Labor Market Lives: Low-wage Workers in Search of Opportunity in the One-stop Job Center

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 16. Employability

Abstract

In the neo-liberal economy employment precariousness and uncertainty has become increasingly normalized across all sectors of the labor market forcing workers to increasingly engage in employability enhancing activates to maintain their economic viability. This paper extends research on how workers manage their employability (how they maintain and secure employment) and on how they use job search organizations (JSO’s) to do so. Data is based on in-depth interviews with unemployed low-wage workers who use state-sponsored One Stop Job Centers as well as participant observation in workshop, classes, and seminars held by One Stop job coaches. I argue that instead of providing low-wage workers the means to move up and out of the low-wage labor market One Stop Job Centers are complicit in providing low-wage employers with a steady stream of low-wage workers. This paper offers a unique perspective on the multiple linkages between state sponsored neo-liberal labor market policies and its impact on unemployed workers’ economic lives.

Author

• Brian William Halpin, University of California Davis