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The Trump Economy


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On 9/8/2019 at 8:19 AM, SoCal Deek said:

Tibs, I’m not sure why these basic comments are so difficult for you to grasp. In order to have an ever increasing standard of living there are bound to be people who fill the role of providing fundamental, low skilled services to those who enjoy that higher standard. It’s neither magic or cruel. It’s the natural progression of things. The difference in America is that we’ve attempted to create a system whereby you’re not stuck in a society that dictates your permanent standing as either a service ‘provider’ or a ‘receiver’. So, we collectively provide a free public education and uninhibited mobility across the country. The PROBLEM is that some people appear to have been sleeping in class and want to wallow in their momentary station in life wondering how they got there. The SOLUTION is not to artificially raise the wages at McDonald’s but rather is to encourage people to take more advantage of that same education and mobility.

 

Somewhat anecdotal and a small sample but this is typical.

 

We just posted a $15/hr operations job on indeed for a week.  Got 110+ resumes.  I looked at all of them, many of them twice.  I'd say that almost 50% of the people are what I'd consider unemployable based on having a recent history of 5+ jobs with an average time in those jobs of 6 months each.  These are people with decent experience but their track record of not being able to stay in a job likely makes them a negative candidate for nearly every employer.  The quality of the resume's overall (how the resume was written) was pretty bad even when lowering expectations for a lower paid job.  Easily 30 of them terrible.  There is a field within the indeed app for applicants to basically sell themselves, write something that makes them a good candidate.  Almost nobody entered anything into that field.  Of the rest of the applicants, about 15 were contacted by phone or email, 5 or so of those never responded.  Of the remaining 10 or so, 6 agreed to an in-person interview after a phone conversation.  2 of those never showed for the interview, didn't call to cancel or re-schedule and didn't respond to follow up calls.  Of the 4 that were interviewed, only 1 sent a note after the interview thanking, etc...  This is all from the past 2 weeks. 

 

The company is in an area outside of Chicago that isn't poor.  It's economically diverse with affluent, middle and lower income people .   This is what the bottom of the economy looks like.  It's filled with people with poor skills, poor work habits/ethics/integrity and very poor job seeking skills.   It's people who rarely do their best.  It's people who put a very low priority on their career.  This population doesn't get described in statistics and in my view it's a big piece.   

Edited by keepthefaith
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2 minutes ago, keepthefaith said:

 

Somewhat anecdotal and a small sample but this is typical.

 

We just posted a $15/hr operations job on indeed for a week.  Got 110+ resumes.  I looked at all of them, many of them twice.  I'd say that almost 50% of the people are what I'd consider unemployable based on having a recent history of 5+ jobs with an average time in those jobs of 6 months each.  These are people with decent experience but their track record of not being able to stay in a job likely makes them a negative candidate for nearly every employer.  The quality of the resume's overall (how the resume was written) was pretty bad even when lowering expectations for a lower paid job.  Easily 30 of them terrible.  There is a field within the indeed app for applicants to basically sell themselves, write something that makes them a good candidate.  Almost nobody entered anything into that field.  Of the rest of the applicants, about 15 were contacted by phone or email, 5 or so of those never responded.  Of the remaining 10 or so, 6 agreed to an in-person interview after a phone conversation.  2 of those never showed for the interview, didn't call to cancel or re-schedule and didn't respond to follow up calls.  Of the 4 that were interviewed, only 1 sent a note after the interview thanking, etc...  This is all from the past 2 weeks. 

 

The company is in an area outside of Chicago that isn't poor.  It's economically diverse with affluent, middle and lower income people .   This is what the bottom of the economy looks like.  It's filled with people with poor skills, poor work habits/ethics/integrity and very poor job seeking skills.   It's people who rarely do their best.  It's people who put a very low priority on their career.  This population doesn't get described in statistics and in my view it's a big piece.   

 

This is my experience in the very little hiring I do, but my friends who do a lot of hiring are seeing the bottom of the economy, as you call it.  

 

It seems that low unemployment isn't all great!  

