Recommendation
Preface to the Revised Edition
Preface to the 1st edition

Part 1: Two Aspects of Technology

1.
The End of Labor
2.
Technology Confidence and Market Reality
3.
The ideal of a technological paradise

Part 2: The Third Industrial Revolution

4.
Moving to a high-tech frontier
5.
Technology and the Black Experience
6.
The Great Debate on Automation
7.
Post-Fordism

Part 3: The Decline of the Global Workforce

8.
A world where farmers are no longer needed
9.
The End of Blue Collar
10.
The Last Service Worker

Part 4: The Price of Progress

11.
Winners and Losers in Advanced Technology
12.
Requiem for the Working Class
13.
The fate of the nation
14.
An increasingly dangerous world

Part 5: The Dawn of the Market Age

15.
Reengineering working hours
16.
New social contract
17.
Strengthening the Third Sector
18.
Globalization of the social economy

Rifkin's prediction has now become reality.
The 21st century is the age of the silicon collar worker.

Will the 21st century be a technological utopia or a gloomy dystopia?
This book is a rebuttal to Toffler's optimistic outlook on the 21st century information society.
This is because layoffs and mass unemployment caused by the information society and management innovation following advanced technology are heralding the end of labor worldwide, regardless of whether it is blue-collar or white-collar.
The era of silicone-collar workers has already begun.
Is the 21st century truly a century of hope or a century of destruction?

In this challenging, somewhat bleak, but ultimately very informative book, Rifkin argues that we are entering a historical transition in which human labor is slowly and inevitably declining.
Global unemployment is now at its highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
More than 800 million people worldwide are unemployed or potentially unemployed.
The main characters that are driving human labor to the brink of death are advanced technology, the information society, and management innovation.
According to Rifkin, once a job is lost, it never comes back.
Most of the jobs that are created are low-wage and temporary.


This rapidly polarizes the world into two irreconcilable forces.
On one side is the information elite who control and manage the high-tech global economy, and on the other is the vast mass of permanently unemployed, completely unnecessary and hopeless in an increasingly automated world.
Rifkin's diagnosis of the global economic order is that the coexistence of these two irreconcilable groups on Earth makes humanity more likely to fall into a dystopia (a defective society) rather than a technological utopia.

Classics in the fields of futurology, economics, and sociology
A must-read for those living in the era he predicted.

Since the publication of this book, Rifkin has published a series of works filled with outstanding insight, including The End of Ownership, The European Dream, and The Age of Empathy, establishing himself as a unique author who covers a wide range of fields, including futurology, economics, and sociology.
"The End of Work" has been used as a textbook in over 300 universities around the world for over a decade, and is also used as a textbook for major and liberal arts courses at many universities in Korea.
As is typical of Rifkin's writings, this book presents his characteristically clear arguments and rigorous logic.
For this reason, sentences from this book often appear in essay tests and textbooks.
The reason Rifkin's insights do not age with the passage of time lies in their outstanding logic.

The 2020s we are facing is the very 'future' that Rifkin predicted in this book.
Rifkin's point resonates even more deeply today because we are witnessing and experiencing firsthand the changing work environment and job paradigm.
The alternative Rifkin proposes to prevent this society from heading toward a dystopian future is even more urgent for us in this age.
The insights Rifkin explores in his recent books, The Global Green New Deal, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, and The Third Industrial Revolution, are all extensions of The End of Work.
Rifkin has always been keenly aware of the emergence of new technologies and structural changes in society.
This book is a starting point for assessing the trajectory of Rifkin's thought, and is a must-read for readers who wish to follow that trajectory.


This book is divided into five parts.
Part 1: Two Aspects of Technology examines the current technological revolution to understand its impact on employment and the global economy.
Part 2, The Third Industrial Revolution, examines how early automation innovations impacted the lives of Black workers and unions in the United States, providing context for the debate over technology and employment.
Their experiences could be a precursor to the future of countless service and white-collar workers, middle managers, and professional employees.
In Part 3, The Decline of the Global Workforce, Rifkin details how massive technological and organizational changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and the service sector are drastically reducing the number of workers.
Part 4, The Price of Progress, examines in detail the ripple effects of the Third Industrial Revolution on the global workforce, simultaneously assessing the impact of the new technological revolution on both industrialized and developing countries.
In particular, we note the uncomfortable correlation between the rise in technological unemployment and the rise in crime and violence.
It describes the conflict between groups that have formed a lawless subculture due to poverty and despair, and the government that seeks to provide order and safety to the citizens, and the ways in which they can be addressed.
Finally, in Part 5: The Dawn of the Post-Market Era, we examine some practical steps needed to address productivity gains as part of efforts to mitigate the effects of massive technological substitution and to reap the benefits of the high-tech revolution.
Rifkin concludes the book by discussing how to renew human values ​​and social relations, and how to formalize the post-market paradigm and enable a transition from a market-oriented perspective to a new third sector perspective.

The final five parts are Rifkin's alternatives to the pessimistic outlook.
What is needed is a new alternative and approach that transcends the threat of technological advancement inherent in a market economy and opens up a post-market era.
It is a new paradigm that fairly distributes the benefits of technological advancements to their victims and strengthens the emerging third sector.
That is, to encourage and value voluntary organizations and labor that provide the services necessary for maintaining and rebuilding communities.
A new social contract is needed to strengthen the third sector, as evidenced by terms like “shadow wages for volunteering” and “social wages for community services.”
This requires new roles for governments, private businesses, and even working people.
According to Rifkin, this social economy, which is not based solely on productivity, will allow us to rediscover human spirits such as intimacy, brotherly solidarity, and the spirit of service, and will initiate a great transformation toward a new society.
This book provides an opportunity to reflect on how seriously our society, obsessed with blind competition and productivity growth, is considering and preparing for the rising unemployment and accompanying problems brought about by technological advancement.