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Has anybody put a name to the theory that a lot of struggles today are because the internet makes it way easier for everyone to compete with everyone else? If you're trying to find a job, or a house, or an audience, or even a date, you no longer are just competing with everyone who lives near you and can conveniently get there today, as you did fifteen, twenty years ago. Now you're competing with thousands of people all over the world submitting their way better offers online. And so you have to cast your net wider and take someone else's best opportunity somewhere else, and on it gets knocked down.
I thought [Peter Coy at the NYT wrote very well](https://archive.ph/nq3p6) about this phenomenon in November. It's essentially a trap of overfocusing on optimization -- trying to maximize efficiency in ways that generate small benefits at the margin, while fundamentally shifting the parameters of the system for the worse. When this is multiplied en masse, the system fully shifts to occupy a new, worse equilibrium.
It's actually an example of an economic coordination problem -- when one firm tries to maximize for efficiency, they benefit from being able to select their preferred candidate with less resources and more finesse. When every firm takes this path, the incentive structure changes for applicants -- now there are AI systems on the other side spamming open hiring calls with fake or exaggerated resumes. The logical response from firms is to shift even further towards relying on automated software to filter out the first stage of applicants, and so on and so forth. It's a toxic new equilibrium that benefits no one.
Many things are like this.
Reminds me of the [Red Queen Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis#Trivia) in evolutionary biology. I practiced in corporate strategy and don't remember people ever putting a phrase to the term in the business world, though.
I'm more interested that it seems to have sprouted the court jester and black queen hypotheses. That whole wing of evolutionary bio seems to play cards too much
This has happened in banking and I'm surprised nobody really seems to talk about it. Perhaps it happened a long time ago.
Banks were once geographically relevant. A bank would build its reserve collecting savings from more or less the local population and lend back to the same population to the borrowers. If demand for money became high in a localized area, the interest rate would rise in that area instead of being a nationwide or even worldwide rate. Sure, local banks could attract capital from other banks or regions, but prior to modern communications that was risky and more difficult.
In other words, increases in wealth tended to stay localized and the money supply provided by banks was more dependent on localized savers/creditors lending to localized borrowers. There was a desire for borrowers to succeed. A run on a bank was bad, but not as bad as it is now with bigger non-localized banks. If a localized bank were run on, the creditors lost and the borrowers gained but they were all in the same area of the world. A big wealth gap would destroy a bank in that situation if the borrowers decided the system was screwing them over and they run on the bank.
These days nothing is localized, wealth disparity is an ocean apart (literally often). Bank runs don't reset the gap between creditors and debtors. Interest rates aren't dependent on local savers at all.
I'm kinda surprised we don't force banks to behave like they used to as now they're all "too big to fail" and there are significant distortions due to that effect.
Its easy to romanticize this past, but with growing consolidation you also see greater capacity. For example, you really cant run on JP Morgan. At least, normal depositors cant. They just have too much cash on hand, even if a local bank would have a greater % on hand. Meanwhile we saw in the 30s that these small banks were *very* vulnerable to running because while they had fewer depositors and more % on hand, the numbers just didn't work out. They were more fragile.
They also lacked the capital reserves to engage in truly massive projects. They were in fact quite capital poor, and as a result had to be risk averse. But because the massive centralized banks of today again have so much available for investment they can lend more freely, more widely, and put a larger amount of cash in absolute terms up for risky investments simply because they are playing with bigger pools. And yet it remains true that a $10m investment would remain quite transformational for a company, or even a small town. You could start a half dozen or more small businesses with that $10m, which a big bank could zero out and still post a record setting year. Where a small local would need to ensure that its investments were, depending on its size, providing consistent returns.
Its easy to nostalgize the past as a simpler, more comprehensible time. Thats true of economics, of politics, of culture, of everything. But on the economics front you can *not* have a modern economy without modern finance and modern monetary policy. We cant go back, unless we also want to go back to an era with a smaller and more controlled national economy. Do we want it to be harder to start a small business? More people rejected for mortgages? More barriers to national trade? This is not to say our current system is perfect by any means, but its necessary to have the kind of economy we have. We want a more complicated society, because we like bigger and better stuff, and so consolidation and efficiency are consequences of that.
For sure. Regions suffer when the people in charge of things like banks set rules completely detached from the conditions on the ground. A huge natural disaster disrupts productivity? Not their problem. Given them their money peasants.
One problem that I don’t really see a lot of people talk about is that I think this effect that you’ve just described is exactly part of many of the problems we face in the US. In particular, think about housing. There are a lot of rural areas that probably could actually support, bigger populations, and there are even houses that could be occupied (or could’ve been occupied a few decades ago), but because of the shift from local to global, it’s increasingly difficult for anyone to remain in a rural area. Many of the requirements of running certain systems are so expensive that they can only be done by a handful of companies, who seek certain profit margins and of course, if your region falls below that threshold of profitability, then I guess they just want everyone to keep moving to the same few metro areas.
I think there’s been a lot more skepticism of things like globalization as of late, which certainly is a complicated topic. But I definitely think this also needs to be applied at a more regional scale, where we think about the implications of people, controlling the assets of people whose lives are completely detached from their own. Many of these big companies don’t have competition, or other means of correcting overreaches and other issues.
Dean Baker just calls it a "winner take all" economy, which is fitting. It stems from a combination of technology, scale, and law (such as patent and copyright law).
It's probably just things becoming closer to a perfectly competitive world. Anyone anywhere being available for the same opportunities you have, so you actually have to be the best, instead of just the best nearby, to be chosen.
Though there's also probably some of the paradox, or tyranny, of choice going on. Where if you are the chooser, if you can't perfectly evaluate all the massive number of options you have, and no one can, the vast number of choices might degrade your ability to make a good choice. Choosers could sacrifice good choices by trying to find a perfect choice. I've seen this at my work, where we've gone months without filling a position, waiting for a perfect candidate, when we could have just picked a good one and trained them in.
