Implementation of Social Programs in Conditions of Increasing Labor Precarization: Regional Aspects on the Example of the USA

Abstract

The current complex phenomenon of labor precarization has been extremely actively developed in the United States of America, especially over the past two decades. Undoubtedly, the main reason for the increase in the share of the precariat in the labor market is economic development based on a change in technological patterns, which is characterized in the capitalist economy, on the one hand, by an increase in the role of human capital, and on the other hand, by its overconcentration, including at the intra-country regional level. The emergence and development of a new form of labor relations invariably leads to the need to revise social policy. The regional aspects of the implementation of social programs considered in this paper, which are to some extent capable of mitigating the consequences of the instability of employment and the insecurity of labor relations in the United States for the period 2007–2020, serve as one of the explanations for the intensifying processes of regionalization observed in the country. The result of the study was the identification of two main aspects of the implementation of social programs at the level of subregions and individual states of the country. The first reflects the further regionalization of federal relations in terms of social support for the population, carried out without taking into account the growing precarization of labor in regions with the largest share of the precariat among the employed. The second aspect, which takes into account the structural features of the distribution of funding in the areas of education, health care and social protection of the population, reveals the authorities’ attempt to carry out balanced social programming in the subregions that are potential centers of the “new industrialization” of the American economy. This approach is aimed at preserving and qualitatively developing the human capital of the region by smoothing out the negative consequences of labor precarization.