As this Labor Day holiday approaches, American workers are simultaneously satisfied and uneasy about jobs and the economy.

Americans tend to feel OK about their own employment and economic situation, according to a report from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. The conservative-leaning think tank cites an August Gallup survey finding that 48 percent of working Americans said they were completely satisfied with their jobs, and another 42 percent somewhat satisfied. Only 9 percent were dissatisfied with their jobs.

The institute report also cites a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, in which 15 percent of Americans described their household’s financial situation as very good, 56 percent fairly good, 20 percent fairly bad, and 8 percent very bad.

But there are chinks in the optimism. Health care is one. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in April found slightly more than seven in 10 Americans worried about having to pay more for their health care or health insurance, according to the Institute study.

Pain at the pump is another cause for anxiety. Gas prices are causing financial hardship for three in four Americans according to Gallup’s July 2008 survey, the institute said. In 2000, only 40 percent of Americans said gas prices were causing them hardship.

And Americans see big problems with U.S. economy overall. A Rockefeller Foundation/Time survey released in July found that 52 percent of Americans believe the American dream is no longer attainable.

It also found that Americans believe the social contract they could once depend on has deteriorated and nearly eight in 10 want a new one.

The pessimism is not surprising given workplace trends over the past few decades. Job security has shrunk amid outsourcing and employers have pushed retirement risk onto workers. And the economic recovery of recent years has not felt great to many Americans.

A study from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute examined the recession-recovery cycle that started in 2001 and found that for the first time on record, middle-class families are at or near the end of a recovery without ever having regained the ground they lost during the recession that preceded it. The study also said job growth has been slower and unemployment stints longer.

In addition, the unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent in July, and payroll employment fell from January through July.

The overall portrait that emerges of America’s workers is one of resilience. But America’s workers are facing strains—which may be hurting productivity. And they’re voicing frustration. American employers are starting to take economic insecurity concerns seriously. But with support for international trade declining and consumer confidence low, are businesses doing enough?

The common-sense notion that economic stress dents worker productivity now has some research behind it.

In a Workforce Management story about the impact of high gas prices, writer Patrick J. Kiger cites findings from Florida State University management professor Wayne Hochwarter. Hochwarter discovered that workers stressed out about gas prices tended to be “less attentive on the job, less excited about their work, less passionate and conscientious and more tense.”

It will be interesting to see if employee disengagement caused by economic anxiety drags down official U.S. productivity figures, which have grown like crazy in recent years.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, after growing 1.4 percent per year since the mid-1970s, U.S. productivity jumped to 2.5 percent a year from 1995 to 2000, and then climbed to 3.1 percent a year from 2000 to 2005.

If productivity does drop this year, it might be a sign that the trend among U.S. businesses to treat employees with minimal loyalty and generosity has a cost.

That trend can be seen in shrinking benefits coverage and stagnant overall wages. The Economic Policy Institute found that between 2000 and 2004, real median family income fell by 3 percent, or about $1,600 in 2004 dollars. U.S. companies also have shown a willingness to outsource, offshore and lay off—even in good times.

I don’t think businesses have a responsibility to provide lifetime employment. But U.S. employers are discarding workers and otherwise squeezing them in a country with a skimpy safety net. And only recently have companies really gotten off the sidelines on the issue of economic insecurity in the U.S.

U.S. employees hold relatively positive attitudes toward their employers, according to a report published this week by HR software firm Kenexa. Kenexa studied organizational confidence, defined partly as employees having confidence in their organization’s future, believing their organization is managed effectively and feeling that the products/services are of high quality. The study of more than 16,000 workers from 12 countries found that employees in India have the highest overall level of organizational confidence, followed by those in the U.S., Russia and Brazil.

I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if we see an erosion of U.S. employees’ organizational confidence and their trust in their employers–which plays a serious role in business effectiveness. Gas prices that remain near $4 in many parts of the country seem to be acting as a tipping point. They may be prompting average workers to ask hard questions about why they haven’t been sharing more in the prosperity that fast productivity growth enables.

Skeptical, financially stressed-out workers may well translate into less-productive ones.

Consider this observation from Hochwarter about high gas prices: “[T]his is happening at a time when corporate profits are down and nobody is getting the 4 to 5 percent raises of the past, which might have helped them to keep up. Instead, they’re falling behind and struggling financially, and they’re thinking, “The company isn’t stepping up and helping me out. The days of me busting my butt for my employer are over.’ “

To an outsider, China today can seem schizophrenic.

Its society and business culture appear to be at once highly individualistic and deeply communal.

Signs of this dual identity can be seen both in the Olympic Games under way in Beijing and in a recent study of Chinese business school graduates.

The study, by consulting firm Katzenbach Partners, found that young Chinese MBAs are hungry to develop leadership skills and that they value entrepreneurial settings.

These sorts of young Chinese managers sometimes are dubbed the “little emperors”— they often are the sole child doted on by parents thanks to population control efforts. And the Katzenbach report indicates that they are focused on workplace pride to the point of self-absorption.

“I would leave my company because the job itself lacks challenges, and there are other opportunities that would allow me to realize my own value all the more,” a Beijing chemical company manager is quoted as saying.

Yet even as they come off as more individualistic than your average American, young Chinese leaders want to contribute to the greater good, according to the report. The Chinese MBAs in the study want competitive salary and benefits, says Katzenbach Partners consultant Stacy Palestrant.

“But,” she says, “they are also looking for work that is more than a job and that lets them make a difference, both in the company and in the future of China.”

The emphasis on both self and group was evident in the Beijing Olympic Games’ remarkable opening ceremony. Solo acts by dancers and singers were juxtaposed with the perfectly synchronized efforts of thousands of drummers and martial arts practitioners.

New York Times columnist David Brooks saw the ceremony as a statement about the potential economic power of a society with a collectivist, rather than an individualist, mind-set.

“The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one,” Brooks wrote. “The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream.”

Brooks cites studies showing that Asians focus on context rather than individuals.

It seems to me, though, that China’s communal mentality is in transition. That’s due partly to the generation of young people raised as single children as well as more than two decades of capitalistic reforms.

Chinese business leaders are wrestling with how to weave together the best of the West and the East—of the individual and collective. During a reporting trip to China last year, I met a Chinese HR manager who summed up the quest by suggesting a balance of “performance culture and family-oriented culture.”

Chinese political leaders, for their part, have taken steps to temper the country’s dramatic growth and new socioeconomic divisions with a concern for social “harmony” and environmental sustainability.

The Beijing Olympic theme “One World, One Dream” in effect imagines this sort of shared progress on a global scale.

At a luncheon before the opening ceremonies, Chinese President Hu Jintao called for the “building of a harmonious world featuring lasting peace and common prosperity.”

China, with its poor human rights record, is a very imperfect preacher. But amen to its hopeful vision—and to its push to unify what too often have been extreme versions of individualism and collectivism.

In today’s ailing global economy, even fast-growing China is hurting.

But there are signs China is poised to heal better than the U.S., gaining a competitive advantage along the way.

A report in Tuesday’s New York Times  describes an economic slowdown under way in China, including a drop in new factory orders and tepid export growth.

That might be good news to advocates who worry about the impact of China’s exports on U.S. jobs. From 2001 to 2007, the U.S. trade deficit with China led to the loss or displacement of 2.3 million jobs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

But any celebrations of a weakening China could be short-lived.

The Times also says that China’s focus on upgrading its transportation infrastructure is paying off.

“China’s enormous investments in new roads, ports, rail lines and other transportation networks are starting to show productivity gains that could help the country weather a global economic downturn better than most,” the report says.

An official at logistics firm Ryder says roads aren’t the only things being improved in China.

“People have made huge investments in the infrastructure, and it’s not just the physical infrastructure,” the official is quoted as saying. “It’s all the training and people development.”

What’s happening in China is in contrast to the U.S., where calls for new public investments in better infrastructure have gone largely unheeded and firms historically have chopped training budgets during tough times. It’s hard to know exactly what U.S. companies are doing about human capital investments at the moment.

But government-sponsored training services are getting cut, just one sign that our national safety net is insufficiently springy when it comes to helping displaced workers bounce back with better skills and a confident mind-set.

It’s true that pouring too much money into infrastructure could be wasteful, and you can fritter away investments in training.

But retrenching too much during tough times is a recipe for more failure. China’s leaders seem to get that. Will ours?