more attainable job rewards. This project utilizes the first and second waves of the International Social Survey Program Work Orientation Module to examine changes in work values between 1989 and 1997. Respondents were grouped into four occupational categories: professionals, managers, other white collar workers, and service/blue collar workers. Data from 1,538 respondents were analyzed, and logistic regression was used to examine eight job values. Six job values included in this study varied between 1989 and 1997, including the desire for job security, promotional opportunities, interesting work, independent work, helping others, and helping society. The value placed on high income and having a flexible schedule showed no change between the years of study. These findings do suggest a general shift from traditional job values to more individualistic job values over the course of the 1990's. However, this change was not uniform across the entire workforce, and instead varied significantly between occupational groups. Overall, the non-uniformity of work value change suggests a divergent experience of the 1990's labor market depending on occupation. The timing of economic insecurity, along with varying levels of labor market power with which workers were equipped to handle this insecurity, lead to the development of differential strategies between occupational groups for adjusting expectations and value systems to the conditions of the new economy. This study contributes to existing discourse on labor market changes by using workers' value systems as a key barometer of large-scale economic trends. This study expands the scope of research related to job values by including a consideration of the numerous factors that ultimately determine how economic changes are translated into attitudinal shifts and value changes for different groups of workers.