Slashdot Mirror
US Employers Struggle To Match Workers With Open Jobs (npr.org)
In the United States, there's a record number of jobs open: around 6 million. That's just about one job opening for every officially unemployed person in the country. From a report: Matching the unemployed with the right job is difficult, but there are some things employers could do to improve the odds. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for the job site Glassdoor, says U.S. employers often complain that workers don't have the skills needed for the jobs available. That is true for some upper-level health care and technology jobs. "But for the most part, it doesn't look to be like there is a skills gap," Chamberlain says. "That's not the main reason why there are many job openings." Chamberlain says that with unemployment so low and the U.S. labor force growing slowly, there's no doubt it is harder for companies to find workers. But he says if that were the main problem, you would see wages rising more rapidly in the economy -- and that's not the case in many industries. Part of the hiring problem, Chamberlain says, lies in company hiring policies.
There is on the job training funds (and training funds in general) available through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. You can access them by visiting your local Career One Stop or Workforce center. https://www.careeronestop.org/
If only there was a way to motivate American workers to apply for jobs? Oh well, I guess more immigration/H1Bs is the only solution.
Zombie 'openings' that expect senior rock-star level experience for H1-B level wages. Pay more. Train people. KTHXBYE.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
"US Employers struggle to find workers willing to be paid minimum wage, part time with no benefits."
The main reason companies are unable to fill low skill positions is that they have strict drug check programs where if marijuana is in your blood you are an automatic fail even if you smoked on the weekend and its legal in your state to smoke recreationally.
Companies need to change their drug screening processes to match with the reality of American society where almost all poor people are doing drugs
**Life is too short to be serious**
150-180k net jobs created per month is not good at all. 300k/month used to be the gold standard for robust growth. The anemic Obama economy got people used to this, but by pre-2008 standards, this is a mild recession right now.
If the business were out there to justify it, people would be willing to pay higher salaries to lure in workers. The fact they aren't tells you the truth about what I said above - the economy is not that great.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
First, just read the summary.
Back in '08 when the shit hit the fan, I was told, "Just get a job waiting tables! It'll show that you have gumption!!"
So, I went to the local bar and grill who was looking for help and applied. Sorry, we need someone who has had at least 5 years of RECENT experience.
The local landscaper (professional lawn mowing company) asked me, "Do you have experience in this line of work."
Now, how to answer that. "Uh, how hard is it to mow lawns?!" or "No sir, I do not."
Well, they are both wrong answers. (BTW, working beneath you skills ruins your career. All those folks who said, "Get a job flipping burgers to pay your mortgage!" were wrong. If you did that, you ruined your career. YOU ARE YOUR LAST JOB. And if that's flipping burgers, then you are a burger flipper - sorry Mr. BS CS. Been there - I know.)
Tech is even more retarded. I once recommended this brilliant ENGINEER (BS ME - a REAL engineer) who had tons of experience with the company's technology.
Nope. "Sorry, you don't fit in to our corporate culture."
Kiss my fucking ass. EVERY company that says they cannot get qualified people are liars. Period.
You don't see companies raising wages to attract the employees need because for the most part (i.e. not the multinationals hiring h1b's, but the majority of companies who employ the majority of people and are small-mid size) they can't.
We live in a debt-based economic system with inflation at a rate of about 2.5% annually, runaway government spending and about 65-75% taxation by the time cash makes its way from a client to an employee. Meanwhile, the government will spend what it expects things to be valued at, ironically increasing with inflation, not solely but functionally equivalent given the magnitudes of figures involved in each case, to the huge multinational corporations, who then buy from smaller corporations in many cases. It's trickle-down-corporate-economics and it works no better than the individual version: the government pays the banks and megacorps, they pay the large-not-multinational companies, they pay the midsized companies and the small companies are mostly paid by the individual consumers.
At each step along the way there's a time delay for prices to adjust where the guy at the top (from the government down) charges more for services, until the next guy down can no longer handle the burden and raises costs on their customers, and so on. The entire system runs in that cyclical nature wherein division of resources moves continually toward government. People blame the megacorps but the truth is they're only the highest ranking slaves.
