Unemployed, under employed and people that have just quit looking
This is in part from the Economic policy institute (https://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/)
And From Fortune Magazine (https://fortune.com/2016/09/08/older-workers-jobs/)
NPR (https://www.npr.org/2017/08/31/547646709/u-s-employers-struggle-to-match-workers-with-open-jobs)
I always hear from the talking heads in Washington and big news that the employment rate is at a seventeen year low. But it is only because they don’t count the missing people, the people that cannot find jobs in their fields have part time jobs or have trouble being hired.
According to a lot of large IT companies (Microsoft, Google, and Apple) to name a few. If you do what I did and look up companies that cannot find the trained employees they need, there are over fifty that I found in a general search. But the people they bring in have to be trained for the most part in what they are doing.
There is a glut of experienced people in every field in almost every state, ready to be hired and can be trained very quickly. Some will say that the local IT ask for too much money, I think as long as it is a living wage they would jump at getting a IT job. I have been offered $10 to $15 an hour here in St Louis, the minimum wage is $12 to $15 an hour here. That is not enough to live on, if I got a second job for about the same amount it would be a wage that most could live on.
I am over fifty and don’t want to shave my head like a lot of folks hiding gray, baldness. But when I have gone in for interviews they are impressed in a phone interview (I have over eighteen years’ experience in the IT field, from Security to Infrastructure support.) At the in person interview they start talking about lifting fifty to seventy pounds moving computer equipment.
Working late and lots of walking. I would not apply for the position if I could not do it.
If the large companies gave the IT people that are here a chance they would not regret it.
From Economic policy institute
Updated July 7, 2017
In a complex economy, conventional measures sometimes fall short.
In today’s labor market, the unemployment rate drastically understates the weakness of job opportunities. This is due to the existence of a large pool of “missing workers”–potential workers who, because of weak job opportunities, are neither employed nor actively seeking a job. In other words, these are people who would be either working or looking for work if job opportunities were significantly stronger. Because jobless workers are only counted as unemployed if they are actively seeking work, these “missing workers” are not reflected in the unemployment rate.
As part of its ongoing effort to create the metrics needed to assess how well the economy is working for America’s broad middle class, EPI tracks “missing worker” estimates, updated on this page on the first Friday of every month immediately after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its jobs numbers. The “missing worker” estimates provide policymakers with a key gauge of the health of the labor market.
Current “missing worker” estimates at a glance
Updated July 7, 2017, based on most current data available
- Total missing workers, June 2017: 1,500,000
- Unemployment rate if missing workers were looking for work: 5.2%
- Official unemployment rate: 4.4%
- Missing Workers are found across the board: Missing workers,* by age, June 2017
Share of missing workers**Number of missing workers
55-64 57.4% 1,590,000 65-74 13.4% 370,000 75+ 1.8% 50,000
From Fortune Magazine
By Mark Miller and Reuters
September 8, 2016
Six years after the Great Recession ended, jobless older workers are the forgotten story of the economic recovery. U.S. employers are creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs every month, but millions of older workers who want a job cannot find work.
The economic data documenting the problem is clear. So is one of the most important causes: age discrimination.
Consider the government jobs report released late last week. On the surface, job growth look is looking solid—the national jobless rate in August was unchanged at 4.9%, and 151,000 new jobs were created. More than 270,000 new jobs were added in each of the previous two months.
The jobless rate for workers over 55 was even lower, at just 3.5%. But that figure is deceptive. If you add in workers holding part-time jobs who would rather be working full time, and unemployed workers who have recently given up on seeking work, the jobless rate for older workers last month was 8.7%, according to analysis of the government figures by the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA) at the New School.
Further, if you add jobless workers who gave up looking after more than four weeks, the 55-plus unemployment rate is a whopping 12%, SCEPA analysis shows. Looked at another way, 2.5 million older Americans want a job but do not have one.
From NPR
In the United States, there's a record number of jobs open: around 6 million. That's just about one job opening for every officially unemployed person in the country.
Matching the unemployed with the right job is difficult, but there are some things employers could do to improve the odds.
Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for the job site Glassdoor, says U.S. employers often complain that workers don't have the skills needed for the jobs available. That is true for some upper-level health care and technology jobs. "But for the most part, it doesn't look to be like there is a skills gap," Chamberlain says. "That's not the main reason why there are many job openings."
Why America's Wages Are Barely Rising
Chamberlain says that with unemployment so low and the U.S. labor force growing slowly, there's no doubt it is harder for companies to find workers. But he says if that were the main problem, you would see wages rising more rapidly in the economy — and that's not the case in many industries.
Part of the hiring problem, Chamberlain says, lies in company hiring policies.
Peter Cappelli, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, agrees. He says one problem is that companies are posting openings with required qualifications that aren't really necessary for the job.
"They're just asking for the moon, and not expecting to pay very much for it," Cappelli says. "And as a result they [can't] find those people. Now that [doesn't] mean there was nobody to do the job; it just [means] that there was nobody at the price they were willing to pay."
Ok that’s enough venting, what do you think?
Sidney Cook