Both trends took shape about two decades ago. The same survey found that 34% of Boomers believe their own children will not enjoy as good a standard of living as they themselves have now.īut these older adults-who were just beginning their adult lives when Working first was published in 1972 - are staying in the labor force longer, and younger adults are staying out of it longer. Some 21% say their own standard of living is lower than their parents' was at the age they are now among all non-Boomer adults, just 14% feel this way, according to a Pew Research survey. Boomers are more downbeat than other adults about the long-term trajectory of their lives - and their children's. By force of numbers alone, they almost certainly will redefine old age in America, just as they've made their mark on teen culture, young adult life and middle age. The 79-million-member Baby Boomer generation accounts for 26% of the total U.S. For example, a bookbinder lamented his low pay, but also expressed pleasure at repairing the old books because “a book is a life.” A gravedigger took pride in the neat lines and square edges of his work, which required an almost artistic skill to match the task of having a human body “going into this grave.”įast forward to the present-and future. There were rays of light that shone throughout Working, too, especially as people articulated a more inner-directed sense of meaning to the work they performed. Their most frequent sense of satisfaction was that they made it through another day as one of “the walking wounded among a great many of us.” The delayed gratification of receiving a Social Security check led many to plod on until they no longer needed to bring in incomes at the level that their earlier years required. At work, his interviewees recounted daily humiliations that they faced with supervisors, co-workers and customers.
A single job was to be secured for most of one’s adult life, mainly to provide money to put food on the dinner table, albeit at a significant cost to the soul. In Terkel’s world, work primarily was about making things and selling them, often disassociated from other interests, values or senses of pleasure. His compelling look at jobs and the people who do them now is a time capsule of the agricultural and industrial eras that preceded the Information Age. For better or worse, the world that Studs Terkel captured forty years ago in his brilliant oral history of American workers, Working, no longer exists.
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