Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1997

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Economics

Major Professor

Anne Mayhew

Committee Members

Fran Ansley, Alan Schlottmann, Anne Mayhew

Abstract

This study examines the causes and consequences of changing employment patterns in Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville is experiencing many of the trends that are at the heart of recent debate about changing employment and job quality. The share of total employment in the service sector has risen far above the share held in manufacturing, and the number of relatively low-paying jobs appears to be increasing. Moreover, the prominent textile and other nondurable manufacturing industries here have felt the effects of NAFTA as plants have shut down and moved in search of lower wages. Thus Knoxville is an ideal place in which to examine changing jobs and job quality, measured in the study by wages, length of expected employment, and required skills. Questions about a possible erosion of the manufacturing base – seen as a source of many reasonably good jobs for urban workers – and the possibility that a fundamental shift is occurring in the nature of the economy led to two pieces of the research: an economic history of Knoxville to trace the patterns of employment over time in the local economy which gave context to the current changes; and a mail survey of currently operating firms to address the actual changes in jobs being offered in Knoxville. The evidence from the survey is somewhat surprising: even though there have been prominent manufacturing plant closings, most firms are not downsizing, and technological change more often leads to job gain than to job loss, even in manufacturing firms. Part of the increased employment reported by the firms is due to the addition of service jobs in all kinds of firms. The kinds of service jobs range from clerical to professional, indicating that the shift to service employment does not necessarily indicate a loss of job quality: some service jobs (clerical and retail) pay low wages but others (health services and professional) pay among the highest wages in the region, while some traditional manufacturing jobs (in textiles and apparels) pay among the lowest. The results suggest that it is not the balance of employment in the manufacturing versus the service sectors alone that holds the key to changing job quality. The economic history of the city suggests the same, as Knoxville has always been a regional center of service employment that has in the past produced good jobs. Instead, it is the reorganization of jobs within firms, in conjunction with a shift to survive employment, that is affecting job quality. For example, firms are hiring temporary employees in order to meet changing demand more efficiently, and temporary jobs in Knoxville are typically of lower quality than their permanent counterparts in terms of wages, and offer few benefits and little job security. The findings also suggest what policy initiatives to assure the availability of good jobs probably will not work. Training programs designed to improve the skills of workers – and thus their opportunities of attaining good jobs – may be a misdirected effort, as firms are satisfied with Knoxville workers’ abilities, consider basic skills to be desirable, and prefer to train on-the-job. The recruitment of new manufacturing to the area is not a guarantee of better job opportunities either, since there is no guarantee that the jobs will be of good quality simply because they are manufacturing jobs. Instead, assuring that good jobs are available is more complicated that reversing the trend to service employment, and more complicated that assuming workers are at fault. Access to job sites through adequate public transportation and union organization are two of the possible components of the complicated set of policies that will be needed.

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