“A cheap and highly skilled workforce”
Reading the Washington Post on the train this morning, I noticed an interesting paragraph buried at the end of an otherwise dull article about a new magazine being launched.
“He [Hull] has been able to assemble a relatively cheap and highly-skilled workforce of former professionals who are now stay-at-home parents. ‘These are mostly women who aren’t in dire need of money and can make a choice to do something that is fun and interesting to them,’ said Beaman, a former editor and interior designer who has been at home raising two children and will continue to work at home.”
Or maybe they’re desperate for something that will help cover the hole in their resumes? Notwithstanding the claims of Ann Crittenden’s new book, it seems like taking a few years out of the workforce to raise children is still being penalized by employers much more than could be accounted for by erosion of skills — and at least some news accounts suggest that it’s worse for men than for women.
It seems that employers take the fact that you’ve taken some time out of the workforce as a signal that you’re not serious about working, that you don’t have the fire in the belly, that you might resist working 80 hours a week.
I’ve heard some suggestions that demographics will force employers to re-examine these prejudices, that they’ll be desperate for skilled workers as the baby boom generation moves into retirement and is replaced by a much smaller cohort of workers. I wish I were more convinced.
September 1st, 2004 at 6:34 pm
Writing is a tough gig to use as a barometer for the workplace as a whole. I’m on a bunch of freelance listservs, and three or four times a year there will be angry denuciations of parents (usually mothers) who take assignments for pennies on the dollar “to keep stimulated,” thereby putting wage pressure on everyone else. Mainstream news outlets are now actually outsourcing editorial duties, putting even more pressure on writers. They’re hardly representative of the labor force as a whole.
That’s probably an aside in the bigger issue at hand. At-home parents getting screwed over upon re-entry is a big problem, and I don’t Crittenden is unaware … I think the new book is an effort to reverse the perception. I hope I live long enough to see that effort become a success.