Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market
Marc Doussard posits a new interpretation of the 2001 to 2006 profit-wage disjuncture that is innovative and fresh. This is the stuff of truly innovative urban-economic analysis.—David Wilson, University of Illinois, Urbana-ChampaignDistinctive and pioneering,Degraded Workanalyzes the areas of excess profit within two sectors that are often viewed as very close to perfectly competitive, smaller scale neighborhood retail and residential construction. These detailed analyses help make a broader case that low wages and precarious work are not inevitable. Doussard integrates these elements into an instructive polemic against some popular but oversimplified analyses of urban and labor market restructuring, introducing the concept of degraded work to capture the changes he observes.—Chris Tilly, UCLA