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Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

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Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#121
post #76

Take an hour off at 2-3pm in any major US city and look at how many people are just milling about. Mostly shopping. There are a lot of people in the US that are not working. Pre-2008 retail was quiet in the middle of the day, now it booms. I can’t comment on if this is a good or bad thing, but I am surprised at how many people are causally walking their dog as I am rushing to compete an essential errand and get back…

You realize not everyone works a normal 9 to 5 right, you honestly think every person shopping are unemployed? Are tech workers this deeply out of touch with normal people?

I don't think they implied that. They just noticed what they say is a large increase in 9 to 5 shopping compared to pre-2008 and are speculating that this increase is because more people now are out of the labor force.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> millenials' CVs are written off in recruitment pipelines I think you've got something wrong here, "millennials" refers to people currently between 30 and 45 and are surely the least likely to be discriminated based on either age or inexperience.

Or they hit that sweet spot of being old enough to have commitments so they can't be a fresh grad slave and young enough to not have benefitted when the getting was good and easy and so they are discriminated against.

Yeah, hiring managers seem to think they can hire people who have no life outside of work.

This guarantees you will only get people who are young or childless or single

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#123

Not exactly on top of it but I had a related conversation the other day. People at my work were talking poor of gen z and how they are bulk of neets and how they are lame and etc. There is always some cringe in different generations apart, but even being older, I can empathise with them. You have zero forecast to buy a home for yourself, to buy a car, to even pay for a university. Whatever they want to do, they will…

I agree and am open to ideas about what to do about it!

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#124
post #123

Not exactly on top of it but I had a related conversation the other day. People at my work were talking poor of gen z and how they are bulk of neets and how they are lame and etc. There is always some cringe in different generations apart, but even being older, I can empathise with them. You have zero forecast to buy a home for yourself, to buy a car, to even pay for a university. Whatever they want to do, they will…

I agree and am open to ideas about what to do about it!

Well in the U.S. you can start by participating in civic engagement and in your local community.

Civic engagement across the U.S. is at historic lows. We are giving up social society for digital screens these days.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#125
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there'd be some value to only taking job applications by post.

There are plenty of services to send mail form the internet for a small fee, so this will only discourage the most poor candidates and add friction for the best ones.

I don't know what the options are these days but MCI used to do it. Yeah, it's some friction on both sides.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#126
post #67

Take an hour off at 2-3pm in any major US city and look at how many people are just milling about. Mostly shopping. There are a lot of people in the US that are not working. Pre-2008 retail was quiet in the middle of the day, now it booms. I can’t comment on if this is a good or bad thing, but I am surprised at how many people are causally walking their dog as I am rushing to compete an essential errand and get back…

Asking because I'm genuinely curious myself, how much of this is unemployment vs the fact that so many more people work from home now compared to pre-2008? Many of those that WFH work a more flexible schedule and probably structure their days a lot differently than 20+ years ago.

I used to encounter maybe one person who did not have a head of gray hair, i.e. obviously retired, in a variety of mid peninsula parks in Silicon Valley on weekdays pre covid during the work day and nowadays I run into a dozen or more in a typical half day outing on a week day and this trend definitely started during pandemic. But I don’t know if it’s unemployment or WFH now.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it’s in how you word it. I’ve given up on trying to get a job because there is no point in trying. I can’t afford to pay my rent, but I guess you could call that early retirement.

If you can stomach it, the seafood canning and fishing industry in Alaska will usually (IDK what the situation is this year) hire anyone off the street, work them 16 hours a day for several months, and give them "free housing." You'll get dumped back in Seattle in several months with at least $10k in your pocket. Edit: genuinely perplexed on the response. This saved my ass one winter when I had nothing for rent.

[flagged]

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#128
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize not everyone works a normal 9 to 5 right, you honestly think every person shopping are unemployed? Are tech workers this deeply out of touch with normal people?

I think a lot of people forget this. Similar to how the retired/disabled people in my life forget how busy life with a job can be. At the gas stations I worked at, the shifts were 7AM-3PM, 3PM-11PM, and 11PM-7AM. I used to do a lot of things at abnormal times. What does a quick beer after work look like when you're done at 7AM? I also don't know many unemployed people cruising around malls looking for ways to spend m…

Heh. I had a manual labor job once where I got off work at 4:00. A quick beer after work becomes "I hope I still have beer in the fridge", since in California you can't buy one until 6:00.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#129
post #32

Today I read about Accenture Norway taking in 56 summer internship students from over...1600 applicants. Record year, they reported. Previously I imagined only the top-top tier firms could enjoy low single-digit acceptance rate, but here we have Accenture crushing it. Competition must be tough. (But for what I know, could be that AI has made it easier for people to spam everyone with applications)

My guess is that it's simultaneously easy for a lot of companies to do automated filtering and for candidates to do a lot of automated applications in a way that's easier than sending out a bunch of envelopes. Which makes it harder for candidates who don't have either networks or impressive credentials.

On the other side, I notice it's so much easier to apply for a job today that people apply for thousands of jobs. When I graduated from college I applied at 70 different places, and my peer group thought that was a crazy high number.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#130
post #29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ensuring that the money went out willy-nilly and that $700+ billion in "loans" were turned into a straight up gift from the taxpayers. Wasn't that widely understood during the pandemic? All the coverage I've seen mentioned that the loans for forgivable if certain criteria were met, and nobody was like "yeah it's fine because it's a loan!".

The problem is that these loans went to _businesses_, not workers. There was an orgy of corruption, with newly formed LLCs claiming to have dozens of workers. And then these loans were just forgiven. And since they went to businesses, Republicans are completely silent about that. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program

The loans went to businesses as a bribe to keep on employees they didn't need until the pandemic was over. If you just gave out money to unemployed people it's almost impossible to stop when the emergency is over.
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