Everyone needs a job, from the time that a child is relatively small through to virtually the end of life. Everyone needs a job, a function to perform. Call it work, a career, vocation, avocation, a chore for an allowance, or just plain puttering around, it is still a job.Work provides purpose and motivation both mentally, physically, financially, and sometimes, providing spiritually fulfilling. Work is not as we like to think — especially when it is a job we dislike — something to pass the time to take home a pay cheque. Our working role and the accompanying reward, for almost all individuals even if we are loath to admit it (and particularly for gentlemen of the last generation) is what defines us: to ourselves, to our family and to our community.That is why when an individual loses a job, it is so difficult, personally. When a replacement position cannot be obtained in a recessionary environment, the loss is devastatingly compounded to both the individual and the connected family.Abrupt or poorly planned retirees understand this change in role only too well, after the fact. One week you are an important piece of the economic picture; the next week, you are overlooked, forgotten and irrelevant.Some retirees are philosophical; they want to wind down. If truth be told, though, no one wants to be irrelevant — just another grey-haired head in a sea of grey and white — except at voting time, then politicians want you — for a few minutes!THE NEW JOB STRUCTUREPeople made redundant is the nature of jobs undergoing a major restructuring. Driven by global competition, technology, and the quest as a business to remain alive and relevant to its customers, employees are becoming more like inventory: jobs, hours, benefits, and skills are dictated by just-in-time need, revenue producing capability, and profitability calculations.FULL TIME, PART-TIME AND JUST-IN-TIME EMPLOYEESFrom full-time jobs for life to part-time all the time, the days of a regular workweek with a regular pay cheque for millions of people are vanishing. There is no such thing as a routine workday with scheduled, planned-for hours. Just-in-Time (JITS) employees have it the worst, not knowing from day to day — only notified the prior evening of the next day’s working hours, if any. Planning for childcare, commuting, no healthcare, continuity of family relationships, and budgets are impossible. JITS live in an uncertain world of perpetual job motion, or no motion at all. Sources: Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America 2001, updated 2011, by Barbara Ehrenreich and recent news media articles.DRIVE DOWN IN BENEFITSIn the United States, a 30-hour workweek is generally considered full-time with benefit offerings. Avoiding increased benefit costs attributed to Obamacare, businesses are reducing salaried workers to part-time of 25 hours a week.Hostess, makers of traditional Twinkies and Wonder bread, is filing bankruptcy due to heavy union resistance plus strikes against the corporate survival decision to reduce wages, pensions and healthcare. Approximately 18,500 workers are now unemployed, left to contemplate whether some money is better than no money — in a slow-to-recover US economy. There were no winners: not the employees, not the union, not the bondholders of the company debt, and not the company.In Bermuda, employee benefits, healthcare, sick pay, paid vacations are still considered a universal right, but with owners of small businesses under enormous cash flow pressure, how long before benefits are not offered at all, regardless of government mandates and penalties?According to Juliana Snelling, Director, Canterbury Law Limited and an expert in Bermuda employment law, “HIP healthcare (and government social insurance pension) must be paid in respect of any employee (and their non-employed spouse) if the employee is working more than four hours per week, except not payable if the placement is for one month or less or, practically speaking, if they are primarily employed and receiving HIP coverage by another employer.The requirement includes self-employed persons and partners in a partnership.Failure to pay is a criminal offence, fine of $500 on summary conviction.Additionally, Ms Snelling added, “there is definitely a trend on Bermuda employers cutting hours in order to try to avoid the cost of paying benefits such as paid holiday and sick leave (by prorating down)”.WILL BERMUDA BECOME A COUNTRY OF PART-TIME WORKERS?This is our new world and new job reality — happening now. It is not pretty. It is downright scary to think of never being employed full-time with full benefits again. Even if economic conditions in Bermuda do stabilise, the two and three well-paying part-time jobs (with tips for great service) per week of the past are in the past, probably never to return.Think about your future. Upgrade your skills. Go where the job opportunities are.VOTE.Disclosure: the author has no affiliation with any Bermuda political party.Martha Harris Myron CPA PFS CFP (USA) TEP at Patterson Partners Ltd providing integrated cross-border tax, estate, investment advisory and related strategic planning services. Her articles are featured in Bermuda and US professional publications. For additional information, please contact mmyron@patterson-partners.com or call 296 3528 http://www.patterson-partners.com