Where are the Jobs? Why don't you get a real job!?

Recently I feel as though people have switched from yelling about there being no jobs to yelling at people for not having a job or not having a real job. Has anybody noticed this switch? I feel like the second complaint leaves out some questions. First off when people complain that others should just get a real job it usually revolves around people setting out for higher wages, either through requesting for a higher minimum wage or going on strike to demand a higher wages or benefits.

My questions are these, what happened to people who got truly screwed by the recession? There are people who are considered long term unemployed or long term underemployed. The longer they stay in this position, involuntarily, the less likely they are to ever get rehired (many of whom had families before the recession began). Are people just ignoring this group of people? If they are not ignoring this group are people implicitly suggesting that the economy has recovered so much that even they should be able to find work which pays enough to support their family?

How do you guys see this?

No.

I see a lot of people complaining about a lack of jobs.

When Squealer releases the quarterly labor figures, he always uses a definition of unemployment that excludes people who have been unemployed for so long that they've given up looking.

For a more accurate picture, one should read commentaries by people like Paul Craig Roberts, who reveals that the real US unemployment rate is closer to 23% than to any of the numbers published by the Ministry of Truth.

Paul Craig Roberts – The U.S. Economy Continues Its Collapse

Really? You haven't seen people get upset at people who want minimum wage raised to a rate above what they believe is acceptable and tell them to go get some skills and real job instead? Or say that their job was never meant to support a family? I see it every time there is an article about minimum wage or groups of employees striking.

@Serraph105: Ive heard people say, "well that job isnt meant so you can afford to pay rent and car insurance, its meant as like a summer job until you find a real job." Biggest horseshat ive ever heard. All jobs should be able to provide you with a livable wage. Maybe not the best wage, but livable none the less.

It will change i feel, i think its getting better. Jobs are everywhere right now, but at the same time, they arnt everywhere and they arnt as dependable. Most people look for some place they might can retire or get good benefits, but these are the jobs that are hard to find or get.

Its a double edge sword, you go searching for a good job with benefits, but then you see it says you need schooling to better qualify. So then you drop 20 grand in schooling only to find out most need around a good 2 year experience. Now your faced with internships and or some other form of low risk work. You have to be hungry and aggressive out there. You have to fight for what you want in life.

The good jobs that are available many people can't qualify for them, they can't pass a dreg test, they can't pass a criminal back ground check, or are not educated enough to be able to be trained for the job. Government policies have hindered good job creation. Raising the minimum wage for fast food workers will only put them out of work. The fast food business will just automate and will need 90% less employees. You are seeing signs of it now. The business tax rate has keep American business wealth over seas and many companies are buying overseas companies to be able list their company in a foreign country for a better tax rate. There are approximately 93,000,000 Americans of working age not working. People are allowed to immigrate illegally into the United States and we want to bring in refugees into the country which just add to the problem. No one want to stop this for various selfish reasons. The government knows all of this but for political reasons will not address the problem instead they just give a blind eye to it or keep instituting policies that make the situation worse.

So I really don't know what job problems are these days.

For the record

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/30/blog-posting/are-90-million-americans-not-working-or-looking-wo/

Not where I'm from. Here in Canada, we have a fair minimum wage.

And a MINIMUM wage isn't meant to be a livable wage or support a family. It's meant to provide you with some income to help build into something better. Even places like McDonald's offer training, skill-development and advancement opportunities for even the lowest level employee. Not everyone takes advantage of those though, and are complacent in remaining on a shit wage doing shit work.

@foxhound_fox: Ah yes Canada would be a different ball game.

There are jobs, plenty of them, but those jobs may not be the kind of jobs you would want to do, if there were no jobs why would undocumented workers would want to cross the border by the hundreds ever day ? and interesting ..... most of them find a job really fast.

Unemployment rate is suppose to be at 5% and I think real unemployment should be around 10%. The problem imo has to do with wages and salaries not keeping up with inflation and the rising standard of living as well as taxes, insurance costs, overregulation on small businesses, lack of benefits, and the 40 hour workweek (should be shortened) and so on and so forth. Of course there are other factors such as having a criminal record and disabilities. Also, the standard of living really depends on the state and local county. You can be making $50,000 but depending on the state and locality, you can either be well off or barely making it.

