Because this two-part series appears at first blush to be “gloom and doom,” perhaps a bit of explanation is in order. As it turns out, the explanation is about greed, business trends, the upward spiral of corporate compensation and a short history lesson.

Remember years ago when your job was your “home away from home,” a place you looked forward to going to in the morning? You worked for a company of “like-minded thinkers” who made the company in every traditional sense of the word. The company for which you worked defined strict ethical codes of conduct expected to be followed by all its employees, which was strongly enforced both by internal and external forces. These codes of conduct not only defined you professionally but personally too. You were expected to take the “high ground” on all fronts of your life.

Your next-door neighbor was probably a colleague of yours. You got together after work and on weekends for family outings with the wives and kids where information was freely shared. Your comings and goings were an open book; what you did after work was as much fodder for the next day’s water cooler convergence as the job you did for your employer. You got to work by nine, put in a hard day’s work until five, went home for a nice dinner with your wife and kids, and collected a steady paycheck at the end of the week … life was simple, good and uncomplicated. If you did a good job, stayed out of trouble, took care of your family, didn’t cause any waves at work, and remained morally sound, you could probably count on retiring someday with a full pension, a gold watch, and a move to Florida.

In November 1932, newly-elected President Franklin Roosevelt took office. Four months later there were 13 million unemployed workers. He proposed a sweeping reform program to bring recovery to business and agriculture and relief to the unemployed and those in danger of losing farms and homes. Roosevelt’s air of confidence and optimism quickly rallied people to his innovative program, known as the New Deal. The rules were rewritten to give working people a fair shake. Generation after generation of Americans came to expect that by working hard and playing by the rules, they could make good lives for themselves and their families. Our nation prospered, and families saw their standards of living improve from decade to decade until the 1990s. At the height of the depression in 1933, one American worker in every four was out of a job. In February 2005, Florida experienced a 4.5% rate in unemployment. In March 2005, the unemployment rate of all Americans was 5.2%.

So what if working hard is no longer enough? What if the rules aren’t fair anymore? Have we gone from a New Deal to a raw deal?

Millions of Americans are asking these questions as they struggle to make ends meet and worry about the future. They’re playing by new rules that are far from giving them a fair deal, leaving them to feel short-changed. In fact, the evidence that the vast majority of Americans are giving more and getting less from their jobs isn’t just clear, it’s overwhelming.

Here are a few cold, tough facts:

* A generation ago, CEOs made 40 times more than the average employee; today they make 400 times more.

* If wages rose at the same rate as CEO pay since 1990, the average worker would make $75,000 a year, not $27,000. The minimum wage would be $15.76 an hour, not $5.15.

* It takes an unemployed worker 20 weeks to find a job, 50% longer than in the 1970s.

* Jobs created in the next two years will pay an average of $36,000. Jobs lost in the last three years paid $43,000.

* By the year 2015, an estimated 3.3 million service jobs will be lost to offshoring or technology.

Whether you look at job security, career opportunity, income, time spent on the job, health care, retirement security, or the right to organize, it's clear that the majority of working people are worse off today than they were several decades ago.

Has the U.S. fallen on hard times? Hardly. Our economy is stronger than it has ever been. Even since the last economic boom ended in 2001, corporate profits are up an average 82%. So, if business is that strong, why are millions of Americans barely getting by? We hear repeatedly that corporations need to "cut costs," "be competitive," and "maintain shareholder value." This all means one thing: increase profits.

It appears that corporations have come to value profits more than anything else, including the well-being of the people whose work creates those profits and the communities in which they live. Once viewed as an asset, workers are now just another cost to cut, which means fewer jobs, lower wages, longer hours, reduced benefits, and, yes, unemployment.

Next week, we’ll explore the widening financial gap between executives and the average American worker.

Joe Hodowanes, a career strategy adviser in Tampa, Florida, offers a free resume and career analysis. Fax your resume to (813) 936-0201 or email it to jmwanes@jmwanes.com For questions, call Joe at (813) 936-0091 or visit www.jmwanes.com on the Web. All Job Search Advisor articles on this website are the property of www.jmwanes.com (J.M. Wanes & Associates). You may download
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