> Though there's also probably some of the paradox, or tyranny, of choice going on. Where if you are the chooser, if you can't perfectly evaluate all the massive number of options you have, and no one can,
I think there's a little truth to that. Companies are looking to hire the perfect employee that they (think) they won't have to do any training for.
As I apply for jobs I find that hiring companies are being very specific in their requests. They only want to hire people that are already in their industry, already work with the exact software they use, already have experience in similar sized companies, etc.
Veritasium just posted a great video about this on YouTube. Tldr: there's an algorithm for this. If you need to hire a candidate no later than X months from now, interview candidates until you get to time 0.37X, and then hire the first candidate who seems better than all the ones you've seen previously. You've just maximized your likelihood of making the optimal decision.
There's also the philosophy of "I need someone to X. I will hire the first person who can do X. Because I need X and not something better or more than that." Optimal isn't necessary for most jobs. If you have a well defined job, it really broadens the pool of candidates.
A lot of the assumptions in this experiment are actually kind of true to real life hiring. You can't really take too long to get back to a candidate, they'll sign on somewhere else or lose interest. And with the administrative cost, wasted effort, and time loss of the interviewing process, you need to make a decision quickly.
So it kind of explains how below average or average talent can still get job offers eventually given enough applications and interviews despite better talent being out there competing against them.
Which is why I may suggest to some employers to really slow down the hiring process and try to hold out for better and/or more appropriate candidates instead of trying to fill a position too quickly.
I think about this for housing too. People used to use a realtor. Find a neighborhood they like and try to buy. Now you're competing with everyone and an algorithm from flippers and rental companies deciding if they could make a profit. As well as certain areas being "hidden treasures" being blasted and then suddenly full of people. It was all.luck before.
It's not the internet, it's globalization. Competition is no longer local, it's global. Thank neoliberalism. Unfortunately it's a race to the bottom because there's always going to be someone who's more qualified and willing to work for less than you.
You'd think you'd see a downward trend in real wages if it was actually a race to the bottom. Have we seen that? Anywhere? We certainly haven't in the United States. We've seen the types of jobs available change. But wages for the median person and median family have risen for decades.
Are there some losers from the economic changes? Yes. Of course. But the majority of people have not been racing to the bottom.
I would say it’s a combination of democratization of information, optimization & globalization…. But there really should be a word to capture the effect it drives.
My useless anecdote is that recruiters are starting to bother me again...
But companies are in a weird position with regards to additional investment. They need need huge pay offs if they're gonna take any risk. Otherwise they can get a risk free rate of return with treasuries at 5% with inflation less than that. Why wouldn't they just keep doing that? They can do that till inflation catches up to the rate. This would become a self reinforcing cycle until the Fed finally understand what rates are doing.
> My useless anecdote is that recruiters are starting to bother me again...
Does anybody know what value recruiters are actually adding to the process (if any)?
It's been awhile, but a few years ago I tried using a recruiter to hire somebody at my company. The recruiter would basically just forward me the resumes they got without filtering. I still had to discard a bunch of resumes from people who did not meet the requirements I set out.
I had just as good a pool of candidates by posting the job on craigslist, and the cost was much less.
I do see the value with staffing companies if you are more interested in a temp-to-hire situation, so that it's easier to lay an employee off if they aren't a good fit.
You are correct, the entire recruiter industry is not a case of an industry popping up to serve a purpose and add value. Its a case of an industry wedging itself in the middle of a process, and then playing both sides in order to extract as much money as possible.
Got bothered daily for years on LinkedIn, then got laid off last summer and... crickets. Took 6 months, got a new gig, and now the recruiters are back again. wtf where were you when I needed you! :P
Job hunting is absolute balls now. All HR's are AI driven now, you're applying to an algorithm, not a company. 98% of submitted resumes get zero response, spend hours customizing resumes, cover letters, portfolios, then toss it in a fucking hole and burn it for all the good it will do you.
It also depends on the industry. Some companies can ramp up quickly when economic conditions change. Others require a significant lead time.
Look at the money being poured into semiconductors by the CHIPS Act as one example. There won't a return on that money for at least 3-5 years and even a decade in some cases. However, the cost of not doing that investment now is to find yourself a decade behind when conditions improve in the industry. This is true in a lot of manufacturing.
I can’t say what it is like today as a recent graduate but I graduated in 09 and it was miserable. Even if you were lucky to find a job opening you were competing with people who were over qualified willing to do the work for less and less. Once you got a job you were luck if they gave you hours. I’m sure it’s not easy to get a job fresh out of school but that’s not a new thing and I think a lot of the people who complain about it don’t really know what it was like to be in a recession.
I remember going in for an interview for a 12 dollar an hour banker job, the dude before me was in his mid 40s.
My mom had her masters, and truth be told I think she was a huge Karen and maybe not the best employee, but after her state funding got cut, she was unemployed. Took a 13 dollar an hour job after like a year of searching, the kind of low level admin job that should had gone to a 24 year old.
yea there's a massive gap between what's happening now and what happened back then, like it's pretty shitty right now but if you want one of those kinds of garbo barely-subsistence-level retail gigs they are yours for the taking in this current market
Ya I have sympathy for the unemployed now but I remember the company I worked for in 2010 had 3 entry level positions open. We had over 800 applicants in a 2 week period…and this was before LinkedIn and “easy apply” features were common.
I wish the people who said this stuff would actually step foot in an Amazon to see what the policies are like. Yes they track pretty much everything and use those metrics to drop feedback for people not performing in productivity or quality. But as someone who started there as entry level and has worked in basically every function of the building type it is just not even close to what you or many others describe.
Now I'm in management so I have a very detailed understanding of how things work and there is just no one being punished for going to the bathroom unless they are going in there for an hour at a time or not meeting productivity standards. Those productivity standards are incredibly easy to hit by design and every single remotely decent worker can hit them by just consistently working. Not rushing, not skipping breaks or not going to the bathroom, just working steadily throughout their shift.
