The postwar employment contract, characterized by stable jobs, career ladders, wages that rose with productivity, didn't dissolve overnight. Firms chipped away at it deliberately, and the result is a labor market organized around workers who were never meant to stay.

Topics covered:

• Contractors, freelancers, and marginal workers: the three categories of disposable work
• Why using staffing firms drives wages down
• The McKinsey statistic that says the quiet part out loud: 95% of a firm's value comes from 5% of its employees
• Why "at will" employment is a spectrum, not a switch, and why disposable workers sit at a different end of it entirely
• The hidden cost firms pay: contractors and marginal workers report substantially less organizational commitment and willingness to put in extra effort
• What ...