What Are Some of the Significant Workforce Composition Changes That Have Been Taking Place Since the Second World War?

1. What are some (mention at least five) of the significant workforce composition

changes that have been taking place since the second World War?

The first significant workforce composition is immigration, in the 1990s wave of immigrant workers was by far the largest in the past three decades, and contributed a larger share of the growth in the nation’s labor force than at any other time since the end of World War II. Immigrants also accounted for all the growth among workers fewer than 35, which explained the drop in U.S. birthrates in the 1970s and the resulting dip in the U.S. born population in that young age group. But even among those ages 35 to 44, the youngest baby boomers, and new immigrants supplied a third of the growth in the labor force. This effect was particularly large among men; eight of 10 new male workers in the decade were immigrants who arrived during that time. Over the 1990-2001 time periods, the nation’s civilian labor force increased from 125.8 million to 141.8 million, a gain of just fewer than 16 million or 12.7% over this 11 year period. The estimated number of new immigrant workers during the same period was 8.03 million; thus, new immigrants account for 50 percent of the growth in the nation’s civilian labor force over the 1990-2001 time periods. Seventy-nine percent of the increase in the U.S. male civilian labor force between 1990 and 2001 was due to new male immigrants. Had it not been for immigrants, the report notes, the nation’s entire male labor force would have grown only marginally over the past decade, and male labor shortages would likely have been widespread in many areas of the country. Firms in these industrial sectors employed 35 percent of all immigrant workers and nearly 40 percent of all new immigrants. But they also have an above average share of the nation’s jobs in engineering, computer science and physical science. Many high technology industries in both manufacturing and in business services were highly dependent on new immigrant workers to fill their vacancies at the end of the 1990s, and immigration has expanded the pool of workers available for high-turnover occupations while also filling openings requiring top technical skills. Immigrants make up one in four of the nation’s lowest-wage workers; double their share of the overall population. High percentages of immigrant workers lacking a high school diploma work in these positions. One third of new immigrant labor force members lacked a high-school diploma, a ratio three times higher than that of U.S. workers

The second workforce composition I think is women in the workforce. When we speak of women’s work we initially think of the work that women do at home, their unpaid domestic labor. However there is also another sort of women’s work the work done by women in the paid workforce, which is characterized by the fact that it tends to be done only by women. Although the work women perform at home is itself invisible because it is always done away from the public eye, women are seen by society as housewives and mothers and not as paid workers. Women’s unpaid domestic work is seen as primary and widespread, and their workforce participation is therefore reduced to apparent insignificance and social invisibility. With the outbreak of World War II the issue came to be, at first there was a general reluctance to allow women into new fields of employment at all. But as the war proceeded it became evident that, if the country was to make the most of its resources, women would have to take over men’s jobs to release men for combatant duty. This realization brought strong opposition from both sides of the industrial fence. Male labor would not tolerate the intrusion of cheap labor into their fields of employment; and employers, although willing to employ women in any capacity, were totally opposed to paying them higher wages. But women had to be enticed into the workforce and many of them were not prepared to work in unpleasant factory conditions, even in wartime. Those women who entered the workforce frequently engaged in industrial action and many refused to enter the workforce at all, but despite the enormous propaganda campaign which was implemented to attract them. The commonly held view that women were forced out of the workforce after World War II is misleading, and has in fact helped to re-establish the invisibility of the working woman. The total number of employed women during the war rose by nearly 200,000 between 1939 and 1943, and had dropped by nearly 70,000 from that peak by 1946. But by 1948 the total number of employed women had risen above the 1943 peak by 4000. These figures do not include the defense forces, which absorbed 65,000 women throughout the war and approximately 46,000 at the peak of 1943. It is a fact that women were forced out of the men’s jobs they had been occupying.