Are there THAT many unemployed people?

[willywonka666]

And why?

I was reading an article in the local paper and nationwide, they estimate that there are 6.1 million unfilled job openings nationwide.


Seems locally that there are open interviews at my local Hardees every two or three weeks.

I have a friend that is jumping from job to job, sometimes after a matter of weeks, because he's looking for top dollar and EXACTLY what he wants.

It's like there isn't a problem of more people than jobs, but quite the opposite.

How are people making it if they don't seemingly work?

What's it like in your area?

[Hobby Drifter]

If a job pays less than what it costs to actually *live* in the area, it's not a viable position.

You'll see a lot of "part time" jobs (that are just under the threshold for "full time") that escape the requirements for providing health insurance and other benefits. Back when I lived in the US, I worked 39.9 hours a week. At a job where the actual working hours changed every week. No vacation. No health insurance. No unemployment benefits. No sick leave. 39.9 hours of work at about $9 an hour. Just barely enough money for a shared apartment, gas, and food.

I was young, just out of college, and could make do with that. But for a lot of people, it's not feasible.

There's this idea that "something is better than nothing" and to an extent that's true. But a part time job with full-time commitment, no opportunities for advancement, and zero in the way of employment benefits and protections is bull****. And it's not something that should be allowed to continue.

Here in Tokyo, we've got "black companies" that try to pull this crap. Some of them get away with it. Many wind up failing pretty quickly.

I don't fault people for not buying into crap like this. "Give us a huge chunk of your time, work your tail off, and we'll compensate you with enough money to live with your parents forever."

[Natural Born Farmer]

Unemployed perhaps not, but underemployed? Hell yes. In terms of having some income, not letting your skills atrophy, and building a resume it is better to have something than nothing, but trying to get by on minimum wage is damn near impossible and it’s obscene that it’s so low in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

[HMARK Center]

There's also the issue of what sector some of those jobs are opening up in, and which sectors aren't hiring so much. You've got these aforementioned service sector jobs that dodge a lot of responsibilities by trying to keep people part time, and then you've got things like the growth in the tech sector and other high skilled positions, but a workforce that hasn't yet had the chance to catch up on what's needed to fill a lot of those jobs.

[Toilet Paper Roll]

There’s a lot of job openings. But unemployment is relatively low right now (United States) it tends to ebb and flow, a lot of job openings this time of year in retail and shipping, but a lot of people pick these up as second jobs to make some extra cash.

If you’re willing to join a trade you have nearly unlimited potential. There’s a lot of new construction and a lot of people incapable or unwilling to do “labor sector” work. You can punch your own ticket.

[Ultimo Gallos]

Locally it seems like every business has a sign up mentioning they are looking for people. And most chain stores have a high turnover rate.

For example there is a Dollar General about 4 miles from me. I am in there at least 3 times a week,much quicker to stop there to get say a loaf of bread than drive to town and be stuck in line for 30 minutes. Every week they seem to have new cashiers.

[Sponsored by Groose Wipes]

Jobs not being enough of a pay to have a standard living anymore is one major problem. Not to mention people who are not qualified and/or don't have experience to have a job good enough to afford living.

[EvenBaldobombHasAJob]

The real issue has always been underemployment. Anyone can get a crappy job that doesn't pay them enough to keep the lights on but relatively few people can actually take care of themselves. Hell before I got my current job I was working a horrible job and lived in a tiny apartment that was basically a hovel.

[Cyno]

Unemployment numbers are decent right now, but they don't include underemployment and people who have outright left the labor force. It's been that way for years. Especially with a lot of the scummy practices employers can get away with to screw over their employees.

[Dr. T is an alien]

As others have mentioned, unemployment isn't actually the issue. Don't get me wrong; being unemployed is a very real problem if you are going though it (I did once go through a stretch for 3 months in 2003 so I can tell you how unfun it is).

Underemployment is a real issue. Hell, even when jobs pay well (my part time job pays rather well) there are still significant issues at hand.

- A very large number of jobs do not pay enough to pay for the employee to cover housing costs, let alone the other things one needs to pay for in order to continue to not die of starvation/exposure/etc.