Economics 101 says a labor shortage is not possible - employers need only raise offered wages until all positions are filled. What went wrong? Econ 101 explanations seem to be highly satisfactory when the job market is on the way down (in a recession for example).
Chamberlain says that with unemployment so low...
Yup, that's where I stopped reading.
This person is not dealing in reality.
I can come up with my own random hypotheticals and 'what-ifs' so I don't need to hear about his, thanks all the same.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I pop in here to the comment section, and read a bunch of people angrily talking about how there really not being an job opening problem, just that "employers are full of shit".
Here's the thing. That's what the article says. Let me be helpful to you, and quote it:
Part of the hiring problem, Chamberlain says, lies in company hiring policies.
Peter Cappelli, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, agrees. He says one problem is that companies are posting openings with required qualifications that aren't really necessary for the job.
"They're just asking for the moon, and not expecting to pay very much for it," Cappelli says. "And as a result they [can't] find those people. Now that [doesn't] mean there was nobody to do the job; it just [means] that there was nobody at the price they were willing to pay."
Come on people! Read!
You don't want to move 1000 miles to deliver pizza? For less than minimum wage? I'm shocked, just shocked I say.
when I was young. The gov't placed you in a job, and paid for your training/education, and the company got a tax break until you were up to snuff. Kept unemployment low, and people happy.
I don't see why this can't be done here.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
My HR department is about a 50-50 split between men and women. And they are all equally useless...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Or start streaming burgers digitally to reduce overhead.
I just pooped your party.
US employers struggle to find purple squirrels.
And they refuse to acknowledge that a red squirrel and a blur squirrel can, on average, do the same job.
Information has a cost and this is the main reason today for unemployment. This is similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
I want to hire some one to do X. I want to pay the minimum possible but still get a good employee. Also I don't know how good an employee is and I (hate firing/can't fire/or incur cost with each hire). This is the asymmetry. The employee knows his value but I don't. I might pay $100K for a good worker but I'll only pay $40K for a poor one. If I offer the median $70K I only get candidates that are worth between $70K and $40K. So then I chose the median of that $55K....and eventually I'm down to $40 and not able to hire anyone.
Employees are also sticky. An employer might be willing to pay $25 for picking tobacco or some other seasonal work but no one is going to quit even a $15/hr part job and move to the middle of no where for that. Even an unemployed person won't do it because they give up the opportunity to get a steady job (and they might lose some benefits (hey maybe we need a basic income))
Some employers are either clueless or collectively keeping wages down in some industries or regions. They then use the open positions as an excuse to get seasonal immigrant labour or H1-B type visas.
A solution could be: more transparency about wages (make wages public), less regulation on employee rights but more enforcement of them and a reduction to H1-B and migrant employment.
I had 2 phone interviews without any depth to them and over in a few minutes. The reason why? They were stuck on looking for a specific skill and if you did not have it, you were done.
The first failed on AWS, oh you have not worked with AWS? Sorry, we are not going forward. It was not a matter if I understood networking, or servers or administration or any of the 50 tools that AWS promises, no direct experience, interview over. Not only that, they ended up hiring nobody!
The second one was Scrum and Continuous Integration, have not done either, interview is over (over in 2 minutes with pleasantries). They don't even try to evaluate your skills, or your thought process or even if you are capable.
It seems like they cannot even be bothered to try and get someone to be productivity and thejob salaries are not great either, just average. If companies were really desperate they would be more aggressive but I think they are just cruising along, not really competing or losing ground. When they become greedy or desperate that is when you will see change.
Note: In reference to AWS, I took an online course on AWS after the interview. It was powerful, not hard but broad. Certainly not as hard as working with specific hardware that implements the same features.
HR BS and H1B fake job postings can account for a lot of the openings.
Also this one place said that we not really hiring but just have an posting to see who is out there.
I've been drinking soda on and off my whole life.
Why don't you stop using the Internet and never start again to prove that you're not addicted?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
If corporations cared at all about unemployment, they already know exactly what they could do to remedy that problem: Let the cream rise to the top. That is to say, offer additional training to existing highly skilled employees, so that they can easily qualify for the next job up the ladder, and then move them up. Then fill the now vacant lower level jobs with people who are presently unemployed and living on the street (or in their parents basement). The newly hired wage earners will be thrilled just to have a job at all, and won't be quite as picky about how much they're earning, and the highly skilled workers will be thrilled to get the raise, and to be recognized for their contributions.
