The Great Jobs Deception: Why More Workforce Education Will Not Solve the Problem of Inadequate Jobs

Brynne VanHettinga has spent a lifetime attempting to understand why work isn’t working for most of us. As a young adult getting started, Brynne experienced the ＂working poor＂ version of underemployment--a string of multiple low-wage, dead-end jobs that had no future. Knowing that education was the only way up and out, Brynne earned a B.S. in economics and finance, and then went on to law school.

After law school, Brynne opened a solo public-interest private law practice, where she represented families and employees. Over some 10 years and several states, Brynne was a first- hand witness to the struggles of people who worked for a living (lack of time, lack of money, family stress from inability to plan for the future, desperation and hopelessness) as well as the increasing hostility of the ＂system＂ (particularly the federal judiciary) to the plight of people who work for a living.

Brynne again sought answers in education, earning a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration in 2015. Her doctoral dissertation picked up the intervening research since the first paper she had written on underemployment as an undergraduate. However, this time the study focused on underemployment of highly educated and skilled professionals. The theory was that this paradox challenged the claims of political and economic elites, who allege that the answer to un- and under-employment is to upgrade workforce skill levels. The majority of these studies suggest that underemployment is a result of more permanent structural features of the labor market rather than a lack of worker skills or solely the result of short-term recessionary fluctuations.

Yet, research on underemployment tends to be fragmented and sporadic, and hardly anyone outside of academia is aware of this research. Brynne wrote The Great Jobs Deception so that lay audiences of educated and professional workers understand what is happening to them in the ＂job market.＂ What all of us do for a living should provide for our reasonable material needs, utilize our education and skills, and serve some greater social purpose, not support a system that is designed to expropriate our talent, our intellect, and maybe even our very souls.