''The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era'' is a non-fiction book by American economist

Jeremy Rifkin Jeremy Rifkin (born January 26, 1945) is an American economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist. Rifkin is the author of 23 books about the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, ...

, published in 1995 by

Putnam Publishing Group G. P. Putnam's Sons is an American book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group. History The company began as Wiley & Putnam with the 1838 partnership between George Palmer Putnam and J ...

Synopsis

In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

eliminated tens of millions of

job Work or labor (or labour in British English) is intentional activity people perform to support the needs and wants of themselves, others, or a wider community. In the context of economics, work can be viewed as the human activity that contr ...

s in the manufacturing, agricultural and

service sector The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the second ...

s. He predicted devastating impact of

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

blue-collar A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor. The type of work may involving manufacturing, warehousing, mining, excavation, electricity generation and powe ...

, retail and

wholesale Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...

employees. While a small elite of corporate managers and

knowledge worker Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Examples include programmers, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, editors, and academics, whose job is ...

s would reap the benefits of the high-tech world economy, the

American middle class Though the American middle class does not have a definitive definition, contemporary social scientists have put forward several ostensibly congruent theories on it. Depending on the class model used, the middle class constitutes anywhere from 25% ...

would continue to shrink and the

workplace A workplace is a location where someone works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a home office to a large office building or factory. For industrialized societies, the workplace is one of th ...

become ever more stressful. As the

market economy A market economy is an economic system in which the decisions regarding investment, production and distribution to the consumers are guided by the price signals created by the forces of supply and demand, where all suppliers and consumers ...

and

public sector The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, infra ...

decline, Rifkin predicted the growth of a third sector—voluntary and community-based service organizations—that would create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying neighborhoods and provide

social services Social services are a range of public services intended to provide support and assistance towards particular groups, which commonly include the disadvantaged. They may be provided by individuals, private and independent organisations, or administe ...

. To finance this enterprise, he advocated scaling down the

military budget A military budget (or military expenditure), also known as a defense budget, is the amount of financial resources dedicated by a state to raising and maintaining an armed forces or other methods essential for defense purposes. Financing militar ...

, enacting a

value added tax A value-added tax (VAT), known in some countries as a goods and services tax (GST), is a type of tax that is assessed incrementally. It is levied on the price of a product or service at each stage of production, distribution, or sale to the end ...

on nonessential

goods and services Goods are items that are usually (but not always) tangible, such as pens, physical books, salt, apples, and hats. Services are activities provided by other people, who include architects, suppliers, contractors, technologists, teachers, doctor ...

and redirecting

federal Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General *Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies *Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...

and state funds to provide a " social wage" in lieu of

welfare payment Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...

s to third-sector workers.

Critical reception

Some economists and sociologists have criticized Rifkin for being one of the major contributors to the "end of work" discourse and literature of the 1990s.

Autonomist Autonomism, also known as autonomist Marxism is an anti-capitalist left-wing political and social movement and theory. As a theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism (). Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tend ...

political philosopher

George Caffentzis __NOTOC__ George Caffentzis (born 1945) is an American political philosopher and an autonomist Marxist. He founded the Midnight Notes Collective, is a founder member of the co-ordinator of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and a professo ...

concluded that Rifkin's argument is flawed because it is based on a

technological determinism Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that assumes that a society's technology progresses by following its own internal logic of efficiency, while determining the development of the social structure and cultural values. The term is b ...

that does not take into account the dynamics of employment and technological change in the capitalist era.Caffentzis (1998) It is also argued that Rifkin's historical analysis of technological unemployment in the agriculture sector in the southern United States was not shared by

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

, who believed the problem was the lack of

labor rights Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influen ...

. More recent research suggests that the widespread adoption of computers between the late 1970s and the 1990s increased employment. A major theme of ''The End of Work'' is that productivity would lead to the destruction of jobs; however, the book appeared when productivity growth had been in a slowdown since the early 1970s as production costs soared, while the widespread use of computers in the 1980s and early 1990s neither reduced costs nor improved productivity, as was expected (this phenomenon would be referred to as the productivity paradox). Strong productivity growth finally appeared in the late 1990s as globalization opened up new markets, but then slowed down again by the second half of the 2000s as costs rose dramatically. The productivity slowdown is still being debated.The Debate Zone: Has the US passed peak productivity growth? , McKinsey & Company
/ref> Strong growth but without absorbing large numbers of unemployed people is called a

jobless recovery A jobless recovery or jobless growth is an economic phenomenon in which a macroeconomy experiences growth while maintaining or decreasing its level of employment. The term was coined by the economist Nick Perna in the early 1990s. Causes Economi ...

. Historically, innovation that makes existing jobs and technologies obsolete has not created permanent unemployment, but has instead opened jobs in new industries and moved jobs from agriculture to industry and the service sector. This process is known as

creative destruction Creative destruction (German: ''schöpferische Zerstörung'') is a concept in economics which since the 1950s is the most readily identified with the Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter who derived it from the work of Karl Marx and pop ...

Notes

References

* J Bessen, ‘How Computer Automation Affects Occupations: Technology, jobs, and skills’ (2016
Boston University, Law & Economics WP No. 15-49
* Caffentzis, George (1998
''The End of Work or the Renaissance of Slavery? A Critique of Rifkin and Negri''
presented at the ''Globalization from Below'' Conference at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, February 6, 1998. Also published in * E McGaughey, 'Will Robots Automate Your Job Away? Full Employment, Basic Income, and Economic Democracy' (2018
SSRN, part 2(2)
* * * * * documentary by New Future Media * documentary

External links

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080918045705/http://multitudes.samizdat.net/article1927.html The End of Work or the Renaissance of Slavery? A Critique of Rifkin and Negri
What's Wrong with This Picture? A critique of Jeremy Rifikin's book ''The End of Work'' by Bob Black
{{DEFAULTSORT:End Of Work 1995 non-fiction books Books about labour Distribution of wealth Labor literature Unemployment Political science books Sociology books Works about the information economy Works about automation

Synopsis

Critical reception

See also

Notes

References

External links