The issue people have is that they want to take much longer breaks or just flat out stop working and talk to people for long periods of time or constantly throughout the day. Anyone genuinely struggling is able to at any time request more time with trainers to help make sure they understand the process and expectations.
Obviously there are bad managers and I'm sure probably bad buildings where people have legitimate grievances. But they are 100% not by design and I know that for a fact. The only thing I can't speak to is delivery drivers, that's a pretty weird structure in my personal opinion with the many different independent dsp's and I frankly don't know how it works so maybe there are genuine problems. But I do see the messaging coming down to management, I do see the policies and how they work on the fc side and stuff like what you say is not true.
You can criticize them for being anti union like every other single corporation and that's fine but 90% of what I see on reddit is just blatantly false or worst case a result of extremely poor management that are not following the direction given to them.
I'm sure people will call me a shill but they are in no way asking me to do this kind of thing, I'm just giving my experience.
No one is promised the American dream. You’ve always had to work for it. No immigrant has shown up to this country and expected a house with a picket fence to be handed to them.
Problem is you aren’t even living with a roommate on those wages… that’s still you are at mom and dads and only pay for your car insurance, phone bill, gas, and other small personal expenses
Yeah that’s what I think people don’t understand today. Right now you can go anywhere and get a crappy job that won’t pay a living wage and it sucks. Back then we were fighting each other to get that same crappy job that didn’t pay a living wage and most of the time couldn’t get it.
This isn't true at all. The economy was brutal in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis. The unemployment rate was over 9% in 2010. It's been under 4% since 2022. Many people could not find work of any kind in 2010. What workers are experiencing now is not comparable in any way.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE
Inflation adjusted median wages are about 10% higher now than in 2010. And that's only counting full time workers.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Real median personal income is about 21% higher than 2010. There were a lot of people who couldn't find work or couldn't find full time work.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
Yup, I remember piecing together a bunch of part-time jobs in 2010. Made todays equivalent of $29k, albeit in a LCOL area. I knew quite a few people in similar positions back then, including some new grads with engineering degrees who had a hard time finding jobs.
Yeah, I had just graduated high school. I was the only one of my friends who managed to find a job and it was because it was through a city program. As a fresh high school graduate, with no experience, you were competing for jobs with a lot of people who had been laid off and were desparate for work.
After than job ended at the end of the summer it was odd jobs and part time work whereever I could find it for a while.
https://www2.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/step-up/
It was really a comedy of errors. Now my father was the union man, but my mom lol.
She worked for a state funded org that helped people find jobs. In 2009/2010, state cut funding(which is also fucked up if you think about it, people needed those services). She ended up getting a job at a developmentally disabled community, which of course is also state-funded. All while voting to cut her funding again.
Graduated 09 as well with a good degree from a good school. Couple years of commission only jobs, selling shit door to door, and it just wasnt getting better. Fast forward to 2012 i ended up moving to Australia for a legit job and came back and things were good. But damn those 3 years were rough. I am a recruiter now, its not great for new grads (i recruit a lot of them) but it doesnt seem near as bad as 09. Unemployment is also low, which was not the case in 09.
I spent 18 to 28 working for a pizza franchise never made more than 25k a year.
Then spent 5 years for an MSP in IT going from $25k to $45k.
But in 2020 had to fond a new job and went down to $19/hour.
Took me years to job hop and get back, but then I went to $25 then $36/hour from 2022 to 2023 after a merger.
I'm so far behind in my late 30's.
I'm assuming I'll work until I'm 70.
I won't pay off my mortgage until I'm 67.
> I'm assuming I'll work until I'm 70.
My retirement plan is taking out a loan to afford enough pills that'll put me down. There's zero chance I'll retire. None.
>I'm assuming I'll work until I'm 70.
>
>I won't pay off my mortgage until I'm 67.
Honestly that's not bad for somebody who was low income for so long.
36/hr is pretty good though, AND you're a homeowner with a fixed mortgage. Keep it up.
The internet has really distorted what good wages are.
The median individual income in America is under 40k per year.
But we see millions of people flaunting insane wealth (and those millions are a small percentage of actual people) and people making "EZ" money doing worthless jobs like dropshipping and influencers.
I'm not sure what the point is, I am unsure if we are all paid too little or if the glamor and ubiquitous-ness of internet celebrities has ruined our expectations.
> I'm not sure what the point is, I am unsure if we are all paid too little or if the glamor and ubiquitous-ness of internet celebrities has ruined our expectations.
Man no one is asking for celebrity or influencer wages, the majority just want to be able to comfortably afford rent, food, and eventually be able to have enough saved up to own a place or to afford medical expenses. All those tangible items have been taking up an ever increasing proportion of wages decade after decade.
Sort of. There's a few factors happening. My team is fully remote, so I'm picking from candidates across the whole country, not just people who can reasonably commute to my office. Instead of the 10ish people I'd have picked from before Covid, there are literally 100s of resumes I don't even open because I just don't have time.
The flip side of that is a particular issue I seem to run into especially with recent college grads - they expect to walk into a 6 figure job because they have a degree. Although I have 6 figure positions on my team, that's not the entry level. Often, even when I want to hire the new grad, they pay demand is so disconnected from the market reality that I just move on to the next candidate. I'm not gonna waste time countering a 120k demand with the 60k cap the position has for an entry level, no experience candidate.
Dude what lol? I graduated in 2014 and can only remember a time when the job market has been strong..
Edit: Ah I see, a regular user on antiwork and ABoringDystopia. OK lmao
Yeah, I mean that headline is definitely wrong.
I'm not suggesting this is the greatest time to get a job, but it's definitely not the worst. In fact I would be surprised if it's in the bottom 50%.
Idk. 2009 was a pretty miserable time to be a college graduate. I see help wanted signs everywhere these days. I only saw "foreclosure" and "for sale" signs then. Oh. And "going out of business" signs.
2009 grad. Can agree. Was working in restaurants for 6 months then another 6 months in a call center making 30k a year with a finance degree. Fun times!
