Introduction

In the new television series “Sisters,” one of the main characters spends most of his time around the house in his bathrobe. He is not sick. He is not crazy. He is unemployed.

Years ago, we would have imagined Archie Bunker, not a suburbanite with a wife and a car and two children, in such a situation. But today none of the old rules apply, even on television. To talk about work in the 1990s is to talk about worklessness and a labor force in which blue-collar and white-coll...