Slashdot Mirror
Down and Out in White-Collar America
XorNand writes "Fortune has a pretty sobering article on the employment situation for white-collar workers. By many accounts, we've never had it harder--the slump in the 80's primarily hit blue-collar workers. While bleak, things might be inching towards the light; as my econ professor says, jobs are the last thing to recover after a recession."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't forget about the president's impact on the economy.
It's been a long time since we've had such an idiot in the whitehouse: not elected, taking away your rights, giving disproportanate tax cuts to his wealthy friends, ignoring corporate execs who have cost the economy billions, fighting questionable wars.
He's making us into servants.
I was laid off four months ago from a software development firm with 170 others working with me. In those four months - i had only 2 interviews (with one leading to an offer very recently) & i consider myself lucky to have had those because many of my collegues are yet to get their first call.
The four month period was a interesting experience & here are some things i learned/did in that time:
1. Remind yourself "often" that it is not your fault. Economy is bad and nothing stays that way forever.
2. Network: I created a simple discussion forum on my server (http://www.toastforums.com/) and asked all my 170 peers to register. It turned out to be very useful in discussing subjects like - how to get our unemployment benefits & severence packages/Over Time pay from our old firm. Many of them started posting job opportunities too as soon as they found themselves in a job.
3. Actively prepare towards something : How about a certification that those recruiters so much like ? Or simply read tech forums and keep updated on any new thing on your subject that shows up. This gave me an artificial feeling of getting somewhere which was very useful to keep my hopes floating.
4. Apply to every ridiculous job on the web, even to those recruiters with fake job descriptions. This could seem like a futile effort with many not even drawing a "hi there, i got you email response". But, again - its one of those exercises that help in keeping a healthy hope alive.
Thats about it.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Just as YOU outsource to foreign countries.
See where your car is made, your shoes, your computer, tv - the list goes on. But you save money. The problem isn't your country as much as it is you. Pay more, buy local or take your share of the blame.
"What's the basis of your conclusion? Do you expect an entire economy to make a U-turn in a few months? What would qualify as a "fixing" the economy in your mind?"
Well, one thing that leads credibility to his statement is that war/defence spending doesn't comprise nearly as much of the U.S. GDP as it used to. If I'm remembering stats that I heard on NPR properly, during WWII, the war spending portion of GDP was something like 22%. Granted, it was spending that went nowhere in a sense, since there was no return on the 'investment' that war bought, but it stimulated market aspects back into production that found something to do after the war ended. It didn't hurt that tensions between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. escalated as well, generating R&D, assembly, testing, and materials jobs to build the infrastructure that carried us into the fifties and sixties. Once the government didn't have one single active enemy to be able to propaganda the country into paying to "fight" against, matters toward defence didn't get what they had.
Contrast that to the modern state, where GDP impact of a war is more like 4%, which can almost be written off as statistical noise, and you end up with a war not helping the economy as a whole. We don't build hundreds of planes a day for our "police actions", we don't crank out the carpet bombs, the tanks, the rifles. We have most of the war materiel stockpiled already, with personnel already trained in its use, and actively being paid already. We move them to the area affected, pay them more for combat duty, go through more ammunition, and put a little more wear and tear on the big items like tanks and planes, but we don't ramp up production. Things remain nice and stable. The fact that no additional money appears to be necessary to pay for the rest of the expenses from the Iraq invasion should be proof enough for that.
I personally am glad that our "problem" is mild enough that we don't even have 7% unemployment. 5% is considered regular, healthy unemployment, and if this is the worst that it gets, we're going to be just fine. I'm glad that we shouldn't need another multi-million casualty war in order to feed people.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I dont mean to imply that I thoroughly research Wonder Bread's history of its management's dealings with labor before i buy a loaf; i have no clue what the companies who make most of the products i buy do, and (this is the worse problem, IMO) even when i do find out horrible things about companies, they rarely stick in my head long enough to affect purchasing decisions.
I think the incredible penetration of advertising into the culture and average person's home is partly to blame as well - for every one report of Nike's child-labor dealings a person sees on the news, how many Nike ads does that person see? 10? 100? 1,000?
Sorry, rambling. Just some thoughts to exercise my hands and burn up good karma :P
Obviously, you don't know many dot bomb coders. I've known several that have struggled to eat, pay rent, and other basics. Especially those that are fresh out of school and didn't get any of the riches from the boom. The fucking IT market was flooded by schools pushing through no talent, no interest folks that just wanted the big paychecks. Now it's a real bitch to prove you actually know what you're doing. Several years of job experience? Means nothing now. People with several years of job experience and a couple degrees are lucky to keep decent jobs. If you live outside major cities your doubly screwed. Nobody is paying to relocate fresh hires these days and most won't even give you an interview if you're out of area. A lot of coders are being forced to compete for jobs flipping burgers in order to stay fed themselves. Did you ever try to apply for a job at Burger King when the 18yo manager hiring you can't even pronounce the qualifications on your resume? Uhh huh. I'll teach those smart asses the meaning of overqualified!
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
What am I missing here?
You're missing that an over-qualified person typicaly would start looking for a better position quicker than a person who's 'just' qualified. Hireing someone costs money, you need to teach the person how your company works and therefor you want to keep your employers for a long time.
Like with fliping burgers, if you had an engineer and a teenager applying of course the teenager. (S)he is more likely to stay.