This article examines the mix of good and bad jobs in the restructuring of United States' labor markets for information work between 1900 and 1980. ls the information sector still growing relative to other occupational sectors? What is the relative proportion of good to bad jobs in the information sector today? ls the mix of good bad jobs within the information sector changing over time? To answer these questions, we examine changes in the relative size of the information sector's labor markers and changes in five occupational strata within it - professional, semiprofessional, supervisory and upper-level sales personnel, clerks, and blue-collar workers.The information occupations mushroomed in size from 17% of the United States workforce in 1900 to over 50% in 1980. Information sector jobs vary widely in quality. Few information sector jobs are fully professional, and clerical jobs form the largest single occupational stratum. When we examined the growth of the various strata between 1900 and 1980, we found that clerical jobs became more dominant, not less dominant. But this distribution has been masked by the steady growth of information sector jobs in the highly professional and semiprofessional strata, as well as clerical jobs. The occupational stratum between clerks and semiprofessionals - the supervisory and upper-level sales workers - has steadily declined in relative size.Two lower strata - clerks and sales and supervisory workers - account for 55% of the jobs in the information sector. Our data suggest that information labor markets are divided into relatively impermeable segments. As the information sector expanded, it took on many characteristics of the overall economy. It includes a mix of jobs that are diverse in their pay, status, and power. Its internal divisions reflect patterns of segmentation that have developed elsewhere in the society - a dual labor market. Overall, the information sector has become sufficiently large that it is not an alternative to the dominant social order - it simply reproduces many of its features