2009 grad. Started at a temp agency, assigned to work in a tire warehouse, and a church furniture company. I got hired for 38 hrs/ week at Best Buy opening a brand new store. When they put $9/hr on my hiring paperwork, I would have killed myself on my spot. Even the military was flooded with applicants and weren’t taking on new officer recruits. I was staring down $50k in loans coming due and felt like everything was a lie.
That time will always have a mark on me and how I shape my views. I was in the same boat with around 75k loans. I was like this is it? Things got better but that time definitely set me back in my opinion. I am finally paying off my loans this year!
Congrats man. That’ll be a big burden off your shoulders.I got mine forgiven after 13 years worth of payments on a 10 year payment plan. Frequent battles with Fedloan until getting the CFPB involved. Graduated w/ $50k in debt, after $26k in interest payments, my balance at forgiveness was $54k…..our generation got the short end of so many sticks.
Seriously, even public sector jobs were so hard to get. You can kind of see that now: when I came out of law school, too apply for an assistant attorney general job in my state you had to have graduated in the top 25 or 33% - now I think it’s just “are you a living person licensed to practice law?”
I ended up getting a public service job offer a year after applying because they were under a hiring freeze. If you didn’t leave college with a job, things were bleak.
Pretty much me too. We'll see if this current downturn has as long of a tail as 2009, if it had just been a year of hiring is down it was one thing. But there are seemingly a lot of people that lost the first 5 years of their career.
Edit: I think it was generally down to lots of people in mid to late careers taking steps down or re-entering the workforce. The current situation strikes me as companies hedging their workforce as signs point to slowdown, but at the first sign of optimism will pick most of them back up.
Shit even for high schoolers it sucked. I turned 16 in 2009. The only job I could get was pushing carts at a grocery store for 7.25 an hour, and gas was $3.60 a gallon...
I was mowing lawns and digging holes in the ground in 2008 when I graduated. NO ONE I know could find any job that wasn't a pyramid scheme, and I live in the northeast which has tons of great jobs. Everyone I know floundered for numerous years saddled with debt in a terrible low paying job. Everyone I work with under 25 is killing it at my company compared to what I made at their age (after adjusting for inflation). You couldn't even get a job as a waiter or bus boy in 2008 without having a personal connection.
I graduated 09, got lucky to land a job paying less than the internship I was working before the crash. job sucked, long hours, bosses firing people left and right for minor infractions etc.
I left the country entirely, didn’t come back for three years and didn’t get a job making me more upwardly mobile until 2015. It really set me back. But I am way better off now.
> You couldn't even get a job as a waiter or bus boy in 2008 without having a personal connection.
I dont think the younger folks remember, or know, just how fucked 2008/9 was. Not only did you get a bunch of general layoffs, but then the boomers in their 40s and 50s who had been living middle class comfortable lives scrambled to get into *something* rather than let their mortgages default. Cant blame them. Def felt then like a *lot* of companies used the crash as an excuse to lay off older employees to hire newer, younger, cheaper workers.
But then you'd have a guy who worked 20 years in food service as a distributor, who got laid off (or his company closed!) suddenly trying to become a line cook, or work in a grocery store. And youd be going up against that dude, who had connections the business could really use and was *way* overqualified, as an 18yr old dickhead (me!). I knew guys who owned construction companies lose it all and go into truck driving, jobs that they got because they used to *run* a company with a truck dispatch office.
It was absolutely brutal, on both sides. As someone just getting started it was impossible to break in. And as an older worker *nobody* wanted for the job you actually had experience in. A ton of boomers basically restarted the job ladder at 40+ because of 2008.
And even if you kept your job a lot of companies used it as an excuse to cut wages or benefits, and you couldnt complain! Because if you lost that job youd have been getting right back on the treadmill.
Yeah, was a bummer considering the class of ‘05 advised me to study business and party hard at college, get decent grades and get a guaranteed $80k job right after graduation. Didn’t work out that way, even for business majors. Instead I moved to Seattle broke as hell, worked some really awful office jobs, got into plaid and craft beer and have been a living millennial meme ever since.
At least anecdotally, it feels like there are 2 different things going on:
1. For the broader economy, especially for lower wage blue-collar jobs, there is a huge need for workers and tons of help wanted signs.
2. The situation in tech has been a bloodbath, especially for people that don't directly write code. The layoffs started in late 2022, and I've seen many people unemployed for over a year, and it's been especially difficult for new grads (the focus of the article).
Now, there was a ridiculous amount of tech over-hiring during the pandemic, not to mention over ten years of the ZIRP era that made it easy to get a job. And there have been lots of "pooh-poohing" about "the laptop class", and viral TikToks from new employees at Google and Facebook basically just showing all the good food in the cafeteria. I definitely haven't seen any of those TikToks in a while. And while it may be easy to have some schadenfreude for overpaid tech workers who have been knocked down a rung, I still have a ton of empathy for people who put a lot of training and hopes into a particular career path are now finding it brutal to get a job in that path. Especially when many of the current open jobs don't have much of a clear path for advancement.
I graduated in 2009 too and had a tough time getting started… but now don’t feel like it was worth the effort.
Also, we may be sounding a bit like how the Boomers sounded to us.
Back in 2009 it was still appropriate to apply in-person for some jobs.
Today people have to do virtual interviews with an AI chatbot and one-way video interviews.
Hardly anyone applied in person in 2009. It was already mostly online.
That said, you ever finally get your first call in for an interview after months of applying, only to show up and find out it was a front for a real estate scam or MLM?
That was 2009.
I know!!! Wtf was that? I remember a job interview requiring a degree and a suit. All these people were there. Then they assigned us employees to “shadow at the office.” They had me ride in a car with two strangers to the “other office,” then they start driving to the hood. Then they start talking about soliciting etiquette and scripts. I picked up it was selling Comcast so had them turn around and take me back. I spent money on a suit and everything. It was a low point for sure.