- What is the solution to that? Well, if you don't like it go to college and make something of yourself! That is often the response of those who grew up in a different time. College tuition has increased nationally over 300% since only 2004 and continues to increase as state governments, which used to foot a large portion of their state colleges' expenses, continue to reduce funding. Conversely, lending student loans is considered a profit center in this country, leading to the average college student loans debt to be over $30K.

- So what, you might ask? If they get that education they should get paid more and can pay those student loans off. For starters, that often is not how that works. New college graduates are competing for jobs with experienced individuals who may even have better educations than them. They often cannot compete for those jobs straight up, so they either take jobs in the interim that are unrelated to their degree (and therefore does not help their pay while they still have the college debt collecting interest) or they undercut the experienced individuals by accepting jobs in their field that pay minimally (or not at all in the case of many internships), where they hope to gain the experience they need to get the better paying jobs in the future.



So, how to deal with it? Well, I mentioned my part time job. Why did I refer to it as my part time job instead of simply my job? Well, I, like so many Americans, deal with the decreased buying power of our stagnant incomes by having multiple jobs. It is worth noting that my household income is noticeably above the national median income even before my wife's and son's incomes are taken into consideration, meaning that we are much better off than many and we still need me to work two jobs to stay above water.

That is a problem on two fronts. One, it would be so nice if I only had to work one full time job to support my family, let alone save for an eventual retirement (which I am not certain I will be able to afford to do). I am not a fan of this whole "work, work, work, work, die" mentality that is being foisted upon the public as being a necessity. I know far too many people who retired, started collecting Social Security and their retirements funds, and felt pressured financially to return to the workforce. It is hard to fill the new jobs with the new guard when the old guard literally cannot afford to get out of the way.

Second, because the youth of today have to compete experienced individuals who are nearly as desperate, it does create a race to the bottom that suppresses wage increases. I just spent 9 months trying to replace my full time job (I was told a little over three months ahead of time I was losing it due to funding issues). During that time, a number of positions I was applying for had me competing with recent college graduates for the position. This meant that they were competing with a much more experienced individual with Masters degree. How could they compete with that? By undercutting my salary expectations, something I had a hard time lowering because I had set expenses like car payments and a mortgage.

That second one plays a not-insignificant role in why wage increases do not keep up with either productivity or increases to the cost of living. In fact, the longer this system is allowed to run unabated, the worse the situation will get. Two generations ago Congress literally put into their records their expectations that the average work week for Americans will likely be reduced to 24-28 hours a week due to improvements in technology, progresses in workers' rights, and other factors. Instead, it is increasingly getting to be a quaint and naive idea for someone to expect to only work 40 hours a week.

[Deleted]

My job basically fell through a couple of months ago and I've been searching for months with no one even bothering to give me the time of day. It's hard living in the middle of nowhere in a state where pretty much everything lives and dies by the failing coal industry.

[brown bricks]

I teach at a middle school and make roughly $20,000/year. So I feel like I can vouch for the fact that it's an absolute joke what some people in this country make. Speaking personally, no matter how much I love teaching, the pay is absolute garbage. And it's not just teaching that has this issue, as others have already said, this is a huge problem in this country.

[Sam Punk]

Nov 23, 2018 12:23:13 GMT -5 EvenBaldobombHasAJob said:

The real issue has always been underemployment. Anyone can get a crappy job that doesn't pay them enough to keep the lights on but relatively few people can actually take care of themselves. Hell before I got my current job I was working a horrible job and lived in a tiny apartment that was basically a hovel.

Very true. Most of the listings I've seen have been part time with no benefits.

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Nov 23, 2018 16:01:32 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

My job basically fell through a couple of months ago and I've been searching for months with no one even bothering to give me the time of day. It's hard living in the middle of nowhere in a state where pretty much everything lives and dies by the failing coal industry.

