>>For example, if management jobs are
>>supposed to be in peril, you wouldn't know it from the figures. With a
>>total
>>of 20.5 million folks currently employed as manager in the U.S., this
>>category of employment has added nearly a million jobs since 2000. Then,
>>as
>>now, about one out of seven jobs in the U.S. is classified as managerial.
Doug:
> This all depends on what you're calling managers. The "management of
> companies and enterprises" category in the establishment survey, which
> doesn't include the produce manager at Kroger's, numbers 1.7 million, off
> 80,000 since the 2000 peak, and off 1,000 over the last year.
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20+ million managers does seem far-fetched, unless it includes everyone who
has someone reporting to them in some capacity for one reason or another,
and even then it boggles the mind. Why this huge discrepancy? Are there
different definitions of manager employed by the various BLS surveys, and
Epstein is relying on (and perhaps further stretching) the most elastic one?
As Michael P. pointed out, the definition is crucial in determining benefits
like OT and is used by labour boards to define the scope of bargaining
units. Employers have used their almost unlimited power to classify
positions as "management" to exclude workers from the collective bargaining
and employment standards rights they'd otherwise enjoy. And it's always been
an important issue on the left in seeking to identify with some precision
the boundries of the "working class".