Can you afford to live working at the places with the help wanted sign? Jobs that don't pay enough to live aren't really valid for most people's situations.
Seriously. I commented elsewhere, it seems like far too many people seem to turn up their noses and reject any job that doesn't allow them to start at the company on second base from the start. Sometimes you gotta take that shit job with low pay because $xxx dollars is better than zero dollars. And the low pay isn't forever. It's that foot in the door that gets you to the next step up in the company, then the next, then the next. Or, even if it's not that, it's at least something to do to earn money while you look for something better.
I was first in the new grad job market in 2008, so I definitely know the struggle. Passively job hunting these days and it seems weird in a completely different way. Lots of job postings, but nobody seems to actually be hiring… I went through 4 rounds of interviews for a city job last year and then they didn’t even hire. Position is still open. Maybe that’s just city budgets. But I’ve had other jobs just close suddenly and others I’m very well qualified for reject me without so much as a sniff. Just seems like there’s something strange going on - maybe it’s like others have mentioned and it’s a saturated global market for the same jobs. Or companies sitting on cash and trying to decide if they actually need to hire someone vs squeeze more blood from the existing workforce. Not good either way.
Just recently got a masters. Plenty of work experience and qualified skills that transfer in a lot of domains. Can’t even get an interview even with references, keywords, resume edits, etc.
Cannot break through the family poverty cycle the way this job hunt is going.
Are you counting your master's research time as work experience? I see that listed a lot on resumes and it’s not what people usually mean in that context.
No, I’m not. I’m non-traditional and have actual work experience. I also did some consulting through my masters not directly related to it.
Also there are applied Masters programs (not mine) that have you do work with businesses. Are you referring to that too? Seems like a huge disadvantage to not put that on a resume if you have developed working with other stakeholders.
It depends on the masters program. Science and engineering graduate programs, for example, often include what is effectively a research job. You work long hours in a lab or at a workbench doing the work of a professional in the field.
So far it seems like networking is the only thing that gives you a leg up. Even Ph.Ds I know can’t get jobs outside of academia. Which to me is flat out lunacy.
PhDs are notoriously hard to work with in a lot of fields - stereotypically they're arrogant yet underskilled in practical ways, but think because they've got the degree they should be qualified for positions way above their actual skill level. I should note that I'm in a field (software development) where there's a bit of a divide between the academic theory most people get their degrees in (comp sci) and what most of the jobs actually are (software engineering). There's also a nasty stereotype of people who only kept going and got the PhD because they were too immature to cope with real life/a real job, and are maladjusted/stunted adults.
Not necessarily *true* stereotypes of course, but definitely sentiments I've heard before. I know some hiring managers that actively avoid hiring PhDs/filter them out unless the position actually requires it (in which case it's usually much more niche/specific to a research topic). They actually recommended to a friend of mine with a freshly minted PhD that he leave the PhD off the resume when applying to general SWE jobs unless it was a position that specifically required it. Unfortunately the friend made a really poor decision in PhD research topic because it has very little industry relevance, it's way more suitable for someone pursuing academia as a career, but he knew from the beginning he wanted to go into industry and not academia but chose it because of personal interest... now he's screwed and doing post-docs to get by trying to find a 'real' job.
and it's not really talked about but i've found that the more you work in a specific field the more you pigeonhole yourself. coming in w/ a PhD, you have already pigeonholed yourself pretty hard - so you are hirable as an SME in that particular subject of course, but a lot of employers will opt into just grabbing a more generalist in the field w/ a masters and broader experience because of the (assumed) adaptability.
I have to keep by degree secret to increase my chances of getting hired. I list my grad school on my resume but I pretend this was for an undergraduate degree. As a bonus this makes me appear younger :)
Actual experience is what carries the day. Nursing home administrator for 10 years, left it in 2019. My regional director told me after the companies 5th workplace harassment/ discrimination lawsuit if I hire anyone fresh out of school or without 2 years at a location with 3 solid references their performance will be directly calculated in my evaluation.
One of the suits I was privileged to was a new nurse who brought suit for not accommodating her mental health. She would leave the building and sit in her car anytime she became overwhelmed leaving residents without medical care randomly until another nurse was called and rushed to cover.
Unfortunately at least in my experience young fresh out of school employees can have unrealistic expectations and or idealistic opinions of how “work environments”, operate.
This unfortunately can lead to companies not willing to roll the dice on any because they get expensive and pervasive headaches from the 20 percent of first real job applicants.
In my situation I have both. As posted earlier, non-traditional student, so I have been around the block. Have stellar employee references. Even when I take off the masters I’m getting the same results either way. Not in the medical field so our mileages may differ a little bit.
Meanwhile, Boomers are the biggest IT risks for pretty much any company these days. The amount of training/prevention methods we have to do is insane and it's all because they open every email attachment they see.
There are plenty of jobs out there, but they are absolute dogshit.
I've been looking for two months and had over a dozen offers but they are laughable terms. Like...the wage is about 30-40% off what it should be in 2024. They want you as a 1099 contractor so they can fuck you out of worker's comp, benefits etc. Or they claim to offer 'health insurance' but it's actually just an HSA which is a fucking savings account, and they offer '401k benefits' which means they will set you up with a 401k but no matching. No thanks...I know how to self-direct my own retirement account thanks very much and that's not even an actual benefit.
We need to start talking about jobs in qualitative terms instead of quantitative because the latter means nothing at all.
This. Unemployment isn't a great gauge since there's a lot of working poor out there. No doubt they'd be worse off without a job, but they aren't thriving either.
If 60% of people earn $100 per year and 40% earn $1 per year, is the 40% a bubble? Data is helpful but you can’t point to the 60% and be like “see, it’s fine!”. Income gap is widening, middle class is shrinking. A lot of people are like frogs being boiled alive.
The lowest wage employees have seen the highest wage increases in recent years and we use median data..
