Recently many activists, scholars, and political commentators have focused their attention on rising income inequality, stagnating wages, union decline, and the disappearance of steady work. They have proposed a variety of programs to address these trends, such as expanding eligibility for overtime, implementing paid family leave, raising the minimum wage, and investing in more training. While each of these specific proposals are valuable in themselves, they address only a part of the problem and offer only partial solutions. What they miss is that that there has been a fundamental change in the nature of work over the past three decades. Since the late 1980s, the entire context of the work experience has changed profoundly. Gone are the days when individuals (at least white, male individuals) with only a high school education could obtain a steady well-paying job by their late twenties and expect to stay in that job for the remainder of their careers. In the past, many blue-collar jobs provided job security, income stability, and a reliable package of social insurance and retirement benefits. But the steady job with a single employer throughout one’s career is a relic of the past.