“Today, white-collar job insecurity is no longer a function of the business cycle--rising as the stock market falls and declining again when the numbers improve. Nor is it confined to a few volatile sectors like telecommunications or technology, or a few regions like the rust belt or Silicon Valley. The economy may be looking up, the company may be raking in cash, and still the layoffs continue, like a perverse form of natural selection, weeding out the talented and successful as well as the mediocre. Since the midnineties, this perpetual winnowing process has been institutionalized under various euphemisms such as "downsizing," "right-sizing," "smart-sizing," "restructuring," and "de-layering"—to which we can now add the outsourcing of white-collar functions to cheaper labor markets overseas.” WorkBusinessWorkersOutsourcingDownsizingRestructuringLayoffsFiringsJob Insecurity Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream Source: Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream