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When companies step up hiring again, job seekers with specialized skills and education will have plenty of opportunities. Others will face a choice: Take a job with low pay, or none at all.

The source of this problem is outlined in two reports scheduled for release Monday from two very different organizations, the liberal Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, an organization with a staunch Lane-Kirkland-esque antipathy toward authoritarian regimes left and right: Through the weakness of our labor laws, the reports say, private-sector American workers can no longer form unions. Human Rights Watch documents how corporations that are model (and highly profitable) employers in Europe and frequently collaborate with unions there descend to American employer norms -- denying workers the right to join unions -- when they come over here. Freedom House, citing the near-impossibility of forming unions in this country, laments that the United States cannot be classed among the 41 nations that afford their workers full freedoms.

“The big question is, who’s going to swallow the losses,” says Mr. Stiglitz. “It should be the banks, but they don’t want to. We’re likely to be in paralysis for years if they prevail.”

How can America's corporations so defy gravity? Ever adaptive, they have evolved a business model that enables them to make money even while the strapped American consumer has cut back on purchasing. For one thing, they are increasingly selling and producing overseas. General Motors is going like gangbusters in China, where it now sells more cars than it does in the United States. In China, GM employs 32,000 assembly-line workers; that's just 20,000 fewer than the number of such workers it has in the States. And those American workers aren't making what they used to; new hires get $14 an hour, roughly half of what veterans pull down.

So far, history be damned. The contrast between revived profits and stunted job growth is stunning. From late 2007 to late 2009, payroll employment dropped nearly 8.4 million. Since then, the economy has recovered a scant 11 percent of those lost jobs. Companies are doing much better than workers; that defines today's economy.

The answers were unequivocal: "A policymaker reading polls who finds that people are concerned about the deficit and says I should rein in spending and I'll get credit for that, I don't think there's evidence that'll move voters," the University of Denver's Seth Masket says. "You want to get as much money in voters' hands in the months before the election as possible."

The charts at the back of the report, showing trends in business perceptions of their “most important problem,” are even more revealing. It turns out that business is less concerned about taxes and regulation than during the 1990s, an era of booming investment. Concerns about poor sales, on the other hand, have surged. The weak economy, not fear about government actions, is what’s holding investment down.

The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

WITH THE agreement at the Toronto G-20 summit of major nations to cut public deficits at least in half by the year 2013, we will start hearing a lot more about a value added tax . We should keep our hands on our wallets.

After the BP catastrophe and financial market collapse: Taking back the sway big business has over our government