The problem, as I see it, is that far too many companies are more interested in the bottom line than in anything else. And one of the easiest ways to turn a profit is (and always has been) to milk existing employees for all that they're worth for as long as possible, and make them do tasks above their pay level, because they "can't find anyone qualified for that position, right now"... which basically causes that old adage, "You have to move out to move up," to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've moved out because of that, myself. If you're in the workforce at all, you've probably done it, too.
And here's where it gets even more frustrating: the "requirements" for any given position do not remain static. It's quite common for employers to adjust the requirements based upon the skillset of the person who just left that position. "Hey, Ralph became a freaking genius at SharePoint while he was working for us. We can't possibly hire someone who knows less than him, now! Change that job req for his position to include senior SharePoint experience, okay? Years of experience? I dunno... how long did Ralph work here? That long? Really?"
And thus, the position that Ralph left -- specifically because he was being underpaid for the skills he'd gained over his years there -- is now entirely un-fillable. Because nobody with those skills would take the job, at the offered pay.
Employers shoot themselves in the foot like that, all too often. My previous employer did it, too... that's why they're my previous employer. And over the past few weeks, I've sat by and watched as my up-line supervisor is being run through the beginnings of the scenario I've described above... so I would imagine she's currently evaluating her options.
The wheel turns, and the cycle repeats itself.
The AC's logic is completely flawed, irrespective of his actual point which is equally flawed.
I will say there are quite a few people who are dependent on pot, and arguably some are addicted according to at least some definitions of addiction. Most fall under varying levels of recreational use though and I'm at a loss to find any actual argument about how using "drugs" makes you a degenerate.
With that in mind, just about every rock star, many politicians, most actors, and a very substantial portion of society as a whole are degenerates. And that's without opening up the definition of 'drugs' to any casual use of otherwise controlled substances (oh, did aunt mary give you a xanax at dad's funeral? guess you're a chemically dependent degenerate)
I'm not a fan of drugs in general but they aren't some automatic indicator that someone is a problem child. Hell, it's trivial to scam most drug tests anyway (hint: why do you think the welfare drug tests failed so miserably) so there's not really much point in doing it besides to keep away otherwise honest people looking for a job that recreationally use some form of drug.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
We have millions of job openings. See...
Job 1: Social Worker - Must have master's degree. Salary $35,000/year.
[Translation, must be someone who did not get their degree in the U.S. because there is no way one can pay for a master's on $35K/year.]
Job 2: Warehouse $12-$14/hr. Flexible hours (either 60 or 20, but not 40). $29,000 a year...with little prospect of moving up. Maybe $17/hr after you've been there 10 years. Support your family on THAT!
Job 3: IT Position $60K a year in major urban city requiring you to live in very expensive housing, the slums, or outside of the city requiring 2-3 hours commuting a day. Please note, we understand that between your commute, mortgage, family, and student loans, that this salary is not sustainable for you. However, it allows us to employ an IT engineer from India, seeing as they do not have a several hundred a month student loan payment.
Before you slam me on this, here me out. You see people going to college, getting a traditional "four year degree", some going even for post graduate degrees. In what? Teaching, philosophy, ancient languages and what not. Not a lot of "demand" so to speak for those degrees. Then, when thousands of those hit the street, the salaries DROP because of the supply is greater than the demand. Most kids, would be better served if they went to a two year technical college/school, getting an associate degree in science, computers and the like. More demand for that, as technology grows. I did, in the late 70's. I went to a two year electronics school, got an associate in electronics, NEVER have been unemployed or under employed. Plus, even though it was the 70's, I came out of school DEBT FREE.
Position: Internet Application Developer
Salary $250K-$350K
REQUIREMENTS: Must have 5+ years of HTML6 experience, and be familiar with Windows 12.
