Labor Day 1993
AT A TIME when the country's biggest companies are abruptly laying off longtime employees by the thousands, it's not surprising that Americans' thinking about jobs and job loyalty is changing. Labor Day this year is distinguished by the realization that the present churning in the job market is not temporary but probably will continue.</br></br>For most of the past half-century, large corporations provided much of the middle class with a high degree of security - including a tacit promise that the employee who performed well would stay on the payroll until retirement. In the past decade's epidemic of mergers, reorganizations and productivity drives, that promise has all but vanished. It's uncertainty rather than actual unemployment that is generating the growing sense of insecurity in this country.</br></br>Unemployment is, fortunately, falling. The great American job- creating machine, stuck in neutral for several years, is now back at work. During the past year the labor force has grown by a million people, but the number of jobs increased by 2 million. The result was that unemployment came down by a million, and the unemployment rate fell from 7.6 percent of the labor force in August 1992 to 6.7 percent last month.</br></br>That's a remarkable achievement and reassuring. So why do consumer surveys continue to show high levels of uneasiness and caution?</br></br>Part of it is that earnings aren't moving much. There has been some increase in average compensation during the past year, but most of it has been in fringe benefits - particularly the soaring costs of health insurance. Cash wages and salaries haven't quite kept up with inflation, and that has hurt.