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Data on 18 rich democracies 1968-87 show that job creation is mainly a product of demographic changes (age structure, net migration rates) and changes in social structure (the rate of family breakup as it relates to poverty and the history of female labor-force participation) -- clues to an increased supply of young and/or cheap labor. Job creation is unrelated to unemployment rates or other measures of economic performance and their causes; it comes at the cost of lower earnings growth and slower long-run productivity gains. If job creation is little affected by demand policies, the appropriate response is less boasting about employment gains and more attention to a strategy to reshape the supply and quality of labor -- e.g., active labor-market and education policies, a family policy, policies to reduce industrial conflict.

In their vision of the managerial revolution, Max Weber and Thorstein Veblen pictured experts coming to power by virtue of their indispensability. The reality, not so dramatic, is nevertheless critical for an understanding of the main drift of modern society. Coalitions of top managers and experts, each acquiring some of the skills of the other, now make increasing use of systematic technical and ideological intelligence. The structural roots of intelligence failures—hierarchy, specialization and rivalry, and centralization—become more prominent. The new technology produces a surfeit of information, poorly digested or lost in the system. Big policy decisions are often made in an atmosphere of urgency and uncertainty, the effects of which can be both good and bad. Alert executives, therefore, reshape administrative structures to smooth the flow of intelligence; more important, they bypass the machinery and seek firsthand exposure to unofficial intelligence sources both inside and outside the organization. These responses are evident in the structure and strategy of modern corporations. Although preconceptions remain discouragingly powerful, top executives are increasingly exposed to social science perspectives in college and on the job. It is possible that social science at its best sometimes breaks through executives' stereotypes, enhances their understanding of themselves and their organizations, alerts them to the range of relevant variables, and increases their skill in using experts.

Traditional concepts of the soc problem of leisure as affected by labor mention Engels' hypothesis of alienation from work as causing `alienation from life' & de Tocqueville's thesis that mass society causes trivial, boring, uncreative leisure. A wealth of US data on job satisfaction is available for reexamination. Concentration should be given to comparative analysis, relating the smaller units to their larger soc contexts, & utilizing the time dimension. The connections between work role, career pattern, & style of life in the Ur community are seen in the examination of the Mc's, where SC no longer predicts much behavior. Variations in work situation & the individual's 'mobility experience' show that careers are 'a major source of stability for modern society.' Style of life is related to career through mobility, eg, the 'shallow roots' or the Org Man. In the 'non-mobile masses' the use of occup as a 'status-winning device' is disappearing, resulting in work as no longer being a 'central life interest'. The search for substitute sources of identity can lead to 'meaningful participation' in voluntary associations or to a 'take-it-easy' attitude of de Tocqueville's apathetic masses. P. D. Montagna.