If you are viewing a dwarf ('v' from the unit list, or putting the cursor near a dwarf and pressing 'v-z' elsewhere) and press 'y' you get to a screen where you can give the dwarf a nickname or a custom profession name.
Currently, this screen is mostly empty, and I think that it would make a great place to manage labors.
I propose that the new customize screen look something like this:
The "Customize Nickname" and "Customize Profession Name" would remain unchanged.
The "Customize Icon" and "Customize Color" settings would allow you to set your dwarf to look a certain way, so that when your third High Master Fish Dissector shows up and you hand him a mining pick, you can make him light grey instead of dark blue. Additionally, if you wanted your militia to look like soldiers all of the time instead of just when they're on duty, you could do that.
The "Next Dwarf" and "Previous Dwarf" part would let you cycle through all of your dwarves with the '+' and '-' keys without leaving this screen, which is the primary motivation for making these improvements.
Finally, you would be able to set a dwarf's labors while all of his skills are on screen.
While this system would not be as fully featured as Dwarven Therapist, or other 3rd party memory hacking labor management programs, it would be an enormous improvement over having to find each dwarf, view him, examine his skills, then switch to preferences and set his labors.
Also, (perhaps most importantly) I think that Toady could make these changes (except for maybe the icon/color stuff) relatively quickly and easily.
On a somewhat related note, if the dwarves were sorted, alphabetically, by profession name (taking into account custom profession names) in the military screen where you assign dwarves to squads, that would make building squads easier when your population gets into the hundreds.