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The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

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Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#41

Post by zaphar »

I've been thinking about some of this for a while. Someday I'd like to try an experiment where companies ignored College education and up but recruited at the High School level with the intention of taking someone from Intern to Highly Skilled worker. Something like the apprenticeship model from the past. In some ways I think College and Post-Grad education is overkill for some careers and an apprenticeship/intern model would be superior.

Unfortunately I'm not the Founder/Entrepreneur type so I'm unlikely to ever own my own company to try the program out in. Maybe I'll be able to convince an employer to try it someday.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#42

Post by bigboote »

chesser wrote: post #22

If everyone is competing for the top 1%, you're never going to solve the problem. And of the people with the skills you want, why should they work at your crappy company instead of starting their own? Try this on for size: "Here, I'll give you a salary and maybe a tiny fraction of equity to come work at my company. But you're over 30 so you'll need to be re-educated." Why aren't you jumping at the chance!? Oh, maybe…

Only the top 1% of people (by creativity) are useful to creative companies. People in the bottom 99% reduce productivity. So yes, creative companies all need to compete for the top 1%.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#43

Post by ataggart »

klbarry wrote: post #39
canterburry wrote: post #32

I think one of the fundamental flaws with American companies is that someone with "the right skills" means the person is a shoe-in at the time of hire. They are expected the walk onto the job with all the training, know-how, experience etc that the company needs at that very minute. Since trends are constantly changing and always towards something new and never before seen, there will simply never be a time when ther…

"...it's a problem of approach and mentality in staffing and HR" This seems to go deeper than that - in economics class, they teach that labor is always an easily variable input, that can be changed more or less instantly. Especially after reading about the effect of all "A" people in a company, it seems to me that economics is still stuck in the thought of labor as factory workers or the like - not modern thought wo…

And in physics class they teach that all planes are frictionless.

Please don't disparage an entire field of inquiry simply because you either had a crappy econ class, or missed the point of simplifying assumptions.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#44

Post by Natsu »

JSig wrote: post #12

The BLS does a TERRIBLE job of managing the unemployment stats. The birth/death model just does not work at cycle changes. For a detailed look at these issues check out Mish's many posts at http://bit.ly/9yjUjN Additionally, there is something going on beyond a flawed model. From zerohedge.com => http://bit.ly/b5AJsz "Readers may be surprised to discover that beginning in April, of 2010, continuing through today, the…

Why did you use bit.ly to shorten those URLs? This isn't Twitter.

http://bit.ly/9yjUjN -> http://www.google.com/search?q=site:globaleconomicanalysis.b...

http://bit.ly/b5AJsz -> http://www.zerohedge.com/article/charting-statistical-fraud-...

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#46

Post by wyclif »

enjo wrote: post #37

This is another great opportunity to point out something rather puzzling about this recession. If you have a college degree your unemployment rate is 4.7%, with a big chunk of that 4.7% in the building related fields (architects, civil engineers, etc... are having a tough go right now). http://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm#monthly It's a double digit unemployment rate if you just have a high school diploma. Meanwhile ma…

I hear you. I'm an unemployed land surveyor re-learning how to program with Python (I learned BASIC and C in high school). So far I'm loving it and wish I'd never been sidetracked into such a dead-end industry. One way of making lemonade from lemons for me is thinking that at least there is some engineering crossover between the two fields. That's what I tell myself on a good day.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#47

Post by StrawberryFrog »

canterburry wrote: post #32

I think one of the fundamental flaws with American companies is that someone with "the right skills" means the person is a shoe-in at the time of hire. They are expected the walk onto the job with all the training, know-how, experience etc that the company needs at that very minute. Since trends are constantly changing and always towards something new and never before seen, there will simply never be a time when ther…

I think one of the fundamental flaws with American companies is that someone with "the right skills" means the person is a shoe-in at the time of hire.

I don't think that it's a uniquely American problem. It's just like that in IT in London, UK.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#48

Post by StrawberryFrog »

wccrawford wrote: post #4

He is 1 step away from saying that the government should be telling people what education to take, and what jobs they'll fill. (Remember Gattaca?) Some industries (not all!) have a shortage of workers. This has -always- been the case. Each generation feels a different pull when they are children, and so has different goals for later in life. We even encourage children to pick a career in Elementary school! By the tim…

It's a LOT easier to find people for jobs if you offer better salary

If there are 200 openings for people who "must have 5 years of java" (pick a different buzzword/skill each year) and only 100 qualified people, can their salaries reach a reasonable equilibrium level, or will they spiral up?

You'll get the situation where there's a tacit understanding that people who put "5 years of x" on their CV actually only have 2 years and enough intelligence to fake it until they make it (hopefully); which is not healthy either.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#49

Post by IgorPartola »

enjo wrote: post #37

This is another great opportunity to point out something rather puzzling about this recession. If you have a college degree your unemployment rate is 4.7%, with a big chunk of that 4.7% in the building related fields (architects, civil engineers, etc... are having a tough go right now). http://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm#monthly It's a double digit unemployment rate if you just have a high school diploma. Meanwhile ma…

The problem is that our current economic system is not ready to deal with such a high productivity level. With technology advancements eliminating entire job classes virtually overnight, in our lifetime we will reach a point where there will be way more people than necessary jobs; and the economic system will have to adapt. Two simple (not easy) solutions that come to mind are artificial population control or a different resource diatribution model.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#50

Post by wyclif »

zaphar wrote: post #41

I've been thinking about some of this for a while. Someday I'd like to try an experiment where companies ignored College education and up but recruited at the High School level with the intention of taking someone from Intern to Highly Skilled worker. Something like the apprenticeship model from the past. In some ways I think College and Post-Grad education is overkill for some careers and an apprenticeship/intern mo…

I hear you, and you know I agree with you on this point, but the naysayers (mostly employers, it seems) will shoot that down with, "We already know the apprenticeship model works, but we can't afford to implement it in a culture where the average American worker changes jobs every 6, 7, or 8 years. Essentially we'd be training our competitors, and we can't afford that."

I myself have benefited greatly from the apprenticeship model-- up until very, very recently (for example) there was no other way to become a land surveyor. You had to actually apprentice, in the formal sense, with a licensed professional to get on the career track and achieve the minimum level of years of experience and then sit for the licensure exam.

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