Like most “stigmas,” there’s a legit reason for it in general - while of course there are exceptions. I didn’t see the article mention anything about the culpability of the long term unemployed person in this whole equation.
they actually should be hired first
The dirtbags are building their case to push for an expansion of H1B because it is cheaper. It’s the reason why most of these companies and their hiring managers are not very active in anything that will spur job creation. It’s in their best interest (not the country’s) to be able to say that they cannot find willing and qualified employees.
After an entire working career with never an interruption in jobs/job offers the entire job environment was completely changed thanks in part to GWB and to a much greater extent by this genetically inferior sub-human in the White Hut.
Yes, it may be blowing my own horn, but I was almost able to throw out my resume on the floor and there would be multiple jobs offer the same day until the central planners gained control.
After the last company went into bankruptcy, there was 3 months of job searches without a single reply to my resume. That had NEVER happened in the past.
It became obvious that a skilled employee, with executive experience, was not needed in a central planner’s world and the job market dried up for my type of work ethic, experience and achievement.
Fortunately, I planned for a good retirement and took it.
Now, however, my own government spends its every waking moment developing plans to extract every penny saved for retirement via taxes, regulations, and the biggest money grab of all, CommieCare.
Not only are they actively working to redistribute my life long earnings to their types, but simultaneously they are cutting off as many of my Constitutional rights to limit my ability to fight them.
It is no coincidence that all these changes are taking place at the same time. Fedzilla must eliminate constitutional protections in order to gain full control.
We are witnessing the end of this country as we know it.
Having been laid off before, I could not find work in my existing field, so I took two part-time jobs to tide me over.
When I finally was able to interview in my chosen field again, the HR manager told me that my willingness to work (even two part-time jobs) shows that I am a dedicated worker - that was one of the reasons she called me in (and I got the job).
TYPICALLY, someone not working for 6+ months is not willing to work or simply not really looking to work.
Of course, there are exceptions in every situation, but there is work out there; maybe not your IDEAL job opportunity, but there is WORK to be done.
Lastly, job hoppers are usually seeking the next pay-raise, not a career with a company. Given time, opportunity and effort, most people would get that next pay-raise in short-order. But, those who job-hop have a tendency to not want to wait until the opportunity comes along.
They will ditch a company to claim a quarter an hour pay-raise, ignoring the comfortable work atmosphere, ignoring the free-time allowed, ignoring the benefits (paid and unpaid), ignoring the COMPANY - as a whole. So, yes, companies are leery of those who job-hop.
Having worked in HR, I can tell you that both of these trends are well-founded.
No kidding.
It’s the same when trying to decide on buying a house, if everything looks good, but it’s been on the market for a long time, you will wonder why it hadn’t been sold yet, so you figure, “why take a chance?”
There shouldn't be a stigma against someone who was previously employed being unemployed for 6 months during an economic downturn.
The job hopper on the other hand? Yeah, I'd be concerned about that.
This is true in good times and in bad times. BI, a liberal rag, acts like this is something new. It's not.
She has a degree in Business Marketing and has been working in the SEO and Digital Marketing field. She has told all her unemployed friends and cousins to enhance their LinkedIn page, get endorsements from colleagues and put all your experience online because the HR departments are looking at resumes on line at LinkedIn.
They offered her $10,000 more a year, $80,000 + major benes, to get her from their competitor.
The landscape was dotted as far as the eye could see with mid-rise office parks filled with cubicles. In each cubicle, we could find a little rabbit, coffee-cup at his elbow, taking a break from his morning routine to discuss last night's game with his cubicle mates.
One of the rabbits - let's call him Jim - is in a good mood. It's 1995 and he has just been promoted to Senior Business Analyst at Giant InsureCo. His father owns a small shoe store in Illinois - his grandfather served in WWII and worked with his hands in a machine shop. Jim was the first in his family to graduate from college, and he followed all the rules - the right school, the right major, the right extracurriculars, hired by the right company, got into the right training program - everything according to what the guidance counselors told him.
Jim feels lucky. He's making $50K/year and in line to keep getting promotions and one day become a manager. He feels like his education and experience guarantee his place in the food chain, and he has nothing more to worry about until he is ready to retire from Giant in around 2030.
What Jim doesn't realize is that he has stepped into a long-term trap.
Jim is 30 years old. His company loves him at that age and at his current salary. There is a labor arbitrage they can take advantage of - they get more than $50K/year of value out of his work, which involves creating computer-based reports and serving as a liaison between two different and incompatible departments at Giant. His 1995 value to Giant is very high, based on the economy and the circumstances of his employment.
Jim makes the very natural mistake of thinking that his intrinsic value to Giant is very high.
Fast forward to 2008. Jim is now a 43-year-old Department Manager at Giant. He has done well over the years and is now paid $85K/year, but he is worried that he will never be able to crack the executive ranks. John, his 35-year-old co-manager, just got promoted to Assistant Vice President, but Jim got overlooked - again. His job is tougher now - he has been working with Giant's financial services group and over the years many of the software developers have been replaced by contractors from India. In fact, the new Global Finance application is going to be developed in India, and Giant wants some of the younger analysts to take lead roles on that project.
They never asked Jim.
