RocketCity said:
More and more people are using these job sites to look for jobs than in years past, so it may seem there are more applicants. However, it could also mean that less people are using offline methods to apply for jobs. Not sure how useful this is.
As a matter of fact, since economy tanked we had this talk of "networking" going viral in US. At some point , like 2 years ago, I remember everyone saying how important it is to network. Although it's much different here from what it is in Canada , meaning you have a fair chance of landing a job without a network (however miniscule that chance is , given an insane competition), still it's bad enough for more and more people trying to use personal connections and references instead of wbsites. And, if anything, internet was around and affordable for nearly anyone since early or mid 2000's, so I don't think you can explain the sheer number of applicants simply by emergence of new technology.
It's just the metrics that show what is going on there, and if you know real people applying for jobs here they will tell you stories which will be consistent with what metrics show (I mean most of people I know don't check those metrics, they just say how frustrated they are and can't seem to grasp what's wrong with them and why no one hires them. Some of them, with masters degrees from top schools here, go back to school to get another masters degree or PhD, thinking that improving their qualifications will hep them with job search in future. But, all in all, when I talk to these people , listen to them and hear their stories I understand that the real reason is what I see when I look at metrics, on sites such as career builder dot com. They are just up against insane competition for each vacancy they apply for.)
What did they major in? Too many people in the US are graduating with useless degrees. The college diploma is the new high school diploma unless you major in something that gives you a concrete skill. I agree with you this is not a positive development.
I don't blame you for asking this question, because it's one of those 'popular' questions out there. But I seriously think that such a question is a big time misnomer. It's almost a fraudulent question, if you analyze its' intent.
First of all, if any degree is truly "useless", why schools charge 30K per year for tuition, granting those "useless" degrees?
Why don't they reimburse students for teaching them something so useless at such a steep rate?
If we accept the claim that some degrees useless, we also must accept that lots of colleges , including top rated, are engaged in something unholy, for charging hundreds of thousands people hundreds of thousands of dollars for something that is not worth the paper it's printed on.
Second, people I personally know of are not all holding stereotypical "useless" BA/Liberal Arts" degrees.
Some are (and many of them dutifully work as waiters in restaurants, accepting their fate in a dead end job), but many people I know or hear about are from relatively more difficult programs at prestigious schools. Some are even engineers!
We have now engineers who work in auto-deaerships selling cars! How useless is an engineering degree , tell me what do you think of that?
I don't even believe the DOL statistics. Mainly because people who get frustrated and quit looking for jobs aren't factored in the unemployment statistics. Although there has been a recovery, I don't believe it's as good as the government would lead you to believe.
let me break a secret for you. There was no recovery of a job market, it got only worse since 2008.
When they speak of recovery, what they speak of is the profitability of the companies and rate of return on stocks investment.
Now, for very long time increase in profitability and rate of return on investments also meant a better job market.However, much has changed lately.
First of all, all those domestic corporations that have high income but outsourced to overseas labor mean nothing to someone who wants to get a job here. What do I care if DELL has 400% increase in profitability by taking all of its' operations to some place 15000 miles away from where I am?
Second, and this is what happened since recession hit companies here, the profitability was tied to reduction in costs rather than increase in gross market share.
So, a company that had 200 billion dollar sales may have the same or less market share today (if greater, then it's due to merger , not due to actual increase of share in market, because bad economy we have now also means consumer that has less to spend to increase the gross share of service and product providers). And CEO's are hard pressed to show higher profit no matter what. What do you think they do? They cut costs.
How they achieve that? If company if not already operating overseas, where labor is dirt cheap, then they cut down the staff here, they keep one person and load him or her with the tasks of 3 or 4 (without increasing the salary) and that's how they 'cut costs and increase profitability", because when they go to meet the board of directors they must show good performance to shareholders in such a poor consumer economy (if they don't do it they get fired).
So, you now have a well performing economy , if you look at numbers that show profitability and rate of return on investments, but when you dig it you discover that it's a fig leaf, an appearance or , more accurately, a performance that has little to do with improving a job market here.
I think in the end this will lead to many companies failing (because there is no Perpetuum Mobile, and you can downsize and cut costs only so much, at some point you will need a mass consumer economy to keep afloat, the only thing that kept everything going for a long period of time), but it can take a decade or decades before it happens. Improvements may not even happen during our lifetime, but it's important to understand the mechanism that we are talking about when we say "economy is performing well", and be critical in analyzing how much of that performance trickles down to and results in more jobs and higher pay.
I identify more with the Republicans on economic issues. Among my peers, I would lean to the right of the majority them. Who made the claim that the economy is good as it was in the 90s? All I'm saying is the economy is as good as it's been since the economy cratered in 2008.
I didn't say anything about you claiming economy is as good today as in 9's, but if you were here and turned on TV all you would here would be how superb the economy is. they say it's as good as it never was before. Even better than 90's.
As to how it actually is, read what I wrote above. Profitability and return on an investment is a subject which is (in current world we live in) is entirely different from how many jobs are there and what the applicant to vacancy ratio is.
Also, you can't compare anything to the 90s. That was a once in a generation/lifetime economy. You don't run into the second coming of the Industrial Revolution very often. Perhaps, your view is skewed because you started working during the 90s. Had you started working in the 70s or early part of the 80s, you wouldn't think the 90s economy was normal. If we were still living in the 90s, job searching would be the least of my problems. I'd have a harder time keeping the recruiters from bothering me. Speaking of politics, I thought Clinton got too much credit for the tech boom. It would've happened regardless of who was in office.
Not sure what exactly you mean, but what I am saying is that I have eyes and ears, and some gray matter above my shoulder. I have a memory of how things were throughout my lifetime, and what I know and what I remember is enough for me to say that this job market is as bad as it never was before. And when I went to DOL and researched statistics, I saw how things were steadily going up since 30's throughout 1999, and how everything started to go down since then, and especially in the last 7 years. these last 7 years were the worst years in a job market since may be 70's , and even then (if you ask people who were around in 70's) things were better than they are now.
And when you look at statistics of 60's or before, you must understand that you are looking at single sex (working male) type of economy, when even minimum wage was putting your kids to school and keep everyone fed , with roof over the head. According to standards they had back then, they were doing Ok, not stressing over finding a job, so even though statistically labor participation rate before 60's was low, still, if you make adjustments for difference in how things were back then you understand it was not nearly as hard life than it is now.
What am I supposed to compare current economy to? 1920's? 1930'?
