Posted on 06/22/2022 5:48:32 AM PDT by bort
People lacking experience have always struggled in the job market. Lord knows I did.
| Measure | Not seasonally adjusted | Seasonally adjusted | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2021 | Apr. 2022 | May 2022 | May 2021 | Jan. 2022 | Feb. 2022 | Mar. 2022 | Apr. 2022 | May 2022 | |
U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force | 3.2 | 1.4 | 1.3 | 3.1 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force | 3.4 | 1.6 | 1.4 | 3.6 | 2.0 | 1.9 | 1.7 | 1.7 | 1.7 |
U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate) | 5.5 | 3.3 | 3.4 | 5.8 | 4.0 | 3.8 | 3.6 | 3.6 | 3.6 |
U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers | 5.8 | 3.6 | 3.6 | 6.1 | 4.2 | 4.1 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 3.9 |
U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force | 6.6 | 4.3 | 4.2 | 6.9 | 4.9 | 4.7 | 4.4 | 4.6 | 4.5 |
U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force | 9.7 | 6.6 | 6.7 | 10.1 | 7.1 | 7.2 | 6.9 | 7.0 | 7.1 |
NOTE: Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data. | |||||||||
The deal with marriage has gotten worse and worse for men over the last 40-50 years. Now add in a lot of women wanting to work on their careers or wanting to play the field and/or having very unrealistic expectations until they hit the wall when their 20s are all gone and its hardly surprising more men are balking at the idea of marrying a desperate 30 something woman who's looking to settle.
Speaking strictly for myself: I was a boomer in a highly skilled R&D position in a high-tech industry, with 40 years’ experience in my field and 20 years’ seniority at my last company. Right before the pandemic hit the company went all-in on the whole woke Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity agenda, and nine months into the pandemic, as sales were plummeting, they decided the problem was they had too many old white guys on the payroll and offered me a retirement incentive package too good to turn down, so I took it.
It took my wife and I a little while to figure out how to live comfortably on what we already had, but once we did, my desire to return to the workplace vanished. I still get calls from recruiters all the time, but when I hear a pitch that gets my interest I check out the company’s web site, and if the first thing it does is slap me in the face with their commitment to Pride and Diversity and all that crap, I tell them no. Life is too short to go back to working for another manager like my last manager, e.g., a tubby purple-haired affirmative action hire who was apt to explode if accidentally addressed by the wrong pronoun. I figure, let someone who’s younger and hungrier put up with that $#!+.
And if the company can’t find anyone who’s that hungry, and can’t figure out that it’s their management that’s the problem... Well, there you go. Labor shortage.
Beau retired in 2017 and I retired in 2016. He has ‘gone back to work’ every spring season because his past employer keeps BEGGING him to. They can’t find decent people to operate a SHOVEL, let alone run the big machinery. He draws a pension, but can work up to 600 hours a year (an extra $27K in his case) and it won’t change his pension at all. They increased it this year UP from 400 extra work hours, again, to entice the skilled retirees to come back. No young people are hanging around the Union Hall looking for work these days. There is literally no one in the pipeline in a lot of the Trades, which is scary!
I, too, get called back to work on specific projects. I always turn them down, or do like you do: $45/hour Consulting Fee. Take it or leave it!
It’s Good to Be the Queen. :)
But I don't think that explains the dearth of front line employees in fast food, retail, etc. Very few boomers held those positions. Our favorite family owned Mexican restaurant has had to open only for lunch - closes down for supper. Can't find help. They had plenty of employees (not boomers) before. Where did they all go?
Young people don’t want a regular job. One of my nephews ambitions is to be a blogger and “not have to pay taxes”. LOL I kid you not. And he is a really smart kid with straight A’s and a wiz with computers.
And companies are scared to hire people with a ton of experience. They don’t want a professional, they want someone very inexpensive to hire and train....its a result of the lockdowns nearly bankrupting some businesses
Older workers need not apply. White workers need not apply.
Your HR department was probably more interested in grilling your candidate over his positions on trans rights and social justice than in whether he was actually capable of doing the job.
So, we need to lose businesses because of government intervention that grossly distorts the labor market? Should we, on the flip side, ignore the government malfeasance of encouraging illegal immigration that grossly distorts wages downward for the unskilled and semi-skilled? Should we just tell people having to compete with illegals that their loss of earnings is just too bad?
Please ask the moderator to delete your link, and repost it using tinyurl.com. It has destroyed the formatting for the entire page.
You’re probably right.
Disability and Vax deaths in working age people. Funny how this happened once vaxxes came out. People say long covid but they also happened to be vaxxed. Go figure. Check out this chart
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU00074597
And they are also realizing that renting is cheaper.
Unemployment is at 3.9% (or close to that.) And you are wondering why businesses can’t find people? Because everyone is working already.
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Not sure you are correct on this point. I suspect the unemployment rate is low b/c millions have stopped looking for work, which is one way to keep the % low. After reading the dozens of responses, it seems that a huge bunch of baby-boomers opted for retirement b/c of COVID, etc., which probably created a huge employment vacuum.
No, but those things have to be factored in until such time IF and WHEN those are changed. They may never change.
True that.
Isn't that exactly what you would like to see happen except for legal unskilled and semi-skilled workers?
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