This income shift, all but ignored in the media, was about seven times as large as the defense buildup of the Carter-Reagan years. Whereas a total of 2.5 million Americans have lost their jobs owing to corporate restructuring since 1991, the percentage of managers among nonfarm employees rose from 12.6 in 1989 to 13.6 in 1995. Although many middle managers have been let go, even more production workers have too, allowing the percentage of managers to grow. It is as if the downsizing revolution were now devouring its perpetrators. Gordon's thesis made him less sympathetic to their quandary than common humanity warrants.
Managers are people too.
For the answers to questions like these, see Gordon's book. In a sign that consumer demand is in fact contracting, at least eight major retailers filed for bankruptcy last year, and analysts were predicting more filings this year in the wake of the miserable Christmas shopping season, which saw mainly upscale retailers, who cater to the top 20 percent of the work force, enjoy good sales. The biggest negative incentive would be to change the law so that unions can fight back against the Big Stick. Union membership tracks the decline in wages. The union wage, as a study by David Card and Alan B. Krueger, of Princeton University, has shown, puts upward pressure on all wages, and so all workers have a stake in union expansion.