But even if someone does have a job, it may not be enough to cover costs and increase their personal status through schooling which is ridiculous. College is great but it shouldn't be the end all, be all solution, and not every job should require a bachelors. For my family, it's difficult to find a well paying job due to lack of education (even though he has plentiful experience) and age.

For jobs, it's not just about having a job, it's about the salary/wage, the benefits, and the hours that person is working. You can be technically employed but really you're just underemployed or employed but barely making it through.

@drunk_pi: The U6 numbers are currently at 9.9%, but it's worth noting that it's down from 17.1% in October 2009. That means the U6 has actually dropped more than the official rate which shows a drop of 5% in the same time period.

All that being said I still don't understand when people get mad at others who are unable to get a job (or a better job) while ignoring the recent recession.

I understand that, "people who have been unemployed for so long that they've given up looking," is something a lot of people reference and to many it's a valid point. However, I just don't get it on a personal level.

There was a switch? I've seen both complaints for the past decade or longer. IMO, any legit job is a respectable job. They are contributing to the economy, paying taxes instead of mooching off of others, selling drugs...etc. How much they are paid has nothing to do with their happiness, that's an individualistic thing they have to find within themselves so anyone else's idea that they should seek higher wages is nothing more than their own opinion and says a lot about their own greed and level of contentment in life.

There has been, likely always will be a group of people that are under employed/over employed or unemployable. It's as much of a product of their environment as it is their own mentality. Some people have personality traits where they just tend to fall into good jobs time after time regardless of economy and others who say they want to work but yet never hold a job regardless of economy. The recession hurt blue collar workers especially hard without effecting the chronic wealthy and poor in regards to lifestyles but how well they adapt is up to them

Several people who lost employment due to the recession were trained in other fields and eventually re entered the workforce. Outside of that, no idea.

For myself, I know I very luckily acquired a job in the education world, so I am generally compassionate towards those who were ill affected by the recession. Prior to that job, I worked at an after-school program with a split shift while going to school. Started at 6, classes from 9-1, then work again from 2-6. And I was barely making ends meet.

The main problem I see is the assumption that those who got "hit" by the recession somehow deserved it, but that's the American dream for you. Survival of the fittest in a meritocratic system that is totally not meritocratic at all.

Yes, I have noticed. I watched a production about the situation in the United States in which there are many jobs available, at the moment, but many of these openings are low wage positions. Based on other research, I have found that Tennessee, for example, has many low wage positions open and a low unemployment rate with respect to the national average, but not many well-paying ones, yet. Nashville is increasingly gaining recognition as a modernizing technological hub, so the high paying computer science field positions are coming, yet it is a gradual process rather than that which is instantaneous, of course.

What pisses me off is welfare. These people live for free, what the hell, work is hard and they don't have to, so they get fat and lazy.

Take welfare away from the equation and we got ourselves a good economy.

Well the social safety net really does help in economic downturns. I mean there are people who want to work and can't get a job and would likely fall into a poverty that they will never be able to recover from. In fact you have to prove you are looking for work just to get it in my state.

I'm all for ending corporate welfare though. If you are a company that can only exist by paying their employees so little that they need welfare (not to mention while simultaneously receiving large tax breaks) to survive then your company probably shouldn't exist as it helps very few and hurts the overall economy.

@Serraph105: Unemployment benefits is a good economic safety net. It's crazy how they expect people to find a new job in 16 weeks though. Companies need to do a better job at hiring people.

Yeah there is nothing worse than working for a company where they constantly remind you to work harder or the company goes under and work effort doesn't reciprocate a good paycheck.

The stats back up my comment. "There are 90,000,000 people of working age not working. The may not be working for various reasons, but they are not working.

And...? Your comment serves no real purpose then. From that article:

• People age 16 to 17, who likely are in high school: 9 million

• People who are enrolled in either two- or four-year colleges: 21 million

• People age 65 and older, who have reached retirement age: 40 million people

"That means 20 million people are of normal working age, not in college and not working. That’s less than one-quarter the amount repeatedly cited in the blogosphere."

If you wish to continue to utilize disingenuous statistics, go for it, but it isn't going to have the effect you are hoping for. You wish to show the doom and gloom of 90 million, even though you are including high school kids and senior citizens past retirement age in that figure.

