Part of this has to do with our very American instincts -- the Puritan work ethic. We have always valued work, hard work. This is the American ethos. But I think somehow it got shifted in the '80s and then especially in the '90s, when you had people articulating deeply cruel and very limited visions of what success is: Success is what's measured in the stock market, right? That's what success is and nothing else matters.

And this overwork image was so romantic. You're working in your garage one minute and the next minute you're Steve Jobs. It was irresistible, especially when the stock market was going up.

It was very ironic that during this period there were endless reports of our children failing in schools and SAT scores dropping and these bizarre and awful episodes of youth violence. People would talk about things that were clearly a sign that something was not right with the world.

But nobody ever said, "Maybe part of what's not right is that we're being turned into 24/7 work machines who don't have any time or energy left for all of these other things that really matter in our lives."

With low unemployment, we hear so much about how great kids coming out of school have it today. Do younger employees really have it better than they used to?

If you were coming out of school with very high-level technical skills or if you were heading for Wall Street, it is certainly true that the money was extraordinary there, and you were rewarded. But the vast bulk of young people were on the other end of the same trends that were negatively impacting all of these people in their late 30s and 40s and 50s.

A new college graduate in 1973 could have expected to earn $14.82 per hour in inflation-adjusted 1997 dollars. And that was $1.17 more per hour than a new college graduate would have been paid in 1997. New college graduates in 1973 were better off than those in 1997.

Unmarried men and women between the ages of 18 and 29 were significantly worse off economically during the '90s than they had been in the '70s or '80s. During a roughly 25-year period, this group suffered a real average income drop of about 11 percent, with more than 80 percent of the decline occurring during the past decade.

How has the new economy's youth fetish affected people in their 40s and older?

I think it's very interesting that at the same time the American population is aging and baby boomers are starting to reach the early stages of retirement years, there's such an obsession with youth.

In certain industries, like technology and Wall Street, by the time you cross that threshold of being 40 years old you're vulnerable. In fact, one of my sources quoted to me an expression among people in the high-tech community: If you're in your 20s you're desirable; if you're in your 30s you're expendable; if you're in your 40s you're unhirable.

We used to think that you get on the corporate ladder and you rise and your salary increases and then you retire with this fabulous pension, or good pension, but in fact you have a different situation now. In your 20s, you struggle just to even get hired -- as an employee, not just as a temp or independent contractor. Then, if you do get hired, you're working very hard. And just at the time you expect that the payoff is going to begin to come -- you've achieved a level of seniority, you're a little older, you're in your 40s, you had this brief moment of success -- you didn't even know you had it. You didn't know it was good until you lost it.

How will this slumping economy we're coming into impact the workplace trends that you describe?

Unfortunately, I think that things are going to get worse. You could see that, statistically, December 2000 was the worst month for layoffs in the past nine years, the worst single month since 1992.

People were laid off like crazy during the '90's when times were good. Certainly you're going to see more of that in this environment. And it's not clear whether it's better to have been laid off or not.

You think you've made it past the hump, you've held onto your job, but now you really are doing the work that once was done by two or three or four people and you're doing it all by yourself. At many of these companies, the first layoff is not the last layoff. The cutbacks will undoubtedly come with healthcare plans and pension plans. Companies will be looking for ways to cut costs as their revenues are squeezed.

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