Here are 80 books that Down and Out in the New Economy fans have personally recommended if you like
Down and Out in the New Economy.
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I have been researching the changes in the workplace for 40 years now. The steady move over that time has been away from a situation where employers controlled the development of their “talent” and managed it carefully, especially for white-collar workers, toward arrangements that are much more arms-length where employees are on their own to develop their skills and manage their career. Most employees now see at least some management practices that just don’t make sense even for their own employer–casual approaches to hiring, using “leased employees” and contractors, who are paid more, to do the same work as employees, leaving vacancies open, and so forth.
This is a classic oral history of jobs in what older people call “the good old days.” It is told from the perspective of the individuals doing the jobs they were talking about, and it reveals how interesting their day-to-day experience is.
The reminder for today, especially in our remote workplaces, is how important relationships with people at work are to our happiness and well-being. It’s also a reminder of how important it is for people to have some control over what they do and to feel invested in their work.
People want to do things well and take pride in what they do. We forget all this when we think of workers as widgets to be optimized.
Perhaps Studs Terkel's best-known book, Working is a compelling, fascinating look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from gravediggers to studio heads, this book provides a timeless snapshot of people's feelings about their working lives, as well as a relevant and lasting look at how work fits into American life.
I have been researching the changes in the workplace for 40 years now. The steady move over that time has been away from a situation where employers controlled the development of their “talent” and managed it carefully, especially for white-collar workers, toward arrangements that are much more arms-length where employees are on their own to develop their skills and manage their career. Most employees now see at least some management practices that just don’t make sense even for their own employer–casual approaches to hiring, using “leased employees” and contractors, who are paid more, to do the same work as employees, leaving vacancies open, and so forth.
Most of the discussion about whether jobs are good or bad focuses on wages. The sociologists add the concern about uncertainty–will my job last?
What gets far less attention is the fact that the way we manage employees has a direct and profound effect on their mental health and, in turn, on their physical health.
This is a new finding and an important one. We can see a direct effect of bad management practices on employee sickness and death. As documented here, stress kills.
In one survey, 61 percent of employees said that workplace stress had made them sick and 7 percent said they had actually been hospitalized. Job stress costs US employers more than $300 billion annually and may cause 120,000 excess deaths each year. In China, 1 million people a year may be dying from overwork. People are literally dying for a paycheck. And it needs to stop.
In this timely, provocative book, Jeffrey Pfeffer contends that many modern management commonalities such as long work hours, work-family conflict, and economic insecurity are toxic to employees—hurting engagement, increasing turnover, and destroying people’s physical…
I have been researching the changes in the workplace for 40 years now. The steady move over that time has been away from a situation where employers controlled the development of their “talent” and managed it carefully, especially for white-collar workers, toward arrangements that are much more arms-length where employees are on their own to develop their skills and manage their career. Most employees now see at least some management practices that just don’t make sense even for their own employer–casual approaches to hiring, using “leased employees” and contractors, who are paid more, to do the same work as employees, leaving vacancies open, and so forth.
Most experts now see 1981 as the key moment when the economy changed: jobs became much less secure, white-collar jobs no longer felt like insiders to the power structure, benefits and wages fell, and income inequality took off.
This book describes the process of moving toward more open-market arrangements in employment. It is largely an explanation driven by events within the US, ultimately political and “private policy” decisions driven by a different view on business obligations.
The economic boom of the 1990s veiled a grim reality: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, the gap between good and bad quality jobs was also expanding. The postwar prosperity of the mid-twentieth century had enabled millions of American workers to join the middle class, but as author Arne L. Kalleberg shows, by the 1970s this upward movement had slowed, in part due to the steady disappearance of secure, well-paying industrial jobs. Ever since, precarious employment has been on the rise―paying low wages, offering few benefits, and with virtually no long-term security. Today, the polarization between…
I have been researching the changes in the workplace for 40 years now. The steady move over that time has been away from a situation where employers controlled the development of their “talent” and managed it carefully, especially for white-collar workers, toward arrangements that are much more arms-length where employees are on their own to develop their skills and manage their career. Most employees now see at least some management practices that just don’t make sense even for their own employer–casual approaches to hiring, using “leased employees” and contractors, who are paid more, to do the same work as employees, leaving vacancies open, and so forth.
What was arguably the most important factor in driving the different views that business leaders had after 1981 about how they should run their companies? The best answer comes from the dramatically greater role that investors started to play.
