Pay remained or fell for the bottom 60 percent of all workers, except the bottom 10 percent. The share of workers receiving employer paid health benefits fell 7.6 percentage points between 1979 and 1997. Lower paid workers suffered the greatest decline in coverage proportionately, with high school educated workers suffering a 10.7 percentage point decrease during the same period. The share of workers in long-term jobs fell despite relatively low unemployment. In 1996, 11.4 percent of the working population reported losing a job in the period from 1993 to 1995.
Downsized workers face extreme difficulty in finding adequate employment.
One third were out of work when interviewed one to three years after their displacement. For those workers able to find new employment, pay was 13 percent lower on average than at their previous jobs. Almost 30 percent of those counted as employed in 1997 worked at other than traditional full-time jobs. Such employment consisted of day labor, work at temporary agencies or independent contract work. In the vast majority of cases such employment provides few if any benefits.