Yeah this is actually a really big problem that a lot of people living in cities don’t get. I live in the Greater Boston area (Newton), but if I lived even in a place like West Bridgewater which is hardly the middle of nowhere and didn’t have reliable transportation things could be much tougher. Then there are those towns that actually are in the middle of nowhere and I can just imagine how tough things must be when people have no savings, no reliable transportation, and no support.

[arrogantmodel]

It blows my mind that athletes, movie stars, and singers make millions of dollars, while people who keep this country moving make jack shit.

Harper and Trout are making hundreds of millions of dollars for hitting and catching a ball. Some kids in their early 20s are about to literally become millionaires overnight, because they're good at football.

This country/world is so f***ing backwards, it hurts. I have gone above and beyond at every job I've had, and I haven't made more than a little over $15 an hour.

My last THREE jobs have suggested I get into a manager position, and all three then screwed me out of it. And in one case, there were times where my check was bigger than the manager's, so that wouldn't have exactly been a step up.

But I've busted my ass, done everybody's job, stayed late, etc. And the most I've gotten is a, "Thanks." I don't want your pats on the back. Thank me on my paycheck. That's why I'm here.

[Futureraven: Beelzebruv]

Apr 25, 2019 2:20:39 GMT -5 arrogantmodel said:

It blows my mind that athletes, movie stars, and singers make millions of dollars, while people who keep this country moving make jack shit.

Harper and Trout are making hundreds of millions of dollars for hitting and catching a ball. Some kids in their early 20s are about to literally become millionaires overnight, because they're good at football.

This country/world is so f***ing backwards, it hurts. I have gone above and beyond at every job I've had, and I haven't made more than a little over $15 an hour.

My last THREE jobs have suggested I get into a manager position, and all three then screwed me out of it. And in one case, there were times where my check was bigger than the manager's, so that wouldn't have exactly been a step up.

But I've busted my ass, done everybody's job, stayed late, etc. And the most I've gotten is a, "Thanks." I don't want your pats on the back. Thank me on my paycheck. That's why I'm here.

Sports and entertainment are glamourous.

People are willing to pay so much money on a weekly basis there's a crazy amount of money. I can't get mad at the players or actors though, a sports team or movie makes billions, I'd rather it go to them actually doing the work and making it successful rather than the executives who just sign the cheques.

[Limity (BLM)]

One of the very best books I ever read, The Corner, is about black neighborhoods in Baltimore. The writers describe these neighborhoods where there are simply no jobs whatsoever. None.

The only economic engine driving these neighborhoods is the drug trade. All the factories and businesses and whatnot have over time uprooted and left behind these people. You're born into an area where there is simply nothing.

Reading that book helped me understand a great many things, one of which is that yes, there can be that many unemployed people in the US.

I'm incredibly lucky that I'm single with no family, and no kids that can find me. This flexibility and my ability to uproot with ease, has allowed me to chase better and better jobs.

When an area goes sour, when a factory closes or is rendered obsolete, there are those people that can't leave, that are stuck there. They become the unemployed.

[Mozenrath]

Apr 25, 2019 2:20:39 GMT -5 arrogantmodel said:

It blows my mind that athletes, movie stars, and singers make millions of dollars, while people who keep this country moving make jack shit.

Harper and Trout are making hundreds of millions of dollars for hitting and catching a ball. Some kids in their early 20s are about to literally become millionaires overnight, because they're good at football.

This country/world is so f***ing backwards, it hurts. I have gone above and beyond at every job I've had, and I haven't made more than a little over $15 an hour.

My last THREE jobs have suggested I get into a manager position, and all three then screwed me out of it. And in one case, there were times where my check was bigger than the manager's, so that wouldn't have exactly been a step up.

But I've busted my ass, done everybody's job, stayed late, etc. And the most I've gotten is a, "Thanks." I don't want your pats on the back. Thank me on my paycheck. That's why I'm here.