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14 minutes ago, bbb said:

 

This is my experience in the very little hiring I do, but my friends who do a lot of hiring are seeing the bottom of the economy, as you call it.  

 

It seems that low unemployment isn't all great!  

 

zero unemployment was a silly notion of the left, at least a few percent are there because they want to be for the moment, along with the terminally unemployable

 

nice of people to declare that events at their company dictate the entire economy of the country, when will they ever learn?  :D

 

 

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14 minutes ago, keepthefaith said:

 

Somewhat anecdotal and a small sample but this is typical.

 

We just posted a $15/hr operations job on indeed for a week.  Got 110+ resumes.  I looked at all of them, many of them twice.  I'd say that almost 50% of the people are what I'd consider unemployable based on having a recent history of 5+ jobs with an average time in those jobs of 6 months each.  These are people with decent experience but their track record of not being able to stay in a job likely makes them a negative candidate for nearly every employer.  The quality of the resume's overall (how the resume was written) was pretty bad even when lowering expectations for a lower paid job.  Easily 30 of them terrible.  There is a field within the indeed app for applicants to basically sell themselves, write something that makes them a good candidate.  Almost nobody entered anything into that field.  Of the rest of the applicants, about 15 were contacted by phone or email, 5 or so of those never responded.  Of the remaining 10 or so, 6 agreed to an in-person interview after a phone conversation.  2 of those never showed for the interview, didn't call to cancel or re-schedule and didn't respond to follow up calls.  Of the 4 that were interviewed, only 1 sent a note after the interview thanking, etc...  This is all from the past 2 weeks. 

 

The company is in an area outside of Chicago that isn't poor.  It's economically diverse with affluent, middle and lower income people .   This is what the bottom of the economy looks like.  It's filled with people with poor skills, poor work habits/ethics/integrity and very poor job seeking skills.   It's people who rarely do their best.  It's people who put a very low priority on their career.  This population doesn't get described in statistics and in my view it's a big piece.   

  I take it the 6 month interval is for reasons other than being contract hires?  The last job I worked at before I became self-employed I learned the hard way all the out clauses that my employer held that worked in their favor.  I got let go not because of my performance or personal issues but the company was fully restructuring and decided to trim the work force.  My counterparts at two other offices in North America got let go on the same day so that took some of the sting out.  The bottom line was that it was hard to put down on any applications the reasons for the early dismissal when the former employer will not provide any verification other than dates worked.  

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3 hours ago, RochesterRob said:

  I take it the 6 month interval is for reasons other than being contract hires?  The last job I worked at before I became self-employed I learned the hard way all the out clauses that my employer held that worked in their favor.  I got let go not because of my performance or personal issues but the company was fully restructuring and decided to trim the work force.  My counterparts at two other offices in North America got let go on the same day so that took some of the sting out.  The bottom line was that it was hard to put down on any applications the reasons for the early dismissal when the former employer will not provide any verification other than dates worked.  

 

Maybe some of the positions were temp jobs and if that's the case people should indicate that is was temp or a contractor position.  A bunch of these particular applicants all have the same few distribution companies in their history and we're aware that those companies either don't make the contractors full hires if they don't like them or they cut the dead wood.  Either way the series of several short term job stints is a huge red flag.  We've hired some of those folks and it usually doesn't take long after they're hired to see why they can't stay employed.  They crash and burn on the very basics of doing a good job and we're pretty patient and understanding with people and won't fire as a knee jerk reaction like some companies. 

 

It's too costly for a company to hire and fire rapidly.   In Illinois I believe someone only has to be employed for 30 days for that employer to be charged for unemployment benefits.

 

 

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7 minutes ago, keepthefaith said:

 

Maybe some of the positions were temp jobs and if that's the case people should indicate that is was temp or a contractor position.  A bunch of these particular applicants all have the same few distribution companies in their history and we're aware that those companies either don't make the contractors full hires if they don't like them or they cut the dead wood.  Either way the series of several short term job stints is a huge red flag.  We've hired some of those folks and it usually doesn't take long after they're hired to see why they can't stay employed.  They crash and burn on the very basics of doing a good job and we're pretty patient and understanding with people and won't fire as a knee jerk reaction like some companies. 

