In 1987, the typical employee had already lived through eight years of ìThatcherismî and the rise of market forces as an economic management tool. The latest smash hit at the cinema was Wall Street so greed was good and lunch was for wimps.
That employee earned just under 200 per week and worked around 37 hours a week. In 1987 there were 14 million men in employment compared with 10.5 million women.
No-one but the business elite had what was popularly known as a car phone and he had never heard of e-mail as the world wide web was in its infancy.
The Ford Sierra took over from the Cortina as the most popular family saloon.
He wore acid-washed Levis and Ray-Ban Wayfarers, played his new Nintendo. The best selling album was Michael Jacksonís ìBadî and Madonna had a hit with ìWhoís That Girl?î; both of which were still played on vinyl - or Walkman if he was cool as the market was still resisting CDs .
AIDS was declared a pandemic and a public awareness campaign dominated the media, and the Russians were just leaving Afghanistan after the SovietñAfghan war.
In 2007, average wages have risen by 270% to 537 in twenty years, but contrary to popular belief, the length of the average working week remains roughly the same at about 37.2 hours a week.
There has been a big increase in the number of women in work with 15.7 million men, and 13.3 million women in employment. There have been big changes in the type of jobs in the last 20 years, with the number of men working in manufacturing falling by a third, and the number of women falling by half over the same period. Meanwhile, financial and business jobs now account for one in five jobs in the UK compared with about one in ten in the 1980s.
Today almost 80% of households own at least one mobile phone and 57% can access the internet, with nearly 70% of those already on broadband. There are an estimated 92 million websites for them to choose from.
Grahame Caswell, Chief Executive of Search Consultancy, said: ìIt has been amazing to investigate the full extent of changes we have seen in the last twenty years. The internet and e-mail have made the whole process of recruiting candidates and researching information so much faster.
ìContrary to the stereotype however, the length of the typical working week is much the same and employers still place a lot of store on the core skills of reliability, initiative and the ability to get on well with customers and colleagues.
ìAt the boardroom table there has been an improvement in gender balance in professions and the higher echelons of business, but itís not quite a level playing field yet.
ìSome of that is due to tougher legislation on discrimination but a lot is simply about changing social and economic expectations.î
Research survey released showing changes in the social and labour market over the last two decades
Search Consultancy celebrates twenty years of recruitment by conducting research survey