I get the resentment, but for all the athletes, there are the people writing their checks who make money that DWARFS any athlete's. They literally buy and sell these guys, after all. Aim higher with the disgust, is what I'm basically saying.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

I'm baffled that some people still don't understand this. It's one thing to have job openings, it's another for the people looking for work to have the required qualifications. It's a problem over here in France as well; in fact, it might be even worse considering how obsessed with diplomas we are, yet companies value the diplomas they require less and less and keep asking for more. The other big part of the problem is that said companies usually require X amount of years of experience in a field, which immediately disqualifies thousands even if they do have all the qualifications. So people are trying to find jobs, even low-paying ones, to gain experience, but they can't because they need experience to get these jobs.

Another thing to keep in mind is turnover. Modern industries are incapable of thinking on anything but short-term. As a result, it's almost impossible to find indefinite duration employment and when you do, companies will do everything in their power to make you quit, and won't hesitate to resort to psychological harassment. This means that jobs last, what? 2-3 years tops? And typically less than a year (in my company alone, I think I can count the number of colleagues whom are still there form when I started on my fingers). So yeah, there's technically a lot of jobs open at any given time, but that's not new jobs, let alone new career opportunities, it's the same garbage health-ruining, social life-destroying, minimum-wage jobs being refilled and put back on the market over, and over, and over, and over again. And of course, due to this cycle, it's also the same people ending up unemployed over and over again. They've basically created a system where all work is interim work but they get to say it's not. Oh and make no mistake, in spite of there being job openings, companies still make sure to hire as little as possible. There's a reason why no service company ever seems to have enough people on staff to actually accommodate the amount of customers, and why said staff looks constantly overworked (subtle hint: it's because they are). If a company needs 10 employees, you can be sure they'll hire two tops. Or they'll push other employees out.

And yeah, as I just alluded to, finding a job doesn't mean finding a career opportunity. Since major companies now refuse to promote actual workers to management positions and would rather have people who have no idea what they're talking about (but they sure have diplomas saying that they're the best at everything forever, as validated by people who know even less what they're talking about) come form outside and tell people who have been working for years how to do their job. Again, this just further encourages to quit. After all, if your company just makes you miserable, doesn't pay for shit and it's being made clear that the sacrifices you've made will at leats pay off eventually, then why stay?

So yes, there are that many unemployed people at any given time, though most of them just keep cycling between periods of work and unemployment, which is even more f'ed up since it highlights the broken state of modern capitalism, where the lowest people on the ladder are kept in a constant state of financial and social insecurity, all so the greediest, most exploitative elements of society can make an extra quick buck and never have to give anything back, even if it means the inevitable fall of their companies. But who cares because the people running these companies have their golden parachutes and are taking no personal risks? They get rewarded for destroying their companies through sheer greed and incompetence and destroying thousands of jobs in the process!

This is how big companies think, nowadays: everyone owes them everything they want, and they are owed it NOW. Meanwhile, they don't owe anyone anything, and paying someone means buying them.

[arrogantmodel]

Apr 25, 2019 3:10:41 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

Apr 25, 2019 2:20:39 GMT -5 arrogantmodel said:

It blows my mind that athletes, movie stars, and singers make millions of dollars, while people who keep this country moving make jack shit.

Harper and Trout are making hundreds of millions of dollars for hitting and catching a ball. Some kids in their early 20s are about to literally become millionaires overnight, because they're good at football.

This country/world is so f***ing backwards, it hurts. I have gone above and beyond at every job I've had, and I haven't made more than a little over $15 an hour.

My last THREE jobs have suggested I get into a manager position, and all three then screwed me out of it. And in one case, there were times where my check was bigger than the manager's, so that wouldn't have exactly been a step up.

But I've busted my ass, done everybody's job, stayed late, etc. And the most I've gotten is a, "Thanks." I don't want your pats on the back. Thank me on my paycheck. That's why I'm here.

I get the resentment, but for all the athletes, there are the people writing their checks who make money that DWARFS any athlete's. They literally buy and sell these guys, after all. Aim higher with the disgust, is what I'm basically saying.

I get that, but just thinking that people who play a game that we all play for fun and for free, can be set for life at 25 years old is staggering. While teachers and people with important jobs can struggle to get by. And as mentioned, people have to work two or three jobs just to be considered poor.

It's just very frustrating to see people struggle who did nothing wrong, who just want to be comfortable and happy.