Some Firms Struggle to Hire Despite High Unemployment

[hack89]

Source: Wall Street Journal

With a 9.5% jobless rate and some 15 million Americans looking for work, many employers are inundated with applicants. But a surprising number say they are getting an underwhelming response, and many are having trouble filling open positions.

The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can't qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work like the food servers that Pilot Flying J seeks for its truck stops.

Matching people with available jobs is always difficult after a recession as the economy remakes itself. But Labor Department data suggest the disconnect is particularly acute this time around. Since the economy bottomed out in mid-2009, the number of job openings has risen more than twice as fast as actual hires, a gap that didn't appear until much later in the last recovery. The disparity is most notable in manufacturing, which has had among the biggest increases in openings. But it is also appearing in other areas, such as business services, education and health care.

Longer-term trends are at play. For one, the U.S. education system hasn't been producing enough people with the highly specialized skills that many companies, particularly in manufacturing, require to keep driving productivity gains. "There are a lot of people who are unemployed, but those aren't necessarily the people employers are looking for," says David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704895004575395491314812452.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

[DJ13]

1. I tried hiring some people to paint my house for $10

No one wanted the job.

Those unemployed people are sure picky!

[Tempest]

2. Were you supplying all the paint and materials?

Where do you live? What are the conditions, weather and house? Were you supplying snacks and refreshments?

$10 ain't shit depending on your answers.

[Salviati]

3. I think that's the point.

[Tempest]

4. After re-reading it a few times, I think you're right

Sarcasm doesn't translate well into the written language.

[AnnetteJacobs]

35. I think that was $10 for the WHOLE HOUSE

Not $10 per hour. That's my read on it, anyway.

[seattleblue]

11. Are you suggesting people should turn down Machinist pay now?

Did you read about the jobs?

[Phil The Cat]

16. If we eliminated Production For Greed

and substituted Distribution By Need, and instituted (a) A national "color blind orientation blind" employment system that assigns everyone a job based on their skills, background, and location, (b) free relocation and housing where labor is required, and (c) ended corporate ownership of real estate, production and distribution facilities, oil, ore, etc., so the PEOPLE can get what they need to live...

WE WOULDN'T BE IN THIS CHAOTIC MESS!

[uncle ray]

26. machinist pay is laugable nowadays.

who would want to invest their own time and money into school and tools for $13 an hour?

[onethatcares]

5. ahh, the educational system hasn't been producing enough

people with the highly specialized skilled bullshit.

All someone has to do is get a $40,000.00 loan to go to a school that doesn't have a placement bureau. That same person, who is probably unemployed, will not qualify for the loan to get some training at the school that wants 40K to train that person.

So company moves factory overseas where foreign government subsidizes all schools, including universities, in order for their citizens to obtain training for said high tech jobs.

Meanwhile, our schools fall into disrepair and we fire our teachers.

Aww, fuck it, it just don't make any sense anymore. Does it?

[CrownPrinceBandar]

7. Yup...

We push our kids to get a college education and get specialized so they can be competitive, and then POOF! they get to hear: "Sorry. You're too specialized and we can't afford to pay a salary commensurate with your education." Gotta love those ever-moving goalposts of the American Dream.

[seattleblue]

12. One of the companies offered a training program.

Most companies don't depend on the educational system to produce people with "the highly specialized skilled bullshit" to use your words.

[onethatcares]

15. context,

"highly specialized skilled" bullshit.

For the 8 years * was in office the meme was that the unemployed could get retrained for the jobs of the future. The funding for those wanting retraining never materialized. In fact, pell grants became extinct, schools tossed their vocational programs out the window to save money and the jobs moved overseas where the governments see education is a major plus.

Apparently, our government doesn't feel that need.

Wanna apply at devrie university? Maybe they'll place you somewhere.

I apologize for my snarkyness but a machinist should be making 18+hr with benefits. Otherwise you're tossing many mis made parts out the window.

[seattleblue]

19. An untrained employee wishing to become a Machinist

should accept less than that. Anyone who wishes to become a skilled trades person starts out untrained. No one is born with the knowledge. I agree that once trained the wage should move up to the appropriate level. The problem we have is so many of these small companies can't compete economically with the industry and skills we have outsourced to Asia, etc.

[okieinpain]

39. I don't understand why the whole free trade deal is so diffucult to

deal with. if you want to sell it here, build it here. that allows companies to sell there products any where in the world, and workers in those places to get a decent job. but oh well I'm just a numb nuts what do I know.

[sfwriter]

20. That job paid $26,000 a year for a machinist...

He graduated 16 of his first class of 24.

Great start for those guys. Four more classes and he has it.

But he shouldn't whine that trained machinists aren't beating down his door.

[Donnachaidh]

6. It used to be that companies would actually TRAIN people for jobs

Now they want people to be ready-trained, but they don't necessarily don't want to pay the SALARY that should come to the ready-trained applicant. Basically, they want the best of both worlds.

