A worker in Florida applied to 60 entry-level jobs in September and got one interview

A worker in Florida applied to 60 entry-level jobs in September and got one interview

https://www.yahoo.com/news/worker-florida-applied-60-entry-193423909.html

 

In my struggling days, I could beat that by miles. I once applied to over 1,100 jobs and got 0 interviews, not even a rejection email, lol.

I can laugh about it now, but those were very dark times.

 

"Holz acknowledged that his results may not be representative of the larger labor challenges in the country, since his search was local and targeted the most vocal critics of stimulus spending." - nothing on exactly how he represented himself either. His comments in the article make it very clear a low response rate was what he was trying to obtain. This looks like a self-serving "fluff" piece.

 

It provides a counterpoint to the "labor shortage" narrative. Does it prove anything, exactly? No, but neither do all these other reports.

 

Anecdotal, but anyone I know today has a job, no one is unemployed or they are independent small business operators or self employed who are busy and doing well such as plumbers, electricians, RE agents etc or employees.
But the homelessness I see around is heartbreaking.
Its not as bad where we relocated but still a difficult situation for the people who lost homes and are on the street.

 

Robert Reich's take on this is that it isn't a "labor shortage." Instead, it's more of a general strike. People are changing the way they live because they don't want to take it from employers anymore.

 

To go along with this, there’s been some fascinating write ups and labor reports on the changing nature of jobs. Of particular note, Amazon has been singled out. Even with them now offering reasonably decent wages and benefits, essentially no one wants to work in their mega warehouse/distribution centers. They’re seeing 100% employee turnover, significant injuries, labor strife, and have implemented metric based gamification to the point of arguably impacting mental health. Jobs are there… but even there own data shows no one wants them… which is also why we’re seeing their investments in AGVs and other warehouse automation technology.

 

Technological advancements march on, as always. But they can be spurred along when exploitable humans to do drudgery are in short supply.

We're predisposed in this society to think of traditional, "nuclear" families as being the norm. You know, a couple of parents, a couple of kids, a house. Things like that. Women assuming careers outside the home in huge numbers rattled that a bit, but we shamed those women into feeling guilty about not holding up traditional roles while also pursuing their careers, so the notion continued to hold.

What I suspect is happening is a fundamental shift in the way many people are approaching life and work. Not everyone, of course, nor even most people. But enough to shake these companies' foundations.

If your business model is built on exploiting vulnerable workers, what do you do if they begin making different choices? Well, at first, Republicans decried the federal government's interventions, claiming people would rather stay home than work because they were being paid "so much." But when those subsidies ran out, workers didn't come a-knocking, which shocked these industrialists! Why, pray tell, can't we shame and starve these people into accepting their old back-breaking, shaming, no-future, no-pay, no-benefits, no-security jobs we dropped them from? (Which still making a lot of bucks, by the way!) WE'RE SHOCKED!

Well, I'm not. You can't starve (food or otherwise) people into submission once they've decided to break out of your occupational penal system paradigm. They're finding other ways. And a whole bunch of useless fast food restaurants (and the equivalent in other sectors) will have to close. Because guess what? Offering a few bucks more--and average wages have only gone up about $1 per hour--isn't going to draw back all of those disaffected workers you summarily dropped when things got a little thin.

Get someone else to cook your French fries and clean up after your customers. There's a whole new batch of workers you can readily exploit, but you won't let them come in.

 

It's not only hourly pay but what you can do with that money when rent is skyrocketing buying property seems like impossible for the current generation in the big cities. Even if the pay is doubled the buying power of that income in comparison do what is needed to survive is very weak.
Government supported with unemployment during this hard time pandemic that allowed people to make some choices but what will happen to those who didn't acquire skills and the government assistance will run out?
I know personally people who worked for Amazon warehouse only to survive barely.
They claimed it was "slavery".
Today I attended graduation of one such lady who left that job and became LVN.
Started as NA and now LVN in a major hospital.

 

We've already seen this. Nothing. When Republican-led states abandoned the Federal subsidies, unemployment figures did not move. Those people continued with their lives.

 

I disagree. But we're just forming different assessments from the same data, so there's no reason for me to object.

Where we certainly agree is that he's on to something here.