In the fall, Jim reads a headline about the spectacular collapse of Lehman Brothers. It's an interesting story, but he chalks it up to the greed of Wall Street bankers and doesn't think it really has much to do with him out in the Midwest.
In December, Jim gets called into a group meeting with his Vice President. His department is being eliminated in March, and he will get a year's severance pay if he stays on to help the younger analysts learn what they need to know to help the Indian development teams migrate the US applications into Global Finance. It turns out the Lehman collapse has affected many of the investors in Giant's financial products, and the attrition rate means the company can no longer afford to offer certain investment management services...those that are supported by US employees.
Jim is angry, then depressed, but he still believes in his intrinsic value. There are other insurance companies out there, and with his vast experience in statistical coding he is sure to find a similar role at another firm. His family might have to move, and with his daughters in eighth and sixth grade his wife is going to be very unhappy about that. But Jim is not a quitter.
He starts the search process as his job winds down. The plethora of open positions on Dice.com and other sites gives him comfort. He sends out resumes - carefully, at first. It wouldn't do to apply to the wrong kind of company. Jim is willing to wait a little bit, to find just the right place to continue his career.
Fast forward to 2013. Jim has been out of work for nine months after his last contract job ended. Contract work has been dwinding, and he never was able to find permanent employment after his time with Giant ended. Companies showed some interest early in 2009 and he nearly got the job with BigInsCo in Wisconsin, but his wife was so unhappy about the move he actually felt glad when they turned him down in favor of the younger guy from Kentucky.
Jim is almost ready to apply for a job at Home Depot, but he feels like a complete failure. It's so damn hard to apply for that kind of work after having a private office and fifteen people working for him. Jim knows he deserves that kind of job - he knows he can excel at it - but no one will give him a chance. He is 48 years old, still in good health and still smarter than most of these young kids who can barely write a coherent English sentence. Why won't those greedy corporate bastards give him a chance? All they want are cheap Indians and cheap young kids!
Jim has failed to recognize to realize a simple truth:
When there is a paradigm shift, everybody goes to zero.
The Age of Overemployment ended in 2008. Millions of Jims all over the country are still sitting around in dumbfounded amazement, wondering how the economy that treated them so well for nearly three decades suddenly has no more use for them. But they were being paid not for a general skill like an electrician or an auto mechanic or even a contract computer programmer, they were being paid for their situational utility. They became hyperspecialists to make more money, but they made themselves unemployable outside of their current corporate environment.
In the age of transition from paper to computerized offices, many people with moderate brainpower became necessary to automate processes - and they paid for themselves by eliminating the large clerical staffs common in big companies until the early 80's.
Those processes are now fully automated, and future work to enhance or improve upon them has been commoditized to the point that it is no longer necessary to retain a large staff of expensive Americans to do it.
We have a growing Nation of Jims - smart, capable, somewhat spoiled by years of relatively easy success, who are never going to make the transition back to being shopkeepers, tradesmen, or laborers. Rather than using their Big Company employment as an apprenticeship to learn how to run their own businesses, they became subject matter experts in very narrow fields. This got them promoted, but also left them incredibly vulnerable to paradigm shifts like the 2008 crash, the full effects of which have not yet even begun to be felt.
Worse, the Nation of Jims are so desperate now to get back what they had that they will vote for any Pied Piper who promises to ease their financial burdens with free money.
Enter Saint Barack.
There is no straightforward answer. It is difficult to imagine a modern economy needing millions of specialist office workers again. Office parks sit vacant all over the country. The work didn't really move offshore and China didn't steal it - it simply doesn't exist any more. Jim has nothing to do. Nobody needs him, and they feel - justly or not - he would need five years of retraining in both processes and culture to be useful. Companies prefer to spend those five years growing younger employees - their labor arbitrage value is much higher, and even if they turn out to be a bad fit at least you can get a few years of excess value out of them. Many companies would probably consider hiring him as a 1099 independent contractor, but unions and placement firms have run to the government to get specialized laws passed that make hiring independents very difficult. We can call this age discrimination, but it's actually a direct side-effect of politicians pandering to unions. Good luck getting that law changed...
And smaller businesses don't dare hire someone like Jim right now. They simply don't dare. We know that is by design, as the 60's radicals who have taken over our government are systematically implementing their bottom-up plan to destroy the bourgeoisie with no significant political opposition, as the so-called opposition's primary financial contributors are also benefitted by such moves. Small business are under direct assault. The strong will sell themselves to larger competitors - the weak will perish. Either way, they will hire only the exact employees they need, and that is highly unlikely to include Jim.
The bottom line is - the Nation of Jims have to start over. Not quite from scratch, perhaps, but almost. It doesn't matter what Jim was - the paradigm has shifted, and the value Jim once represented is gone. And the longer they wait, the harder it is going to get for them.
As a final note, ponder this quote about the 1982-2008 era - it contains more truth that you will find on this topic in the whole of the Internet:
"When the whole world brought its savings to the United States, people of mediocre skills and slack work habits could afford big houses, expensive vacations, and (at taxpayer expense) generous pensions. Why Americans expected to live well indefinitely on the largesse of foreign investors is a question for the psychiatrists, not the economists." --Spengler, Asia Times