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Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

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171–180 of 210 posts

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#171
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The survey says this is based on savings in bank accounts not a 401k Either way there’s nothing preventing you from “touching” 401k savings. You pay a 10% penalty.

Ha ha, there’s no way in hell I believe those numbers. This says it’s no more than $5k on average, at best. More like $2,500. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/03/11/how-much-money-americans...

Averages are a bad way to look at it. There are fat tails on both sides.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always understood there to be a difference between "laid off" and "fired". "Fired" tends to be because of you, "laid off" is more on the company's side. I was "fired" once (well, twice, in the 90s) because I wasn't pulling my weight. I was 'laid off' once (in the 2000s) because the company was running out of money, and had to lay off around half the company. That wasn't really anything to do with my performance…

The reason it has a stigma, though, is that when layoffs happen, companies tend not to layoff their star performers, or they do at least some amount of stack ranking. Of course that is not always the case (sometimes entire departments are closed if a company exits a line of business, or the entire company itself folds), but if the company had a ~5-30% across-the-board layoff, it's generally assumed some level of pers…

It depends a lot. Usually, if you are a star, not only you're more expensive to start, but also more liable to look for greener pastures after a layoff. So, unless you've been at the company for a really long time, it is better to send you away, because it is likely that you won't stay too long after the layoffs.

Also, there's the whole long-standing goal among managers to keep their head-counts as high as possible. Managers also don't want to become redundant, so, it makes sense to lay off the more expensive people as much as possible, to keep their headcounts high and avoid the unwelcome situation of having a team too small to justify their continued existence as managers.

And, of course, for morale, it is better to convince anyone left that they were left because they are the stars, not because of their low likelihood of looking elsewhere.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#173

our labor force participation rate hasn't recovered since the recession. 65.7% participation rate in september of 2009 compared to 63.2% today. look at the official data yourself: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln the "low" unemployment is a result of nearly-unemployed people working small jobs which aren't enough to cover their basic needs rather than a genuinely improving economic situation. remember: 5% u…

If I'm reading you correctly, employers have largely written off the 07-09 jobless. I'd imagine that a nontrivial amount are on SSI/SSDI as a fallback.

If there's a chance to not let their talents rot, how does one nudge the employer to give them a good faith chance?

If the choice is to write them off, then how does one make it less painful for the written off?

Either way, it does no good to do nothing for people caught on the wrong end of employment or nothing towards employers that write people off.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR; The cost of a bad hire is extremely high and not worth the risk. I'm a team lead and do a fair number of interviews. It's amazing how many people can talk about their experience and make a ton of really impressive statements that makes it appear as though they are knowledgeable and then that person can't perform a simple coding exercise. On the other hand, it's equally amazing how a person can do an excellent j…

Why the down vote?

I wondered that as well. Upvoted, and good food for thought.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#175
post #82

I'm honestly experiencing this as a CS grad in the Dutch job market. I find it weird and frustrating. I've noticed why: 1. Companies don't dare to value creativity [1]. University is so liberal and the job market is so the opposite. 2. Most companies can't value a CS degree. The exception is when enough people in the company did a CS degree and that's a lot more rare than I thought. 3. University didn't teach me to f…

It sounds like the company made the right decision based on your words alone. The tone of your description of their "CRUD applications" comes across as dismissive. What the company wants is people who are happy to work there or at least not unhappy enough to leave (and, even better, will keep their unhappiness to themselves). The company wants this more than technical ability. You might be really talented but it seem…

[deleted]

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're low-status and therefore low paid. Pretty sure it's mostly the other way: They're low status because they're low paid. Jobs are low paid when there is a big supply of people who can and want to do them. Which is pretty much equivalent to the jobs being low skilled. Since everyone can flip a burger, you don't have to pay much to find someone to do it.

Additionally, the demand may not be sufficient to support higher wages. Even if no one is willing to flip a burger for less than $50 per hour, who is willing to pay for a burger flipped by someone earning $50 per hour?

And yet people are totally willing to contribute to servers earning much more than $50/hr in tips (on busy nights). $50/hr spread across a lot of customers works out to not actually being that much per customer.

Admittedly this is relatively expensive sit-down restaurant service we're talking about here, which is different from the fast food market.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#177

Just remember that it gets harder to get a job as you get older. You probably don’t want to be the oldest in your place of employment. Sure you might be the lucky one. Your best bet if you’re younger than 40 is to get rid of all your debt and have a viable exit strategy from the workforce. If you’re younger and reading this just remember your replacement will be along shortly. Age discrimination is real and unstoppab…

Do you want to explain how one avoids being the oldest at their place of employment? Or how to accomplish early retirement at 40 for the average person?

Be a manager by the time youre in your 40s.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#178

One of these days, I want to take a year off to see how hard it is to find an actual job de novo, with no experience. I see so many trade schools and apprenticeship programs that its hard for me not to think that people just arent looking hard enough or in the right places.

Unless you're rich, I don't understand why you would consider doing this.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#180
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like communist socialist facist nazi etc. propaganda to me... ...at least that's the knee-jerk defense you hear from the priests of our current system (most mislead or benefiting from the corruption). If you don't support our current broken form of capitalism, you're labeled a blasphemer. Heaven forbid we, as a society, re-evaluate the functionality of something adopted hundreds of years ago and adapt/cha…

Since they instituted the communist economic system that makes it impossible to save capital by draining the purchasing power of the currency at an exponential rate the working class has been on a steep downhill decline. I think it is pretty obvious at this point the experiment has failed.

I'm sure this will convince nobody of anything, but inflation in the US in July was 1.8% (annualized) in July, and a Vanguard money market fund was yielding 1.9% recently.

What more can you ask, whether you're ranting in favor of or against socialism? Risk free returns maintain your purchasing power, while at the same time, you get essentially nothing for taking no risk with capital. This seems exactly how it should work in a perfect system...doesn't it?

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