Steven Greenhouse has written an excellent article in the New York Times, detailing the rise of part time employment in the labor market. When I was traveling the country interviewing folks who had been laid off, many of the Americans I met had, in fact, secured a new job of some kind but in almost in every case it was a job unrelated to their established field, a job that paid far less than previous jobs, and, in all likelihood, a part time position. What Greenhouse's article highlights so well is the fact that the reliance on part time employees is not limited to big corporations. Small businesses across the country--businesses with a demonstrated degree of conscientiousness--have come to routinely rely on workforces composed almost entirely of part time employees. It's a disturbing development. Not just the proliferation of this model but the fact that it is increasingly viewed as acceptable and increasingly a permanent approach to labor in the US. This is what happens when workers are stripped of nearly all leverage, knowing there is always a line out the door of a hundred unemployed workers eager to take any job at all.