Labor Market 2026: Mostly How It Was in Early 1950s (and it may stay that way)

Only the oldest of us Boomers will remember. Historians could also put it together. That was how earning a living used to be. That was back in the early 1950s. It was the time before the post-war economic boom really kicked in and college introduced the working man's children to being all you could be.

Usually you didn't have the opportunity to graduate from high school. You know someone. That someone got you in. The in could be the next 40 years on the railroad, unloading freight on the docks, moving paper at city hall or policing the mean streets. You obeyed the boss. Actually you knew to suck up. Eventually there was medical insurance. And that was that.

Of course, there were exceptions. Members of the lucky sperm club got to be professionals. Medical doctors, lawyers, accountants. 

Today the labor market replicates much of that. You bet, you better know someone.

Those lamenting the grim realities of a current job search on Reddit have no idea that what they're encountering used to be the usual. A difference? They probably have a splendid classical education. My father ended schooling at the third grade; my mother at the eighth.

The present model of working at what is available at the compensation you have to accept and having to cave to power could persist. Members of my extended family, caught in that hardened work dynamic, never escaped. I have a hunch they never even envisioned doing so. My father died two years after retiring from the railroad. My mother, to care for him as he died from cancer, rigged early retirement from her school-cleaning job. 

But it wasn't the darkness being experienced now by the disappointed who had been socialized to be all they could be. Without great expectations, those workers at the mid-20th century just put one foot in front of another. 

"Tragedy" to them was not missing out on a promotion, a sector collapsing because of technology or age bias. It was the breadwinner running off or dying. Serious illness. A relative caught by the police for stealing. 

No, I didn't inherit their sense of acceptance. After content-creation, where I had been all that I could be, was wiped out, I froze in time. Even as I replaced that with another way of earning a living, I orbited in a time warp.  For too long.

During the Industrial Revolution which mirrors the work world of today, the novelist who captured the brutality - Charles Dickens - published "Great Expectations." The theme was: Don't have them.

In intuitive coaching and tarot reading my mission is help the ambitious navigate the emerging obstacles to making a good living. Often the number-one is the great expectation. Focused on the Big Score they can miss out on succeeding, three steps forward, two backward. And it may not look, talk, walk and pay what their generation anticipated.

Careers. Forget all that. It’s about earning a good living, no matter what.

Complimentary consultation with Jane Genova, StreetSmart Coaching (janegenova374@gmail.com)