Redefining the Status of Occupations

Abstract

In the past thirty years we have seen waves of re-assessments carried out on the world of work in the wake of the declining industrial society: the degradation of work (Braverman, 1974) was prominent in the 1970s; the end of the division of labour and the upgrading of work (Kern & Schumann, 1984) in the 1980s; the end of work (Rifkin, 1995) in the 1990s; and the end of the career (Moen & Roehling, 2005) at the turn of the century. Will we witness the end of the term ‘occupation’ in the years to come? While Rifkin (1995) propagated the decline of the labour force on a global scale in the post-market era, as the consequence of massive job cuts in production and marketing of goods and services, Moen & Roehling (2005) argue that the lock-step pattern of career is dissolving, that it never existed for women and is becoming less and less the employment pattern of men.