Before the Industrial Age, people needed food and shelter, even work, but they did not necessarily need jobs. People could create, or produce, on their own, what they needed to survive.

One of the essential features of the Industrial Age was the separation of the producer from the consumer. (Toffler, The Third Wave, 1980) By the time that separation became nearly complete during the 20th century, a person could no longer survive in modern societies without a job. We had even created complex social welfare systems to address this fact for those who had no jobs.

The norm in the mid-twentieth century, particularly after the great depression, was to get a job and to hold onto it. For life, if possible.

By the 1970’s, the baby boom generation was swelling the ranks of the U.S. work force. This largest of all generational groups had never known hard economic times, was far better educated than all previous generations and, though the economy was generally good, there was enormous competition for jobs. Changing employers became a common strategy for improving one’s position. Employers (and old-timers) began to complain that this job hopping marked the death of employee loyalty to the company. Within ten years, pressured by the new global market realities, employers used this new employee disloyalty to justify their own disloyalty toward employees: waves of layoffs and downsizing were instituted broadly throughout industry to get costs under control. If people needed jobs, that seemed no longer to be the concern of companies that were slimming down to fighting weight for success in a new world economy.

Social changes that preceded (perhaps, even, helped create) the Information Age, made us increasingly unhappy with our jobs. We began demanding more significance in our work in order to make a more meaningful contribution. We began demanding richer lives than our jobs allowed and time with our families and in our communities. This has been particularly true of the pioneers of the Information Age: the knowledge workers. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that Professional Specialists led a dramatic turn-around in the last 15 years from declining numbers of people who worked at home to increasing numbers. Separately, there are increasing numbers of home-based businesses; most of these do not represent the business-owner’s primary source of income, suggesting a growing need for something that jobs just aren’t offering. I suspect that this something is more than – and different from – income.

Between 1983 and 1998, tenure with their current employer for men in the U.S. declined for all ages (mostly for those between 45 and 64). While downsizing and job displacement surely affected that trend, it was also driven by voluntary job changes. Interestingly, the only group today with tenure higher than government workers is managers.

We are entering an era in which people will still need money. And work. But jobs may have already become optional. It’s time to reinvent the concept of “job.”