:nopity:

[seattleblue]

13. You didn't read the article

The companies were offering training.

[sfwriter]

17. I read that article, it lacked details... and was narrowly pro business.

Like what was the "training wage" for those machinists? That Flying J cooks position is unlikely to involve training or mileage or childcare or anything to make it worth the drive to the outskirts of BFE.

It costs me money to do anything but freelance writing out of my house. I could not take a $7 an hour job and pay for childcare. I'm better off underemployed and taking care of my kids.

The full pay for those machinists was listed as $13 an hour, about $26,000 a year for a TRAINED MACHINIST. Do you think THAT has anything to do with it? The training wage must be lower.

Tell you what, offer to let me gas up my vehicle on nights I work and pay for childcare, and I'll take the $7 cooks position. Otherwise, the cruel math of the situation is, I'd lose money taking it. Once you take $200 in childcare and $25 in gas for the drive out to the truckskirts of town, their ain't anything left for a week's work.

I found a link to the job listings for Flying J, just google them and cook, - they run from $7.50 to $11 depending on market. That's $15,000 to $22,000 and says nothing about the hours.

I guess I'm insane for expecting people to make enough to live on, much less be able to afford that job.

The only jobless person interviewed in that story supported my assertion, holding out for a living wage, AND FINDING IT.

Notice the guy looking for machinists said benefits were keeping people away. At what he pays, I'm sure they are.

[seattleblue]

21. I don't know what the business outlook is for the machine shop in the article.

But it is a small company and I'll bet they are competing against outsourced industry and jobs. It is rare that a small business like that is making a ton of money. But the article did not really get into that part of it.

[sfwriter]

23. $26,000... AVG pay $32k - $52k

Nuff said...

They interviewed a guy complaining that people were not desperate enough to work for little enough while offering only 81% of the ENTRY level on the field.

The whole article was made to support this guys assertion that jobless benefits were at fault.

It was Wall Street Journal though, what do you expect?

[TygrBright]

8. I think all you need to know is summed up in these two paragraphs:

First:

The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can't qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work like the food servers that Pilot Flying J seeks for its truck stops.

Then they go on to note, with total clueless abandon:

The difficulty finding workers limits the economy's ability to grow. It is particularly troubling at a time when 4.3% of the labor force has been out of work for more than six months—a level much higher than after any other recession since 1948.

It's as though these oscos have a total disconnect from what "the economy" actually MEANS. To the Wall Street Journal, "The Economy" obviously means "The machine that creates wealth for the few by exploiting cheap labor, moving offshore, avoiding regulation, and producing the absolute minimum level of quality we can charge outrageous prices for."

To the REST of us, "The Economy" means "the structure of institutional assumptions and rules that allow people to exchange value for equal value to produce wealth that supports the entire society."

The staggering cluelessness of these people is revealed in every syntactic choice in the article.

Pathetic.

Effing pathetic.

amazedly,
Bright

[TygrBright]

9. And furthermore:

At Mechanical Devices, which supplies parts for earthmovers and other heavy equipment to manufacturers such as Caterpillar Inc., part owner Mark Sperry says he has been looking for $13-an-hour machinists since early this year.

Dudes.

Try looking for $25-an-hour machinists. Betcha you'll have to beat the applicants away from the door with a club.

Mind you, $25/hour isn't a patch on what skilled machinists were making in the 1970s (adjusted for inflation,) but it's at least marginally competitive.

Just try it. I dare ya. Go on, reduce yer fucking shareholder dividends and yer owner drawdowns and offer an honest,competitive wage. Here's what'll happen, I'll guarantee:

You'll get a huge pool of applicants to choose from. If you choose the best ones, give them a fair benefits package, decent working hours and conditions, treat them like human beings and give them some say in how the production line is run and other relevant decisions, you'll have an almost zero rate of turnover and your personnel management costs will go way below industry standards. Your quality and productivity will soar. In five years, you'll be outcompeting everyone else in your sector.

Go on, TRY IT! Just TRY IT! I dare ya!

exasperatedly,
Bright

[mbperrin]

22. Good gawd, no, $13 is shit! We have a general handyman who gets $15

per hour plus a free apartment and bills paid, except for his cell phone.

I managed machine shops in Odessa and Houston 20 years ago, and we paid $45/hour plus a full rack of benefits for trained machinists. We charged customers $225 per hour for their services, so it was a good deal for the company. We paid trainees $22.50. Adjust for inflation, that would be $67.96 and $33.98 now. Throw in medical, vision, dental, and disability fully paid by the company, and congratulations, you've made it back to 1992!

Perhaps some of these companies will someday figure that riding a horse until it's dead is wasteful.










WTF am I thinking about companies realizing anything? Their CEOs get hundreds of millions for riding their current companies into the ground.

