SPOTLIGHTS
Working Scared: Just Published and Now Available for Purchase!
A new book by Heldrich Center Director and Rutgers University Professor Dr. Carl E. Van Horn. Available in hard cover, Kindle, and Nook from Rowman & Littlefield, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.
Working Scared presents a narrative of the transformations and economic crises that have been disrupting the U.S. economy and American workers in recent years. It explores the devastating consequences of the Great Recession, the forces that are reshaping the American labor market, as well as their impact on American workers — especially older workers and recent high school and college graduates. The book also includes concrete recommendations for restoring jobs and economic prosperity for American workers.
Working Scared draws upon nearly 25,000 interviews with employed and unemployed Americans conducted from 1998 to 2012 as part of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development’s acclaimed Work Trends series. The voices and stories of American workers chronicled in Working Scared tell a compelling story about wrenching structural changes and recessions during one of the most volatile periods in U.S. economic history.
Watch a short video with Dr. Van Horn discussing the book. And check out Dr. Van Horn discussing Working Scared on AOL Jobs and discussing the book with Marty Moss-Coane on WHYY's Radio Times. Also available are two articles from The Philadelphia Inqurier about the book: one about whether the American worker is disposable and the other about the bleak story of workers.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Looking for the latest Heldrich Center publications? Click here for a list of our most recent publications, all listed in reverse chronological order (with most recent listed first).
NEWS & UPDATES
- Immigration Reform and the Implications for STEM (4/5/13)
- Krepcio Receives Prestigious Leadership Award (3/25/13)
- Van Horn on Long-Term Unemployment and Older Workers (3/27/13)
- Star-Ledger Covers Van Horn's Working Scared (4/16/13)
- Van Horn on HuffPost Live (3/1/13)
- Krepcio Authors Article on Older Workers (4/16/13)
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Guestworkers in the High-Skill U.S. Labor Market
A new paper by Heldrich Center Senior Faculty Fellow Hal Salzman and Daniel Kuehn of American University and B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University finds little evidence to support expansion of high-skill guestworker programs as proposed in the immigration bill being debated in the Senate. The study, published by the Economic Policy Institute, finds that U.S. colleges and universities provide an ample supply of highly qualified science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates.
Key findings include:
- Guestworkers may be filling as many as half of all new IT jobs each year;
- IT workers earn the same today as they did, generally, 14 years ago;
- Currently, only one of every two STEM college graduates is hired into a STEM job each year; and
- Policies that expand the supply of guestworkers will discourage U.S. students from going into STEM, and into IT in particular.
Heidkamp Blogs About Mature Workers
Maria Heidkamp, Senior Project Manager at the Heldrich Center, has written a post for the blog AGEnda about the struggles of mature workers in today's economy. She shares about the complex job search process that older workers face and the de-skilling of the older workforce, a trend that sees many older, higher-skilled workers now taking jobs once occupied by lower-skilled workers. Check out her thoughts and insights and join the discussion. AGEnda is a product of the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College.