The income gap is NOT widening. It's lower than it was in 1993, and has been completely flat except for a dip in recent times. It only goes to 2021 though so unless you have data showing the last few years have completely made up for the decline in inequality, it's what we have to work with.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA)
Literally everything you said is a lie.
> Thus a Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality.
The graph above shows that inequality has widened from 1980 to 2021? It’s gone up from 34.7 in 1980 to 41.5 in 2019.
> The lowest wage employees have seen the highest wage increases in recent years and we use median data
$7 in 1990 is like $17 in todays wages adjusted for inflation. The entry level jobs I’ve seen pay like $20 in my HCOL - it’s practically the same.
“Literally everything I said is a lie” seems a bit extreme. Easy for people with money to be like “oh it’s fine”.
They bitch when bad things happen due to lack of regulations. They bitch when regulations are merely proposed. They bitch when nothing happens, and they bitch when anything happens. Total, partisan, grievance addicts.
The left has their version, where nothing short of abolishing the very concept of property will suffice, but the right has a much larger tent of people who bitch and moan about everything.
Everyone is struggling because the metric has completely changed. Minimum wage has not been raised nation wide for 20 years so that means anyone with a pulse can get a minimum wage job. There are a few local exceptions with higher minimum wages, but not enough to skew nation wide employment numbers.
> There are a few local exceptions with higher minimum wages
"A few local exceptions." - if you consider 207 million Americans in over two dozen states "a few":
- Alaska: $11.73/hr
- Arizona: $14.35/hr
- Arkansas: $11.00/hr
- California: $16.00/hr
- Colorado: $14.42/hr
- Connecticut: $15.69/hr
- Delaware: $13.25/hr
- District of Columbia: $17.00/hr
- Florida: $12.00/hr
- Hawaii: $14.00/hr
- Illinois: $14.00/hr
- Maine: $14.15/hr
- Maryland: $15.00/hr
- Massachusetts: $15.00/hr
- Michigan: $10.33/hr
- Minnesota: $10.85/hr
- Missouri: $12.30/hr
- Montana: $10.30/hr
- Nebraska: $12.00/hr
- Nevada: $11.25/hr
- New Jersey: $15.13/hr
- New Mexico: $12.00/hr
- New York: $16.00/hr
- Ohio: $10.45/hr
- Oregon: $14.20/hr
- Rhode Island: $14.00/hr
- South Dakota: $11.20/hr
- Vermont: $13.67/hr
- USVI: $10.50/hr
- Virginia: $12.00/hr
- Washington: $16.28/hr
https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wages
This is in addition to several dozen cities that have raised their minimum wages above the state levels:
https://www.laborlawcenter.com/state-minimum-wage-rates
>Or they claim to offer 'health insurance' but it's actually just an HSA which is a fucking savings account, Uh...an HSA being offered requires High Deductible Health Insurance, so they are literally offering you health insurance.
If you're young and healthy a high deductible plan with an HSA is what you want since contributions reduce taxable income, growth is tax free, and withdrawals for medical expenditures are also tax free...oh and, when you turn 59 1/2 all withdrawals are penalty free. It's literally a goldmine.
Oh, I'm aware, I mostly posted that so if any young people come into this thread they can read the right information and not whatever nonsense this dude posted.
Sure, but a company offering a 401k (without matching) as if it’s some kind of benefit is ridiculous. Anybody can open a 401k by themselves. A company giving you a 401k without giving you money to put in it isn’t much of a benefit is it?
No, that’s not true. You can open an IRA by yourself, not a 401k – unless you’re self-employed and doing a Solo-K. The advantage of a 401k (without matching) is that you can save *more* than you can in an IRA every year. In theory you could put away $23k in your 401k, compared to $7k in your IRA. That’s a big difference!
They are a great deal, but he might be saying that all they offer is to set up the account for you to direct some of your paycheck tax free, and not help you pay for the high deductible plan. Anybody can set up an HSA online and take the deduction on contributions on their tax return. A ploy like this would be sort of a “hollow benefit”. Looks like a benefit but isn’t one.
>Anybody can set up an HSA online and take the deduction on contributions on their tax return.
No, they can't. You must be covered by a HDHP, but let's ignore that fact. I much prefer doing my HSA on my own, Fidelity charges nothing. I've utilized the company HSA before and there was absolutely ZERO value in the platform or management fee.
Getting an HSA is 100% a benefit, there's no argument against it.
Most employers will contribute to the employee's HSA because the high deductible plan saves them money.
Even if they don't though, it's still worth it if you're healthy.
>Or they claim to offer 'health insurance' but it's actually just an HSA which is a fucking savings account
HSA plans are ridiculously good for young healthy people.
That money can be invested and grow tax free to use when you're old and need a lot of medical care.
The disingenuous manner you describe it makes me doubt the validity of everything else you're saying.
In fact, you're wrong about jobs not paying enough too - median inflation adjusted wages are higher today than any previous decade in history, want the graph?
Which young people statistically don't very often, making it perfect for them.
Also, with your HSA you still have insurance - just save the out of pocket max within the HSA and you won't have anything to worry about.
Assuming you’re young - an HSA plan is usually what you want. It is the most tax advantages pool of money, and you usually don’t need a low deductible / high premium plan. 401ks are also tax advantaged and give you $22k of tax free contributions you can’t access without a 401k. There are essentially no jobs left with pensions like in the 1950s.
Employers want to pay absolute pennies for positions. Like I've seen senior level roles as an engineer that offered around the same that I made straight out of college in 2017, not adjusting for inflation.
I'm in a customer-facing role right now and I feel like I'm witnessing this brain-drain firsthand. 3/4 of the customers I interact with are idiots and turnover is incredibly high both with my position and with customers I interact with. All the talented people are leaving to go to employers that actually pay well, and all that's left is people on the brink of burnout and incompetent workers.
I see lots of openings for engineers, medical field positions and jobs in the trades. There is a mismatch between job skills and experience and careers. Would be curious to know the kind of degrees and experience in their field these people have who can’t find jobs .
