Good work is central to a good society. But what does that mean? How is job quality measured? Is it possible to pay and treat workers well in a time of rapid technological change and global competition? What economic forces and political realities are central to the answers? To answer these questions, I take a pluralist approach—drawing from many strains of economic thinking. Pluralists begin with the evidence, rather than with deductions from prior assumptions.

I also look at many forms of work—non-standard (including self-employment and “gig” employment) and non-market work (such as the unpaid care of others) as well as employment relationships. Ditto for different types of workers. Gender and race-ethnicity appear throughout, not just in a chapter on discrimination. Early chapters include serfdom, race-based slavery, and changing gender roles. The “three faces of wages” illustrates how pre-market forces affect where any one person ends up on the occupational structure and wage pyramid.

Wealth inequality is finally getting the attention it deserves, so I don’t ignore it, as many books do. Differences in family wealth affect opportunities for education and for job networking—along with the ability to “wait.” That’s an advantage over having to take what’s readily available, and it affects intergenerational mobility. With enough wealth, laws and regulations can be influenced—as we see happening regularly today. Wealth continues to be the elephant in the room—not measured adequately nor incorporated into most labor models.

Another difference in my approach is recognition of workers as unpaid parents, family members, and neighbors who have the very important responsibility of preparing the next generation for life and work. In a well-functioning democracy, workers are also informed citizens. That takes time and education, so it’s important that work and pay support them in those roles. Think about the decline in support for democratic institutions and how it parallels falling worker participation in unions.

My pluralist approach builds on economic ideas as old as Adam Smith’s as well as on more recent heterodox schools of thought. Early chapters focus on the history of work, and of the institutions established to deal with wage labor and industrialization. Most of the evidence I present comes from the US. But the same tools can be applied to other economies with different histories and institutions. For example, it’s clear that while US productivity has grown over the last four and a half decades, its “dividend” has gone primarily to capital and to the top 10 percent of workers. Educational differences explain only a fraction of that last part. Institutional change—declines in internal labor markets and union membership accompanied by increased offshoring, outsourcing, and non-standard employment—explains much more.  

In the pluralist tradition, I start with an economy embedded in society and the environment and draw on path dependence theory, in which history constrains or influences current decisions. Established traditions of lower pay, restricted occupations, or ceilings on advancement for women or certain minorities seem “normal” to many people. But these patterns affect who trains for specific work as well—a classic example of feedback effects.

To shed light on wage-setting and employment, I use the wage pyramid, the backward-bending supply of labor, perfect and imperfect competition, the job competition model, crowding in dual labor markets, and the social practice aspect of wages. I don’t ignore demand and supply, which illustrate how competitive forces operate. But it’s a model built for commodities—and labor is inherently different from any commodity. Quick example: productivity is the source of wages but wage levels can also influence productivity. Show me a commodity whose productivity is increased by a higher price! Also, demand-and-supply models don’t reveal the processes behind wage determination. And because it’s a static model, the predictions are often wrong in a dynamic world (see, for example, employment effects of minimum wages and collective bargaining).

It’s clear that people care about fairness or equity, despite very different views of what is fair. And people care about their children and grandchildren’s future opportunities. That’s why pluralists reject the single goal of efficiency, and give equal weight to justice (fairness) and sustainability. This changes conclusions about how resources should be used and for who should bear various risks.

Every book has central themes. Path dependence, bargaining power, the importance of social as well as private costs, and a wider conception of job quality are dominant. Several other themes are in the background. One is the modern reversal of what’s abundant and what is scarce. Technological advances and education have massively increased workers’ hourly output. Coal, gas, and oil helped produce this abundance of market goods, but their carbon waste now overwhelms natural clean-up capacity. Economic thinking must adapt to the new scarcity of many formerly “free goods”—clean air and water, a stable climate—and the new abundance of traditionally scarce manufactured output. We need to identify why there doesn’t seem to be “enough” money to protect labor and the environment despite this abundance.

A second background theme is the financialization of economies for the last forty years and its effects on business decisions. Labor is often squeezed by private equity and institutional investors’ emphasis on very short-term profits. At the same time, extraordinarily high pay for financial sector workers and CEOs means we can’t look only at declines in labor’s share vs. capital’s share as the source of inequality. At least in the US, inequality within the distribution of wages and salaries is now equally important.

A third is how to address environmental pressures (climate change and water shortages) and technological challenges (AI and robots) in ways that help workers. That often boils down to how institutions are structured. While the liberal world order has leaned toward redistribution through progressive taxes and/or social programs, I emphasize pre-distribution. That’s because bargaining power is shaped by institutions—and those are built by people. Difficult as it may sometimes be, they can be reformed and rebuilt to fit today’s social values. In the closing chapters, I cover some commonly proposed solutions: sectoral bargaining, lifelong access to education and training, shorter work weeks, guaranteed jobs programs, and universal basic income. I also explore some that are less often discussed—worker-owned businesses, legal protections and bargaining rights for “gig” workers, and re-evaluating efficiency in consumption as well as production.  

My book doesn’t lay out contending heterodox perspectives. Instead, I borrowed tools from a variety of economic approaches to fill a larger and more substantively realistic toolbox than most books about labor. However, I was selective, so as not to overwhelm readers with too many alternatives. I illustrated many of the concepts graphically, since “a picture can be worth a thousand words.” (The “scissors” of demand and supply—with their crisp intersection—look quite definitive. They lend a patina of authority to free market arguments that doesn’t survive deeper scrutiny.) Each chapter introduces pluralist models for a better understanding of work, pay, and sustainability. I’ve italicized and defined economic terms when first introduced, and included a glossary for helpful reference. Throughout the book, economic analysis incorporates ideals of justice (fairness) and sustainability along with efficiency. I’m of the philosophy that we must refuse to be a dismal science despite the reality of today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.