[employment] will balance ever return

There has been a trend towards the four day week gathering momentum and the schools are one area where this is manifesting itself:

Bucking a nationwide trend toward bulking up school calendars, dozens of rural school districts are actually paring back their work weeks, cramming more academics into four days. The trade-off: School days are an hour or more longer than in most schools.

In rural areas, where pupils are required to help out with the farm work, this might make some sense but for them to hang around malls, doing nothing? Especially with ASBOs and chavs on the increase? I wonder what justification is given for this:

The South Carolina Department of Transportation rolled out a pilot program this week that offers four-day work weeks in exchange for longer work days. "Secretary (Harry) Limehouse felt that this was a very important thing to do for employees because we have a number of employees that commute," said Mary Gail Monsts-Chamblee, the department's director of human resources.

The justification is that gas prices are now $4 a gallon. So, in an induced economic crisis, people are to work less? An eight hour day [including lunch] will now become a ten hour day? Or will it be a nine hour day, with the net effect a 32 hour week?

The point is probably moot anyway, as more and more firms are employing people as temps or part-time, with the slant towards women:

She added that women returners who wanted part-time work were preferable to those who were seeking full-time positions as they were more likely to remain in their job when the economy recovered.

There are more and more cases of overqualified people trying for less qualified positions but firms are wary of that, as they don't believe they will retain those people after times get better. Against that, the qualification hike [in the UK - NVQs] is getting to a ridiculous stage. The tick boxes are exponentially expanding, often demanding irrelevant skills for that particular position. This comes close to expressing it:

This comprehensive skill set, once required only of managers but now applying to all levels of employment, appeared in several employer surveys, with an additional emphasis on communication and computer/technical skills.

What will be the immediate and medium term future for employment? If things do improve, has the wheel of change irrevocably moved to a mobile, part time and temporary, expendable workforce? More than this, as an article in the Asia Times states:

President-elect Barack Obama is the only man in town with a checkbook, and by virtue of the Treasury's near-monopoly of financial power, will take office as the most powerful peacetime president in US history. Faced with the collapse of private pension, health care and financing systems, Obama will have every reason to use his mandate to socialize medicine, pensions and many other aspects of US economic life. The American economy may be hard to recognize afterwards.

I think not only the American economy will transform in this way.