Free Republic

After a successful summer internship at a mortgage tech company, Alana Klopstein was thrilled to get a job offer. She signed the contract in January 2022, giving her peace of mind during her final year at UC San Diego. Then in June, three months before her start date, she got an email from the company.

In the search for workers in this tight labor market, companies have courted new hires with the promise of higher wages, sign-on bonuses, ample vacation time, and childcare. The latest: “No vaccine required.” That three-word phrase is popping up across online job listings (sometimes emphatically in all caps and accompanied by exclamation marks) as businesses seek to turn the federal government’s proposed vaccine decree on its head and attract employees — notably those from a talent pool that’s been turned off by or turned away from employers that require a Covid-19 vaccination. Under the series of federal regulations, which have...

Getting a job takes longer than ever, as employers ask more of candidates. It has never been easy to land a job, but a rise in hiring has added a new twist: Employers are taking nearly twice as long to hire people as they did several years ago. Companies need an average of 23 days to screen and hire new employees, up from 13 days in 2010, says Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at the jobs and recruiting site Glassdoor, based on a study of nearly 350,000 interview reviews by the site's users. Applicants run a gantlet of multiple interviews not...

If you've been unsuccessful in your job search, it might be time to start looking in other parts of the country. But before you pack up and go, you'll want to consider which cities have the best career opportunities, the happiest workers, and the lowest cost of living. To help, online careers community Glassdoor just released its latest report on the 25 best cities for jobs right now. These metro areas stand out for having the highest Glassdoor "Job Score," which was determined by weighting three factors equally: how easy it is to get a job (hiring opportunity), how affordable...

Republicans and conservatives frustrated with the GOP’s failure to nationalize this year’s midterm elections received a gift last week from, of all people, President Barack Obama. Going completely unappreciated is how his Department of Labor, particularly its Bureau of Labor Statistics, has from all appearances been conducting a de facto midterm election campaign with cooked unemployment figures for quite some time.On October 2, Obama did the job elected Republican leaders up to that point had failed to do. Speaking at Northwestern University, he told his audience [1]: ”I am not on the ballot this fall. … But make no...

Vitae Delivered With a Pillow or by Stuffed Carrier Pigeon Bring Attention but Not Always Gigs. The box was delivered to the Los Angeles office of One Fine Stay, a business that arranges short-term accommodations in luxury homes. Stuffed inside was a queen-size pillow in a cheap cotton pillowcase. The intriguing gimmick didn't ultimately work for Pillow Guy, who was rejected after one phone conversation and a face-to-face interview. Also rebuffed by One Fine Stay: an applicant who "delivered" a résumé via a stuffed carrier pigeon and another who included a link to his unpublished erotica. Companies like the online...

Both Dr. James Joyner and Bloomberg’s Peter Orszag are looking into a rather puzzling pair of statistics from the labor market this week. Posted job openings around the country are up roughly 50%, but new hires have only risen by 5%. What can account for the disparity in these numbers? It would seem that if companies are posting that many more openings, surely hiring should be on the rise in comparable numbers, and yet it’s not happening. Orszag: To get some sense of how significant this is, consider that if, since June 2010, hiring had risen a third as much...

Hope for finding a job, for paying next month's rent and for keeping the lights on over for the holidays is fading for Brenda Wallis. She lost her job in 2008, at the dawn of a recession that eventually claimed 147,700 Oregon jobs. She exhausted her unemployment benefits and has applied for cash assistance from the same state agency at which she once worked. And she's filled out hundreds of applications, landing six interviews but no offers. As the gap in her work history grows, the bills get harder to pay. There's little left to hope for, says the Fairview...

Job hunting in a recession is a tough assignment - with almost one in ten people out of work in the US, it takes more than a spruced-up CV, a tidy haircut or a smart new suit to stand out from the crowd these days. But doctors in the US have found a new way to give the unemployed a leg-up with a "Botox bailout", offering thousands of dollars worth of free Botox injections, liposuctions and other cosmetic procedures to ensure they look their very best - and perhaps a little more youthful - at interviews. "If people feel good...