[Honeycombe8]

27. If someone needs a job, $13 is better than nothing.

Esp. if the job provides insurance.

It's not fair, no. But if I lost my job, I'd have trouble finding other work at my age (mid 50's), despite my being in excellent health, not overweight, energetic, etc., etc. All that boring stuff. Not many employers hire people in my age bracket. I would take a job at Burger King or McDonald's, if I had to. I doubt they'd hire me; why would they, when they don't need my experience, and they can hire a more energetic person who is 35 years younger, and who they feel more comfortable bossing around than someone who reminds them of their mother?

I wouldn't take a machinist job, though. I'd be afraid I'd get seriously injured, because I'm not used to that sort of job or heavy equipment and the like. Nothing is worth the risk of getting injured. But they wouldn't hire me, anyway. Even for $13/hr.

What they're really complaining about: the feds have cracked down on the hiring of illegal immigrants. That's who takes $13/hr machinist jobs. So now there's a glut of job openings w/o applicants. It'll even out; the employers will gradually increase the pay; the unemployed workers will gradually accept lower pay. I hope. Or the company will go out of business, and the unemployed workers will become homeless.

[onethatcares]

28. a machinist job is one that deals with

large machinery that's true, but. It involves being able to set those machines up to tolerances of thousands in run out, run in, wobble, etc. It requires using dial indicators, micrometers, and a myriad of other tools that will kill your eyes over a l0 year span. It involves layout and welding. The jobs are not just running the machines, they have robots to do that.

$13.00 an hour, wow, just wow. I was under the impression that "illegal" immigrants took the jobs American workers didn't want to do because they were too dirty,dangerous or just didn't pay anything. I must have missed something here.:banghead:

[Blue_Tires]

31. exactly....

[DavidDvorkin]

10. In the IT business

employers are now requiring far more skills than they used to, and offering less money, because they know there are lots of people with those skills out there, desperate for a job at any salary.

They're taking advantage of the bad situation workers find themselves in, and they're blaming the workers. Nothing new there. This happens with every recession. But let's put the blame where it belongs: greedy, callous employers, not incompetent or disdainful workers.

[Imajika]

14. Yup, exactly right...

Employers are taking advantage of the situation. Some of it they feel is necessity, if their competitors do it they feel that they have to - but much of it is sheer greed.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

18. There are always skills that are in short supply,

We have trouble finding people with useful language skills (and we define that to mean you will do your job interview entirely in that language, and not just order a pizza or proposition women) and people with a background in litigation support software such as Summation and these programs don't come with "For Dummies" books. When we hire people with an IT background they tend to quit at the first opportunity, even for lower pay because they find it boring and beneath them. The last ones parting shot was "I didn't get a Computer Science degree to be a secretary", he did apparently get a computer science degree to work at the Apple Store though - this is infuriating because the software tends to be beyond the skill of typical administrative staff. This leaves us at the mercy of a handful of expensive consultants who are walking conflicts of interest.

People with certain skills also don't think to look for work in certain places even if the work is there, last year we found two people with the skills we were looking for in completely random places by fluke encounters, such as a Japanese woman working at Starbucks who was speaking perfect European Spanish to another customer. We stumbled on a language geek just by standing behind a family of Spanish tourists in a coffee shop. She also spoke French and Italian - and obviously Japanese. She had been looking for work as a magazine or newspaper writer. Communications department of an international business never crossed her mind and she had never heard of us three blocks away.

People don't think about their skills, people think about their job description and can be threatened by or simply oblivious to the possibility of approaching other industries.

[sfwriter]

24. Should have been titled?

Some firms struggle to hire because they offer shit for wages.
Some firms struggle to hire because they are only offering 80% of an entry level wage.
Some firms struggle to hire because their benefits are nonexistent.
Some firms struggle to hire because their workplaces are unlivable. (Applies to one here in town. No skilled editor will approach him.)

I'm sure you can think of a few more.

[hack89]

25. Or perhaps "life is tough for middle skilled workers" ?

for that's the issue. I work in a high skilled industry and we have a difficult time recruiting talented workers.

I just think the US economy has undergone a fundamental change and that certain types of jobs are gone forever.

[No Elephants]

29. I call bullshit on the Wall Street Journal.

[hack89]

30. Thanks for the factless rebutal. nt

[AmandaRuth]

32. Something I have been becoming more aware of

in the past year, which I think is part of the problem, is a big disconnect between the remaining middle class and the long term unemployed (such as myself). I hope I don't make anyone mad, and these thoughts haven't crystalized in a manner that I can provide real clarity.