The problem is HR wants someone in percise wording that matches the job description with years of experience and rather be understaffed than take a risk. Worse, they use software programs to do the work for them which filter 100% of all the qualified candidates out.
This is why the H1B1 visa is popular. It is not about cost savings anymore. It is the Indian firms will lie and make a resume that matches the description as no American can do the job etc.
In the old days if you had 7 years of experience in programming in one language and doing the same work then you can learn another language in a similair role etc. NOT today! You need to have ONLY that language. Worse, you can have the same language AND same kind of work experience but still be not qualified. It is because your coverletter and resume didn't have the keyword % of the descriptions. Or you have done it for 10 years, but your last position where you have 3 years experience doesn't touch what the job entails so therefore you are not qualified.
What needs to change is managers need to do the filtering and not HR and God FORBID do not use Taleo to filter out resumes first. You will get liars and Indians and just because I have done a job for 5 years doesn't mean I am any good.
Competence is job title and projects you work on. Not based on how many years you did the same tasks which is all HR looks at. I would take a senior software engineer who did design work in another language or different tasks then to pick a mediocre guy who only did 5 years experience in the same tasks over and over which HR would choose.
http://saveie6.com/
Dear Hiring Managers Everywhere,
I've been hired and have had to do the hiring. I know the drill. So, you want good candidates? Do the following:
1) Get HR out of the loop. HR, as you know, isn't where the brain trust of the company lives. They also tend to be lazy. Result? They're using keywords to exclude resumes. If you don't say, "Agile" on your resume, you sink out of sight, even if you've been working in an Agile environment for years. Keyword based systems are an utter, abysmal, total fail.
2) Don't throw every skill you can think of into your ad. Otherwise good candidates who may not have ever used say, Jira (which takes all of about 15 minutes to learn), are excluded. Pick a few of the core ones. You want someone who can teach themselves. That's as or more important than experience in any specific technology.
3) Understand that you'll have to train and that this will take time. Nobody's going to have everything. If they lie enough to claim they do, well... good luck.
4) If you have a thoughtlessly hacked together toolset that includes, VB6, F#, Erhang, Perl, a collection of proprietary, obscure TLAs and BrainFuck 2, you'll probably have to hire two or three people, instead of the 1 you could have hired to maintain a standard LAMP or Windows stack.
5) What you really want is a 20 year old kid with 30 years of experience who'll work 60 hours a week for 40,000 a year. Guess what? You won't find that person. If you do, don't expect him to stick around. If your manager(s) don't/won't understand that, your company is doomed. Polish up your resume and start looking.
6) Fix your application software. If you get a resume, do not make anybody fill in all that redundant information again, get disgusted and stop. Don't ask the address, web site, and supervisor phone number of the company that died in the dot com crash of 2001. It wastes everyone's time and make you look like idiots.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Lorenz says another thing employers need to understand is that wages need to rise, even at entry levels, if they want to fill jobs. He says he is telling manufacturers, "If you are below $12 an hour, I don't know that I'm going to be the person to be able to help you with those jobs."
That's because in the past year, job openings have nearly doubled in western North Carolina where he works, and the supply of additional workers is shrinking fast.
Cappelli says another part of the problem is that employers haven't adjusted to new conditions. For years they've had their choice of workers desperate for a job. Now, the labor market has tightened, but many employers haven't responded, he says.
Pretty obvious what's going on here:
Normal Economy: Recession ends -> labor market shrinks -> wages rise.
US Economy last 40 years: Recession ends -> labor market shrinks -> immigration fills the gap.
US Economy under cartoonishly anti-immigrant government: Recession ends -> labor market shrinks -> immigration goes down anyway -> OMG what do we do!!!?
Obviously wages either have to go up, or managers will have to move the work overseas. Given the attitude of US management for the last 40 years about sharing their wealth increases with workers, I know which I'd bet on...
That's funny. I'm in the aviation industry and I keep hearing about this pilot shortage that we're having. I've been diligently hunting for a better job for the past five years and can't get so much as a peep from any decent employer. I have had plenty of savage offers for 40-70% pay cuts, opportunities without benefits (e.g. no health insurance), and offers to work 30% more for 20% less. There's lots of work out there, but not for anyone with experience it seems.