>Then there's also the job stability issue as well; who wants to buy a house or start a family when you don't know you'll be somewhere for years?
I can't help but feel that you're describing some mythical ideal that never really existed for most people. Yes, for a long time, a lot of manufacturing jobs were pretty stable and people worked for IBM for a long time. But, even in that case, even if the jobs were stable, people tended to move around the company a lot. The military, which has always been a large employer, is an even more extreme example of jobs being relatively stable but mobile.
But that's the point - workers mostly didn't lose their jobs.
Some computer companies - DEC especially - made it a point of honour not to lay off or fire employees unless the circumstances were exceptional.
I don't think people "moved around the company a lot" either. Certainly not any more than they do today.
Mobility has gone down because only exceptional jobs pay relocation expenses, and the areas that offer the highest income also have the least affordable housing.
So there's less disposable income around than there was in the 50s-70s, and that makes people much warier of starting a family.
I can't help but feel that you're describing some mythical ideal that never really existed for most people. Yes, for a long time, a lot of manufacturing jobs were pretty stable and people worked for IBM for a long time. But, even in that case, even if the jobs were stable, people tended to move around the company a lot. The military, which has always been a large employer, is an even more extreme example of jobs being relatively stable but mobile.
By the way, according to this Economist article from a couple years back, US workforce mobility has actually gone down significantly to a degree not explained by demographics: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/07/labour-m...
>Also with many family units having two workers, what happens when one doesn't have a job?
And what happened when there was more typically one worker and he (the common case) lost his job?