 

It's too costly for a company to hire and fire rapidly.   In Illinois I believe someone only has to be employed for 30 days for that employer to be charged for unemployment benefits.

 

Point is the political left wants to demonize employers that cut heads or don't offer better wages when there is significant portion of the workforce which frankly isn't worth the better wage or even a job given their lousy effort. 

  In my case none of the employees were temps or hired on that basis.  Also, I want to make sure that you understand that contract hire in this case does not mean being a contractor in the sense of being an independent salesperson.  Specifically, I was hired to receive and warehouse whole goods then arrange their transfer to dealers and distributors.  My job was on the employer location with infrequent duty as far as setups for trade shows and demo events.  All the contract hires at my branch were for 5 years.  I was gone slightly after 2 years.  My former boss called me to let me know he was not in the know the same day I was cut loose.  I was making 17 dollars per hour plus incentives and had 5 weeks vacation per year built up by then plus paid 2 week holiday shut down for Christmas and New Year's.  The new person came in for 11.50 per hour and none of the extra's.  That location was closed 2 years after I was let go.  I understand the need for scrutiny when a person has a series of short stints on their resume but at the same time most people are paycheck to paycheck.  Sometimes you have to eat crap to pay the bills and I did that with another employer.  

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5 hours ago, keepthefaith said:

 

Somewhat anecdotal and a small sample but this is typical.

 

...

 

  This is what the bottom of the economy looks like.  It's filled with people with poor skills, poor work habits/ethics/integrity and very poor job seeking skills.   It's people who rarely do their best.  It's people who put a very low priority on their career.  This population doesn't get described in statistics and in my view it's a big piece.   

 

This population shows up in the statistics as the part timers who can’t get a full time job.

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1 hour ago, RochesterRob said:

  In my case none of the employees were temps or hired on that basis.  Also, I want to make sure that you understand that contract hire in this case does not mean being a contractor in the sense of being an independent salesperson.  Specifically, I was hired to receive and warehouse whole goods then arrange their transfer to dealers and distributors.  My job was on the employer location with infrequent duty as far as setups for trade shows and demo events.  All the contract hires at my branch were for 5 years.  I was gone slightly after 2 years.  My former boss called me to let me know he was not in the know the same day I was cut loose.  I was making 17 dollars per hour plus incentives and had 5 weeks vacation per year built up by then plus paid 2 week holiday shut down for Christmas and New Year's.  The new person came in for 11.50 per hour and none of the extra's.  That location was closed 2 years after I was let go.  I understand the need for scrutiny when a person has a series of short stints on their resume but at the same time most people are paycheck to paycheck.  Sometimes you have to eat crap to pay the bills and I did that with another employer.  

 

If that company location closed thereafter then it seems like you were a casualty of cost cutting in a company that had a losing operation.  The folks I'm talking about literally show a different job every year or less.  In their cases there is likely a performance issue.  Today though we found a great candidate. 

 

Hopefully you're in a better place now.  If not invest some time in yourself and prepare for and look for a better opportunity.  It's rarely been easier to get hired in many parts of the country than it is now.  It won't happen all by itself though. 

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15 hours ago, keepthefaith said:

This is what the bottom of the economy looks like.  It's filled with people with poor skills, poor work habits/ethics/integrity and very poor job seeking skills.   It's people who rarely do their best.  It's people who put a very low priority on their career.  This population doesn't get described in statistics and in my view it's a big piece.   

This is very much to my point. If you assume that the people who applied are American citizens then they’re all the product of a free public education and by definition should not be unemployable. What we’re experiencing is a total breakdown of the education system. Those bottom High School graduates are simply not being prepared for the work force. Yet ‘Big Education’ keeps churning out this horrific product year after year with no pushback from anyone. Instead this unemployable mass is demanding a pay raise!

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