Their interests were always different from those of the CEOs and business leaders. The notion that businesses were accountable to “stakeholders”–community, employees, customers, and investors–shifted sharply to the view that there was only one stakeholder: investors.
Why and how this happened is one of the most important stories of the 20th Century and beyond.
The current economic crisis reveals just how central finance has become to American life. Problems with obscure securities created on Wall Street radiated outward to threaten the retirement security of pensioners in Florida and Arizona, the homes and college savings of families in Detroit and Southern California, and ultimately the global economy itself. The American government took on vast new debt to bail out the financial system, while the government-owned investment funds of Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Malaysia, and China bought up much of what was left of Wall Street. How did we get into this mess, and what does it…
Estelle and I created the list of books based on our over 50 years of combined expertise in helping others to thrive in their careers. Our passion is facilitating the instruction, training, coaching, and professional development to help individuals reach their career goals. We wrote the book about thriving in careers and created a podcast about thriving in careers with over 30 episodes to help others reach their personal and career goals. At the same time, we want others to be their authentic self while thriving in their careers.
I really love this book because it changed the trajectory of my entire career. I was a business major in high school and continued as a business major while working on my bachelor’s degree. However, I did not feel that working only in business was my true passion.
The book explored not only job-hunting tools but also provided tools for reflection on deciding what you really want to do as a career. After reading this book, I earned a master’s and doctoral degree working with adult learners, which is my true passion. I love the book because its advice and guidance were relevant for being my authentic self and thriving in a career that best fits my skills and passion.
With timeless advice, up-to-the-minute insights, and more than ten million copies sold over fifty years, the world’s most popular and best-selling career guide is fully revised and expanded for 2022.
“One of the first job-hunting books on the market. It is still arguably the best. And it is indisputably the most popular.”—Fast Company
What Color Is Your Parachute? is the world’s most popular job-hunting guide. This completely updated edition features the latest resources, strategies, and perspectives on today’s job market, revealing surprising advice on what works—and what doesn’t—so you can focus your efforts on tactics that yield results.
As an EFL Professor for over 20 years, I have evolved from a language teacher into a generalist who is constantly asked to teach skills-based courses that help my college students learn life skills like presenting or job skills. As the old saying goes, you need to become somewhat of an expert in something to teach it well so I have become a much more proficient interviewer and job skills expert through 10+ years teaching students to excel in these areas. My book is a compilation of the best worksheets and activities compiled and created for my students and I hope others find them as useful and effective as my students have.
This fill-in workbook for the career classic What Color Is Your Parachute? is a helpful tool for recent grads, workers laid off mid-career, and anyone searching for an inspiring work-life change.
Featuring new information for the pandemic era job market, the classic Flower Exercise organizing your skills and preferences in one place; the Party Exercise to help you discover who you work best with, and the Transferable Skills Grid that helps you discover your most valuable skills.
Richard N. Bolles's helpful charts and activities allow job-hunters to dig in and discover how their unique interests, passions, and dreams will give them a picture of their dream job.
This book is much more hands-on and, when completed by the user, but the format and exercises may not appeal to every job applicant.
An interactive companion to the world’s most popular job-search book, updated for 2021, that helps you translate your personal interests into marketable job skills.
This fill-in workbook for the career classic What Color Is Your Parachute? is a helpful tool for recent grads, workers laid off mid-career, and anyone searching for an inspiring work-life change. Featuring
• New information that addresses the job-market in the pandemic era • The Flower Exercise that gets everything about your skills and preferences in one place • The Party Exercise to help you discover who you work best with • The Transferable Skills Grid…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
Meg Jay, PhD, is a Clinical Psychologist, and an Associate Professor of Human Development at the University of Virginia, who specializes in adult development and in twentysomethings in particular. She earned a doctorate in clinical psychology, and in gender studies, from the University of California, Berkeley. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and on NPR and BBC. Her TED talk “Why 30 Is Not the New 20” is among the most watched of all time.
Three cheers for Entry Level Boss. I love Alexa's voice. I love her advice. And I love that she's broken down getting a job into the steps that every twentysomething wants and needs. Anyone who wants that first job--but is not sure how to get it--should read this book.
An easy-to-follow, nine-step process for how to land your dream job and cut through the noise of job-searching in the 21st century.