@StrifeDelivery: out of that 20 million you can also subtract couples where only one spouse has to work, and seasonal construction work where most only have to work 8 months to cover living expenses, trust fund brats, day traders, second hand sellers, professional fisherman, farming and farming related jobs are rarely reported as employment, people that got lucky with mineral rights, professional gamblers...

You're right in that we can continue to chip away at the 20 million figure. My problem stemmed from his persistence on the 90 million figure, which was grossly inaccurate and is simply used to peddle doom and gloom in our current political atmosphere.

It is probably because I am 27 and had stopped college for a few years, but what I see more than anything is this insistence that you need to go to college yet you get NO real help in getting it done outside of student loans, which BTW don't pay my rent, car payment, phone bill, etc.

I have a solid job for no college experience but will be working full fucking time just to pay my bills while going to school full time and I have no idea why this became the norm. Really would love to just focus on school while working part-time for extra money but that isn't possible in this world...

Employment is still a serious problem in the US. Things are better, but not great. I graduated college in 2007; that was heart-breaking, I mean you go to school and people tell you it will pay off and you finish and there's nothing out there. Took a shit cooking job while I looked for another 8 months for a job I actually wanted.

Another horrible outcome I did not expect was employer abuse. The people that actually have jobs can't afford to mess up or complain, so you have fewer people doing the SAME amount of work as a properly-staffed company, and employers are like "Hey, we don't need that many people after all!" while the current employees are stressed, overworked, and underpayed.

It's bullshit. There is nothing wrong with a 40-hour work week, maternity/paternity leave, and 3-weeks vacation; instead you have people working 60-hour weeks, getting fired because they have kids, and maybe getting one week vacation AFTER working for two years. The US is back-asswards when it comes to employment. It's one of the reasons I am borderline socialist (not quite there yet, almost though).

Yes, that's one of the points that more critical commentators (like Paul Craig Roberts) have been trying to make.

Losing jobs mainly in manufacturing, heavy industry and high technology, then regaining jobs mainly in the basic services sector (waitresses etc.) doesn't represent a "recovery". It represents a lurch towards a Third World economy.

A hospital that "retrenches" its cardiac surgeon and its neurosurgeon and then hires two new nurses may be employing the same number of people, but it's not quite the same hospital any longer.

We corrected him on this exact same figure, literally, a year ago. Either he is willfully ignorant on this matter or he just can't be taught. Either way, it isn't worth your time.

No kidding. I worked an average of 76 hours per week for several years (I know the exact figure because I led my team and took our weekly hour figures to management meetings every month), and every time I devised a way to save hours of work every week, they cut our team again. Started working over 80 hours a week with a team of eleven. Ended working 80 hours a week with a team of 5. It was a miracle I found the time to look for another job.

I was soooooo happy when I could finally tell that company to take a long walk off a short pier.

Its hard to say what a livable wage is. I used to live on $10 an hour. I barely made it, but I was able to afford rent, gas, groceries and that's about it.

@plageus900: It just means you can afford the basics. You can afford average rent, average food, average medical/dental, average cloths and average utilities bills.

If you work 40 hours a week and still cant afford the basics, then you dont have a livable wage.

Among the 99%, only socialists and communists expect to receive a livable wage.

/sarcasm

Its even worse then that when i went to vegas with my mom and sister this summer lots of homesless people on the street such a stark constrast of wealth displays there between the haves and the have not. Everytime they would see one they commented they should stop being so lazy and get a job and work for the money so they no longer have to work on the sreets i didn't say anything but one time they did i got mad and punched some glass alonside a walk way with my fist there where like wtf was that I just told them the glass is pretty fucking though here! This dave chappelle skit explains this kind of thinking perfectly!

Dave Chappelle - Sesame Street

@mattbbpl: I'm aware. My correction of jimb was more for other people who might read his comment than anything else. Hence the lack of much substance on my part.

I agree with this completely ESPECIALLY the employer abuse part.

It is AMAZING the lack of respect employers have for their employees. I have seen it constantly as a nursing assistant. It is not just geared toward us CNA's either (who have to get training and be certified by the State BTW) but even towards the nurses who have to take years of college to get their degree.

Everyone is essentially treated as completely replaceable and that leads to an absolute SHIT work environment.

@LostProphetFLCL: Hellllllo nurse !

Hahaha.....

For the uninitiated:

I am feeling inspired to do a sexy photo shoot in my CNA scrubs now!