The Return of the McJob?

Remember McJobs? For the uninitiated, the McJob was a lowly position, often in the service sector, with few opportunities for career advancement. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was almost a rite of passage for graduates. It was perfectly possible to graduate with honours and still find yourself earning minimum wage (not that this existed then) as a shelf-stacker at Safeway.

If you were a BA or MA Hons, you did this job 'ironically' (misusing the English language as you went) and with zero commitment. There was an unspoken understanding between employer and employee: there would be no exchange of loyalty on either side. Benefits and job security were often non-existent, as was any spark of interest from employees.

So it feels like "deja vu all over again" when unemployment figures start creeping up towards two million and car manufacturer BMW summarily lays off 850 employees. Former trade minister Lord Digby Jones's plea to save manufacturing echoes earlier calls to salvage, well, UK car manufacturing during the 1990s recession.

This time around, fast-food outlets and supermarkets are thriving, while skilled jobs with career promise (or without a uniform) are growing scarce. Fast food chain KFC looks set to open enough franchises to employ some 9,000 and Julian Goldsmith's latest post tells of a stampede to get to the front of the job queue at Tesco in Liverpool.

Does this herald the return of the McJob? Possibly. But there are a couple of reasons to think it'll be different this time around.

First, Gen Y and 'Echo Boomers': their energy, sense of entitlement, approach to work as a learning experience -- this has 'burning platform' potential. I know that's been said before, but the collision of the Millennial mindset with the current economic upheaval may at last force through workplace changes that have been bubbling under for a decade.

Employers are very different, too. There seems a more equitable exchange between employer and employee than in the early 1990s. Great employers are recognised by the media. Regulatory pressures and the 'war for talent' have raised the possibility that the old ways of working may not always be the best. Training and career progression opportunities are far more common -- and actively championed as a recession-resistant tactic by the likes of McDonald's.

What's not different is our attitude to entry-level service jobs: they are still seen as the dead-end option. Lord Jones was ostensibly expressing concern for UK skills when he wrote: "I discovered worrying signs that whatever new jobs are created are likely to be low-paid and low-skill...".

But he also reveals how little service jobs are valued. They are still seen as demeaning and low-skilled, offering neither the prospects nor the inspiration for advancement beyond the lowest rung. But there's no real need for this tradition to continue, is there? At the most enlightened end of the service scale, John Lewis Partnership or Timpson are proof that you can create careers from low-skilled starting points.

You could argue the opposite -- that hard times herald the return to a pile-em-high, sell-em-cheap attitude to people, that the glut of talent hitting the labour force will devalue skills. Or simply that it's always going to be more economically sound to train less, churn more in certain jobs. It's perfectly possible for the McJob to live on in spirit. It may never have gone away. But I think we'll have to come up with a new name for it.