Banging your head against the wall about the job search? Wondering why nobody’s even bothering to send you a rejection letter (much less an interview request)? You are not alone. This process is a beast, but there’s good news: #EntryLevelBoss is the book for you. This is an easy-to-follow roadmap for transforming yourself from frustrated job seeker into hired, happy, productive human.
One part behind-the-scenes memoir, one part playbook, #EntryLevelBoss lays out career coach Alexa Shoen’s proven 9-step…
I’ll tell you a secret. I’m obsessed with money—not fast cars, designer labels, and McMansions, but the accumulation of capital: who has it, how they got it, and what lengths they’re willing to go to to keep it. So I’ve always loved novels about work. They cut right to the heart of a character’s true motivations, revealing what they’ll fight for and who they’ll love. Don’t show me what a person looks like, show me how they earn (or don’t earn) their living, and I’ll remember them forever.
When I picked up Tsumura’s first novel to be translated into English, I’d just given notice at my hectic corporate job. So when the burned-out narrator tells her employment agency she’s looking for an easy job that’s “ideally, something along the lines of sitting all day in a chair,” I could relate.
She searches for that elusive work-life balance at a series of strange positions, but when she lands a plum gig working in a small hut in a forest, the story’s disparate strands weave together into an emotionally satisfying whole.
"[A] 21st-century response to Herman Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'"―NPR
"A revelation."―Time
A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and ideally, very little thinking.
Her first gig--watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods--turns out to be inconvenient. (When can she go to the bathroom?) Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to job--writing trivia for rice cracker packages; punching entry tickets…
On Jan 30, 2013, I was sacked for "insubordination." No notice, no severance. My bosses threatened the other employees with dismissal if they talked to me. I'd been at the company for decades, rising from entry level to the executive team; after years of striving, it was a devastating blow. Once I picked myself up, I realized I’d leaned in so far, I’d toppled over. So I set off on a new path. Today, I have a master’s degree in Eastern classics, four leadership books, and one historical novel, and I’m committed to helping high achievers—women, especially—find their own paths to happy success: paths beyond “lean in.”
It may seem strange to include a jobseeker’s guide in a list of leadership books, but Agile Unemployment is the resource for anyone faced with the hardest leadership task of all: leading yourself through a time of trial.
Sabina Sulat has been there—on both sides of the HR desk for “that conversation”—and she offers her well-earned wisdom with deep candor, much-needed encouragement, and straight-shooting practicality. In my early career days, I always found the “What color is your parachute” genre pretty useless, not to mention incredibly depressing. I wish I’d had Sulat’s sound guidance back then; it would have helped me lean in, out, up, down, and sideways with far more grace and optimism.
Lost your job? Struggling to figure the future out?
Agile Unemployment is the book for you. Losing your job can be harrowing, but it is a temporary state and does not define you. Cast aside your doubts and develop a new mindset to carry you through those down moments and rebuild your life how YOU see fit. Agile Unemployment is your guide to working through the job searching process and learning how to pivot your mindset to build resilience as you develop confidence and find the job of your dreams.
Turn losing your job into a moment of opportunity. Agile…
My book is a collection of monthly Editor-in-Chief letters to the readership of World Neurosurgery, a journal that I edit. Each essay is short and sweet. The letters were written for neurosurgeons but have been re-edited so that they apply to all human beings. They cover topics such as leadership,…
My grandfather was a labour activist in Hull in the UK and my father had many classic labour texts such as the book by Tressell, listed below. That got me interested in the world of work and later more specifically in managing people. I moved from studying economics to employment relations /human resource management. Given that most of us (workers) spend 80,000 hours of our lives at work - more time than we are likely to spend on any other activity during our lifetimes - how we spend these lives has remained a source of fascination
This is a brilliant scholarly book (which has been valuable in my own work) arguing that the traditional economic view of the employment relationship needs to be balanced with employee entitlement to fair treatment (equity) and the opportunity to have meaningful input into decisions (voice).
The aim is to strike a balance between efficiency, equity, and voice and give employment “a human face”, allowing for shared prosperity and human dignity.
John W. Budd contends that the turbulence of the current workplace and the importance of work for individuals and society make it vitally important that employment be given "a human face." Contradicting the traditional view of the employment relationship as a purely economic transaction, with business wanting efficiency and workers wanting income, Budd argues that equity and voice are equally important objectives. The traditional narrow focus on efficiency must be balanced with employees' entitlement to fair treatment (equity) and the opportunity to have meaningful input into decisions (voice), he says. Only through a greater respect for these human concerns can…
