Job insecurity is the new normal. Here's how it's affecting your family life

After World War II, there was a golden era when Americans, especially those that had an education, could expect to have a job and keep it until retirement and retire with an adequate pension.

Those days, which Allison Pugh, professor of Sociology at University of Virginia, refers to as the "20-year career and a gold watch" model, are over. Between a competitive global market, recession and job automation, and a switch to part-time and contingent workers, Americans now live in a culture of perpetual job insecurity, in which they are easily laid off, at both high and low-level jobs, and can expect to switch jobs, or locations, at least a half dozen times during their careers.

Last year, Hewlett-Packard eliminated 34,000 jobs, and JC Penney and Sprint announced cuts, while JP Morgan Chase has cut 20,000 from its workforce since 2011. In double-earner families, at least one parent reports feeling "insecure" about their job, and in almost half of those both think their job is insecure.

This dynamic creates a constant tension for workers, who are beset by uncertainty. It has bred what Pugh calls the "one-way honor system," in which workers are beholden to employers, but employers are not, says Pugh, author of "The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity," out earlier this year.

How does insecurity impact our love lives, Pugh wondered? How do these changes go beyond the cubicle to our romantic partners, friendships, and children? For her book, she interviewed 80 people about their work lives and personal lives. Pugh talks to the Deseret News about how the "insecurity culture" infiltrates our homes and amplifies or diminishes our commitments and obligations to those we love.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

DN: In the title of the book, you refer to the "Age of Insecurity" in America. What does that mean?

Pugh: Part of what's new about this time in America is that employers are restructuring not just during recessions, but when times are flush. Over the past 30 years the American economy has added 60 million jobs, but it's not clear to workers if they will keep their current job or where the next will be. There is also evidence that long-term employment is on the decline.

At the same time, the churn at work parallels changes in intimacy. Partnerships dissolve and reform much more rapidly than they did 50 years ago. Divorce rates have plateaued since the 1980s, but 20 percent of marriages end within five years, and so do co-habitators. These have implications for stability.

DN: You call these twin phenomenae — job insecurity and family insecurity — the "two whirlwinds." Are they connected?

Pugh: The rise in job insecurity and the rise in divorce and separation doesn't necessarily imply linkage. It's not that simple. But we know that the old style of organizing work — the social compact, lifetime careers — encouraged particular kinds of intimacy and families.

Job insecurity does lead to family disruption, and job stability lends stability to the home. You could make the argument that job security enables families to endure. Families of all kinds can experience longer relationships when they are not scurrying around figuring out new ways to make a livelihood.

DN: One curious effect that you notice within job insecurity is a "one-way contract" in which workers feel supremely beholden to employers without holding employers responsible. Can you explain that?

Pugh: The one-way honor system is when individual workers profess having an intense work ethic that also involves loyalty or identifying with the employers. Many people that I interviewed said that they give "150 percent, or 100 percent, or 125 percent," so the individual is pledging themselves as a statement of personal character. They're saying, "I'm a good person, see how much I identify with work and can be relied on."