Posted on 06/20/2011 4:46:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
One puzzle of this somber economy is the existence of unfilled jobs in the midst of mass unemployment. You might think (I did) that with almost 14 million Americans unemployed - and nearly half those for more than six months - that companies could fill almost any opening quickly. Not so. Somehow, there's a mismatch between idle workers and open jobs. Economists call this "structural unemployment."
Just how many jobs are affected is unclear; there are no definitive statistics. Economist Harry Holzer of Georgetown University thinks the unemployment rate might be closer to 8 percent than today's 9.1 percent if most of these jobs were filled. That implies up to 1.5 million more jobs. Economist Prakash Loungani of the International Monetary Fund estimates that 25 percent of unemployment is structural; that's more than 3 million jobs. A recent survey of 2,000 firms by the McKinsey Global Institute, a research group, found that 40 percent had positions open at least six months because they couldn't find suitable candidates.
Let's acknowledge two realities. First, though structural joblessness is important, the main cause of high unemployment remains the deep slump. In the recession, jobs dropped 20 percent in construction, 15 percent in manufacturing and 7 percent in retailing. Only a stronger economy can remedy this unemployment.
Second, a big economy like ours always has some vacancies. People quit or get fired. Hiring procedures grind slowly. Some highly specialized jobs are inherently hard to fill: say, a transportation engineer fluent in both Chinese and English (a real-life example).
Still, the job mismatch hobbles recovery and bodes ill. The harder it is for workers to find jobs, the longer they stay unemployed - and this, in turn, worsens their prospects. "Long-term unemployment sends a negative signal to employers: What's wrong with this person?" says Holzer.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
oh I get it, it is not 0bama’s fault, it is the economy’s fault now! ;)
This prohlem is structural and has its root long before Obama became President. Obama simply excacerbated the problem.
Well, speaking for myself, if could be paid for 2 years+ to sit home and do nothing... why work?
It is the Socialist WAPO what would you expect. They are part of the Obamakazi attack destroying the country.
Precisely. I don’t like O’bammy, but to attribute the problems in our economic infrastructure prmarily to him is silly. Now, granted - he did douse the problems with Miracle-Gro...
Bingo.
The dims set the table for unemployed folks to collect bennies for 99 weeks while at the same time regulating the bat snot out of American business making it very difficult to hire someone. One two punch. Then their media scratches their heads wondering why businesses won’t hire at baraq’s command.
A major problem for my company is liberal education. We don’t need a womyns studies doctorate, we need electrical and chemical engineers and geophysicists. If you went to school for “Studies” degree or “Art appreciation”, then you wasted the money and time.
Education requirements now on many jobs are bullsquat unless it is medical, engineering, science, or some other higher order schooling. (I am sure there are more, but mostly I think college has become a wasteland of liberal thought and drinking/drugs and hookups.)
I see now most highschool kids can’t speak properly, spell, do basic math, nor write a sentence. College now is having to make up for that lack of education. And it is failing.
Yes, at the expense of bumping a DNC-media article I will say that many companies and recruiters post bogus job offerings to collect resumes in order to inflate their available worker pools.
Corporations will also post adverts for potential contract awards and count these unfulfilled positions towards the company’s size when bidding on contracts.
So yes, it’s BS but we expect that from the DNC-media.
I’ve read several articles documenting that some companies won’t hire anyone whose been unemployed, or isn’t currently employed. That could account for some of the problem.
Another problem...wages have dropped. So some refuse jobs thinking that they’re being “low-balled” by the employer, when the truth is, the job that paid $50,000 a couple years ago, probably pays $40,000 (to a new employee) in today’s economy.
Ah...did you get to the bottom line of the article?
Whoa...it is a propaganda piece blaming businesses from everything of lack of workers skills to paid training to refusal to hire unqualified workers...
So, the stone is turning. No longer can they blame Bush, they won’t dare blame the 0bama depression...instead they are now beginning to blame the business owners...
Payback's a bitch but it's here - and, sadly, it ain't gonna be easy to fix.
Lawyers and bureaucrats are another part of the problem. They for a company to jump thru endless hoops to do business, and those hoops get passed down to the worker as the business tries to avoid the lawyer and overcome the increased costs imposed by the bureaucrat.
My last job, when I started I loved it. I did my job, did it well, and walked out the door at night without worry. By the end I spent more time doing everything but my job with the rate nearly double than when I started.
I simply couldn’t adapt anymore to the shifting, confusing mirage of what the company wanted on a daily basis. I’m not knocking them because they were trying to survive the what had been imposed on them. Much of it was contradictory and not possible to reconcile.
Well, speaking for myself, if could be paid for 2 years+ to sit home and do nothing... why work?
Then after 2 years complain that you need an extension of, say, another 2 years.
Really, congress needs to take another look at NAFTA, CAFTA and SAFTA and repeal this idiotic legislation. They also need to enact an excise tax, on all good being imported to the US that we use to make in this country, to get the manufacturing back into the US.
That is the way to provide jobs for people out of work.
I don’t know about you but the $250/week that Florida pays for unemployment doesn’t go very far.
You are on the right track.
I believe the problem is MORE of the former — employers unwilling to hire anyone who has been unemployed for some time. This causes a very bad chain reaction and feedcs on itself. Employers won’t hire while the unemployed become essentially atrophied in their skills.
The so called problem of those who feel they are being low balled is not as prevalent as one might think. I know of MANY who are willing to work on the same job for much lower pay but still no offers.
It’s an employer’s market out there and they can hold out for as long as they want.
You mean getting a degree in ebonics isn’t going to help me get a job as a rocket scientist? Who’d a thunk it?
At middle-age I went back to school. None of my previous college counted, so I had to start all over. I didn't finish this time either...why? All the BS requirements that wasted my money and time, and the liberal indoctrination centers.
Even the science degrees require you to take 'studies' courses in unrelated fields. It helps to produce a well rounded college graduate.
I can attest that there are lots of jobs for “Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence” experts. However the bar has been set so high that there are very few qualified people. For instance, a lot of companies are looking for Cognos developers, but unless you have worked for a company that used Cognos, there is virually no way you could ever learn it. IBM does not provide evaluation copies to consultants and there is almost no third party material of any use.
I don’t know why, but companies seem to have turned thierback on training. Guys who could write assembler or COBOL or Visual Basic could easily handle Cognos with a couple weeks of training.
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