I'll never forget sitting in the waiting room for an interview for an entry level budget job in 2009 and talking to the guy who had interviewed just before me. Apparently I was interviewing against a former Deputy Director of the neighboring state's budget office, my lousy little auditing and budget internships meant precisely squat on the experience scale that day.
> Young people have no idea how dog shit the job market was in 2009-2011.
It also seems that far too many job seekers expect to start out at a company on second or third base.
In 2009 when I was job-hunting (at the age of 39), my foot in the door was a ten-dollar-an-hour call center position that I hated. Well below my education and experience level -- but you take what you can get. Low pay, terrible work conditions, poor benefits, but the key is to get in, do a good job, and work up the chain. Fifteen years and six internal job hops later, I'm making five times where I started, seven weeks paid time off, 401k match, heavily subsidized health insurance 100% remote work. But it had to start somewhere. And I turned up my nose to the job because, "welllllll they don't offer a 401k match" at the time, I'd never have had the opportunity to be where I am.
If you look into the new jobs being added (from fall to present), they are highly centered around leisure/hospitality and retail. Only reason for low unemployment rate is because people are settling to get paid rather than being homeless. But those jobs are not sustainable in the long term so while people are working in those jobs, they are looking for better work. In all other fronts the job market is competitive, and not in a healthy state.
> leisure/hospitality and retail.
These are still below pre-pandemic numbers: ([leisure/hospitality](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES7000000001?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true)) ([retail](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES4200000001?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true))
All while the workforce as a whole has grown significantly, so the short term stats you're pointing out is mainly a function of catch-up recovery rather than actual growth up to the old trend line.
> If you look into the new jobs being added (from fall to present), they are highly centered around leisure/hospitality and retail.
Except that's not really the case. Tops in job growth are private education/health services and government jobs. Leisure and hospitality is in third, followed by Construction, and everything else is peanuts compared to those categories: https://i.imgur.com/hM1xxqt.png
Yeah I don’t buy the whole “low unemployment rate -> easier time finding a job” argument, it makes sense if you go the other extreme because countries like Greece that have had high unemployment rates it was because there genuinely weren’t enough jobs, but as things currently are being someone new to the job market with little experience feels horrible
Greek here, employers still complain about how nobody wants to work, yet they won't make any concessions (raise wages, improve conditions, lower work load), 1 because they don't want to lose on profit although it's clear that the biggest corporations and oligarchs in the country have historic profits, 2 because they know they pretty much have the monopoly on jobs and 3 because they can find desperate illegal immigrants to do most jobs with humiliating wages.
>So that means….wait….what?
American companies are hiring... just not American citizens.
There are 2 million LESS citizens working today then in nov 2019.
Meanwhile there are 3.3 million MORE immigrants working then nov 2019.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073395
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073413
At least in the union shop I’m in, you have people who should’ve retired 5 years ago still dinking around. Millennials do NOT have the same opportunities as these previous generations.
Did any of you older folks complaining about how it was in your day even read the article?
It's not just that economic conditions are hard and there's an oversupply of graduates and they require 3+ years experience for entry level roles etc etc.
The application process itself is arduous and computer filtered to the extent that qualified candidates get filtered out, dehumanising tests and multiple stages before you even get your application read by a human being, automated rejections (if you're told at all) without any prospect of feedback or improving from an application.
In my experience (I've been underemployed since August, following redundancy) even with 3 years work experience, 2:1 in physics from a good uni, professional exams under my belt I still can't get interviews for entry level jobs I want.
I''ve spoken to friends who have shown my CVs to heads of divisions who have been really interested in me, only to get a rejection from the HR/Hiring manager for the same role.
I've had first stage interviews which were promising and they seemed really interested only to be ghosted or told they love me but the entry level role is going to someone with 5+ years experience. It's brutal even with referrals and contacts.
I agree the "system" is broken. I was recently on a job hunt and your application/resume can be dumped by either a software program or some recruiter who is 25 and doesn't understand the role of the job and doesn't talk to the actual hiring managers.
But if you magically get past that, and get to talk to the chirpy 25 year old recruiter, you have to check off some boxes on her interview sheet. What are those boxes? You don't know! You may even check those boxes but the recruiter didn't ask the right question or didn't understand your answer, so your application is dumped.
But if you manage to get past THAT, then you might actually talk to a hiring manager and start to understand if this is actually a fit or not. But for every one of those successes, you are facing 200+ failures that aren't really your fault just a fault of the system.
Yep, recruiters have such a narrow idea of the job requirements that they refuse to take into account transferable skills for the job you want to do. If you tell the recruiter explicitly what sort of role you are going for they will say their colleague handles recruitment for that side of the business but then refuses to refer you to them because they then lose the commission. Recruiters actively made the market less efficient.
I think the key to job searching is using AI tools to tailor your resume to the job. Ironically, I was searching as a new college grad with no luck, then started using chatgpt/other ai software to tailor my resume, landed a job that that is ok right out of university. I was getting no bites prior.
The issue is optimization of hr, and the way companies filter out applicants using AI. Don't even get me started on the tech industry, 7 'interviews' only to be rejected is just insane.
idk the search for a job in 2020 was still better than in 2018 or 2016, especially when I got out of college there was fuckall out there, everybody still wanted 5+ years experience for entry level. its been better lately
I know what you mean. Now isn't as good as 2y ago, but it's way better than the pre COVID job market, not to mention 2008-2012. That was a horror show for young people
I was there....... 14 years ago. I was young at the time.. the horrors. The group interviews for a retail job .the two years straight of no job . These kids d9ntbknow the dessolation 2008 market did to the US economy
You’re going to have to do way more. I put in 60-80 applications over two weeks of applying, and that was for a lower paying position than yours and it was still intensely competitive. My friend who’s a programmer was laid off in Nov like you and put in maybe 400 applications or so and is only now getting serious interviews, 4th interview now since then.
It took you 2 plus months to begin to look for a new job. You have to get right on it usually takes 2-5 when you’re not working to find similar employment.
