Empirically, the transition of American workers from large corporations to smaller ones described both here and in PG's 'Refragmentation' has not taken place.
If one considers a firm employing > 500 workers to be large (as per the Government's definition), the percentage of employed individuals working for large companies has remained nearly flat (actually increasing slightly). The same holds true if your definition of large is employing more than 1000, 5000, 10000 etc [0].
A dead giveaway that this observation was anecdotal rather than empirical was Paul's statement:
> you find what most would have done back in 1960... was to join big companies or become professors.
The percentage of individuals working as professors has historically been such a small percentage of the overall workforce that their inclusion in a statement about national employment trends highlights the author's dependence on the availability heuristic rather than data.
If one considers a firm employing > 500 workers to be large (as per the Government's definition), the percentage of employed individuals working for large companies has remained nearly flat (actually increasing slightly). The same holds true if your definition of large is employing more than 1000, 5000, 10000 etc [0].
A dead giveaway that this observation was anecdotal rather than empirical was Paul's statement: > you find what most would have done back in 1960... was to join big companies or become professors.
The percentage of individuals working as professors has historically been such a small percentage of the overall workforce that their inclusion in a statement about national employment trends highlights the author's dependence on the availability heuristic rather than data.
[0] https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/files/bds_firmsize.x...