We’re All Temps Now

California Used To Embody Stable, Middle-Class Living. It Was a Brief Interlude.

The photo below was taken at the Lockheed Aircraft Company Christmas Party in Burbank in 1950. The smiling Lockheed workers are receiving awards in honor of their fifth anniversaries at the company, awards that reflect the stability of regular pay benefits and employment.

From January 1951 through November 1957, the unemployment rate in California never exceeded 5 percent. For much of the time, it was under 4 percent. The number of nonfarm payroll jobs grew from 3,406,900 in January 1951 to 4,877,100 in December 1959. In the following decades, the abundance …