Self-reliance and Blue-collar Unemployment in a Steel Town

Abstract

MASSIVE LAYOFF of blue-collar workers during the 1980s will provide social workers with a com prehensive case study of unemployment and middle America, including a gauge of the responses by social agencies to the social and economic needs of a seg ment of the population that generally enjoyed prosperity during the 4 pre vious decades. Unemployment and eco nomic uncertainty has become a national issue and has reached a crisis level in many regions of the country (Abramovitz, 1984; Beckett, 1988; Bor rero, 1980; David, 1985; Macarov, 1988). Unemployment figures reveal an unrelenting upward trend over the past 30 years. Average unemployment for 1965 was 4.4 percent (Bureau of the Census, 1977). By 1960, this figure had risen to 5.5 percent, and average annual unemployment through the 1970s was 6.2 percent. Except for the past several years, unemployment in the 1980s has averaged 8 percent nationally and has been much higher in many specific areas (Bureau of the Census, 1988). Between 1981 and 1986,13.1 million workers aged 20 or older (approxi mately one-eighth of all employed workers) were displaced because the plant closed, the company moved, work decreased, or positions or entire shifts were abolished. One-third of these displaced workers were employed with the same company for 10 years or more (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1986). About one-half of the jobs were in manufacturing. Since 1981, employ ment in construction and manufacturing has declined by more than one-half million (Bluestone & Harrison, 1986). Of all the displaced workers, one-fourth were unemployed for at least 1 year between 1979 and 1984; when they were reemployed, 45 percent took a cut in pay, with two-thirds earning less than 80 percent of their previous income (U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1986). David E. Biegel James Cunningham Hide Yamatani Pamela Martz