OK, employers are using this economy to depress wages, no doubt. But what is troubling to me is some of the reaction I get or read from people that are in safe (for now, ha) middle class jobs. They can't seem to understand why a 50 year old that formerly made between 50,000 and 60,000 a year can't just up and take a job making 22,000 a year. Because if you do, there goes everything you have worked for, for the last 30 or so years. You can't make the mortgage payment (and maybe you only have 10 years left), and pay health, auto and house insurance, you can't take vacations, you can't save for retirement, you can't put your kids through college. It is a weird feeling when you discover that your country, society and way of life doesn't need you anymore at the young age of 50, and I am talking about a sizable portion of the population here. I was actually trying to explain this to a still middle class worker, and he got all puffed up and red in the face and screamed at me, "WE DON"T OWE YOU ANYTHING"..... I never did ask him who the "we" was, and why he personally thought he might owe me something.

The thing is, as long as it isn't happening TO THEM, it isn't happening. And not to fear monger, but all the middle managers, planners, accountants, firefighters, police men, nurses and so on, that are still in "middle class" territory, should be aware that they could be next, and certainly when there is a huge skilled labor pool for those type of skills, that has shown they are willing to work for less. The middle income jobs, those making between 35,000 - 75,000 seem to be disappearing.

And the part about training is so true. I checked into "retraining" programs that were available to people in my situation. Auto shop? Are you kidding me? A 50 year old lady doing auto body work? I was hoping for some sort of tech training (designing websites, e-commerce), but nothing. I ended up financing my own retraining, which is fine, I'm not complaining. I just hope it pays off, I cannot afford a low wage job, and all I am talking about is keeping the house I raised my children in, and hope to retire in.

[Yavin4]

34. I May Have An Answer for You

I've noticed that people are ego-centric. Lots of people go through their whole lives thinking that bad shit will never happen to them. They'll never be laid off. They'll never get sick. So, they don't have any empathy for people who do go through hard times. Thus, they're less likely to vote for social saftey net programs like national health care or extensions of UE.

[raccoon]

38. You got that right. And these same assholes, I mean people, think VERY differently when it's

them, or their kids or grandkids, who needs a social safety net program, such as Medicaid, extensions of UE.

Some of these dumbasses believe in a just world; ie, people get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Google "just world theory."

I have no patience with these fools; they need to have their heads surgically removed from their arses.* I wonder if national health care would pay for that surgery?


* However, if they live long enough, the universe will slap them up side the head with a two-by-four. She has a way of doing that.

[raccoon]

37. Great post. Consider starting a thread with it. nt

[county worker]

43. What you say makes it very clear to me why we need to really get going on organizing again.

A union is the only thing that gives a worker some leverage. I'm 64 and am still working in accounting. If it were not for the union I am in and the civil service rules I would have been out of here two years ago.
We got a new manager and he is a real control freak that only wants young recently graduated yes people to work for him. He tried in numerous ways to get rid of 5 of us who are all over 60.

He could not do it so we are now people with no real authority, mainly clerks who all report to someone between him and us. I can sense at times that it irks the shit out of him to have to rely on any of us old farts for anything.

[Yavin4]

33. Some Need To Realize That Machinist Work Is Not Skilled Labor

It's extremely, highly skilled labor, even more skilled than most IT, legal, and finance jobs. It requires your full concentration at all times, dexterity, knowledge of math, knowledge of computers. It's no joke.

Foreign competitors are cheaper because they don't give a damn about safety, and they'll work 20 people to death in order to get something done that would take one, highly skille U.S. worker to do.

Paying $13 an hour is beyond a fucking joke. You can make more money managing a McDs and bossing around teenagers.

We need to get the unions back and fast.

[Kat45]

36. Article says people have a hard time adjusting to low-pay unskilled work

Why should they be expected to? People with some skills would be pretty bored--and wasting the skills they have--doing unskilled work, and the low pay, which would not be a living wage, would be inadequate to cover their living expenses. No, I'm not talking about extravagant expenditures, nor am I talking about several Starbucks coffee drinks a week. I'm talking about the mortgage (or rent) that has been affordable to them throughout their lives. I'm talking about food, gasoline, child care--the normal expenses of living.

Would the WSJ folks expect a laid-off investment banker to adjust to unskilled, low-pay work? I didn't think so. Nor would they expect the laid-off investment banker to adjust to a middle-skill, middle-wage job.

[daleo]

40. Wall Street bankers had a hard time adjusting to $1 million a year, after the bailout

So, they insisted the government quit stifling their pay, and they got their way, if I recall correctly.

[high density]

41. Yes, that's the way to fix the economy, by having people "adjust to low-pay, unskilled work"

In a consumer-based economy like ours, it obviously works best when the consumers have no money. :crazy:

[Practical Machinist]

42. Unemployment in the manufacturing industry

Thanks for the post hack90. The manufacturing industry can be hard for both employees and employers. Read comments about this article from real machinists at www.PracticalMachinist.com -

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/manufacturing-america-europe/wsj-article-bloomington-ill-machine-shop-208912/