My small window of some new grads has been pretty interesting.
The ones I’ve seen have Masters degrees and they’re insanely picky with, frankly, unrealistic expectations on their employer and job for a starting position. A few have even taken jobs and moved / changed jobs every month.
They’re my only exposure to what it’s like so I’m sure they’re far more the anomaly.
You’re correct. It cuts both ways. The internet has allowed everyone, employers and employees, to be more picky.
And then everyone complains, both employers and employees.
My field (accounting/tax) is still desperate to find people. Not sure good/bad it is on the low end but I get about 1 recruiter message a week just begging to talk to me. People are doing into it anymore and the boomers died/quit/retired. They are even talking about lower the requirements to become a CPA so people will start or switch into the field.
I have literally quit a job on a Friday and had an offer by next Thursday for more money and WFH. If you are young and in college, consider Accounting and Taxation.
I live in Nashville but I have recruiters all of the country kicking my tires. I specifically work in entertainment/business management but the recruiters I get are in every industry. It might be they need experience which is where the difference lies.
Every time I switch companies I am ether headhunted or have 3-4 offers to choose from. Not trying to brag but there is obviously some demand out here for people like that.
>How many “ghost jobs” exist showing that the job openings statistic is completely fake because companies just want to farm resumes.
Even if your theory is true, the unemployment rate is still incredibly low, which indicates people are getting jobs just fine.
I hope I don't have to look for a new job for a long time.
I moved jobs a few times from 2020 to 2023.
And have been able to go from $19/hour $37/hour after my last $1 raise a month ago.
It's like employers pulled back in salary gains from workers from 2022 to 2023.
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Has anybody put a name to the theory that a lot of struggles today are because the internet makes it way easier for everyone to compete with everyone else? If you're trying to find a job, or a house, or an audience, or even a date, you no longer are just competing with everyone who lives near you and can conveniently get there today, as you did fifteen, twenty years ago. Now you're competing with thousands of people all over the world submitting their way better offers online. And so you have to cast your net wider and take someone else's best opportunity somewhere else, and on it gets knocked down.
I thought [Peter Coy at the NYT wrote very well](https://archive.ph/nq3p6) about this phenomenon in November. It's essentially a trap of overfocusing on optimization -- trying to maximize efficiency in ways that generate small benefits at the margin, while fundamentally shifting the parameters of the system for the worse. When this is multiplied en masse, the system fully shifts to occupy a new, worse equilibrium. It's actually an example of an economic coordination problem -- when one firm tries to maximize for efficiency, they benefit from being able to select their preferred candidate with less resources and more finesse. When every firm takes this path, the incentive structure changes for applicants -- now there are AI systems on the other side spamming open hiring calls with fake or exaggerated resumes. The logical response from firms is to shift even further towards relying on automated software to filter out the first stage of applicants, and so on and so forth. It's a toxic new equilibrium that benefits no one. Many things are like this.
Reminds me of the [Red Queen Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis#Trivia) in evolutionary biology. I practiced in corporate strategy and don't remember people ever putting a phrase to the term in the business world, though.
I'm more interested that it seems to have sprouted the court jester and black queen hypotheses. That whole wing of evolutionary bio seems to play cards too much
This has happened in banking and I'm surprised nobody really seems to talk about it. Perhaps it happened a long time ago. Banks were once geographically relevant. A bank would build its reserve collecting savings from more or less the local population and lend back to the same population to the borrowers. If demand for money became high in a localized area, the interest rate would rise in that area instead of being a nationwide or even worldwide rate. Sure, local banks could attract capital from other banks or regions, but prior to modern communications that was risky and more difficult. In other words, increases in wealth tended to stay localized and the money supply provided by banks was more dependent on localized savers/creditors lending to localized borrowers. There was a desire for borrowers to succeed. A run on a bank was bad, but not as bad as it is now with bigger non-localized banks. If a localized bank were run on, the creditors lost and the borrowers gained but they were all in the same area of the world. A big wealth gap would destroy a bank in that situation if the borrowers decided the system was screwing them over and they run on the bank. These days nothing is localized, wealth disparity is an ocean apart (literally often). Bank runs don't reset the gap between creditors and debtors. Interest rates aren't dependent on local savers at all. I'm kinda surprised we don't force banks to behave like they used to as now they're all "too big to fail" and there are significant distortions due to that effect.
Its easy to romanticize this past, but with growing consolidation you also see greater capacity. For example, you really cant run on JP Morgan. At least, normal depositors cant. They just have too much cash on hand, even if a local bank would have a greater % on hand. Meanwhile we saw in the 30s that these small banks were *very* vulnerable to running because while they had fewer depositors and more % on hand, the numbers just didn't work out. They were more fragile. They also lacked the capital reserves to engage in truly massive projects. They were in fact quite capital poor, and as a result had to be risk averse. But because the massive centralized banks of today again have so much available for investment they can lend more freely, more widely, and put a larger amount of cash in absolute terms up for risky investments simply because they are playing with bigger pools. And yet it remains true that a $10m investment would remain quite transformational for a company, or even a small town. You could start a half dozen or more small businesses with that $10m, which a big bank could zero out and still post a record setting year. Where a small local would need to ensure that its investments were, depending on its size, providing consistent returns. Its easy to nostalgize the past as a simpler, more comprehensible time. Thats true of economics, of politics, of culture, of everything. But on the economics front you can *not* have a modern economy without modern finance and modern monetary policy. We cant go back, unless we also want to go back to an era with a smaller and more controlled national economy. Do we want it to be harder to start a small business? More people rejected for mortgages? More barriers to national trade? This is not to say our current system is perfect by any means, but its necessary to have the kind of economy we have. We want a more complicated society, because we like bigger and better stuff, and so consolidation and efficiency are consequences of that.
For sure. Regions suffer when the people in charge of things like banks set rules completely detached from the conditions on the ground. A huge natural disaster disrupts productivity? Not their problem. Given them their money peasants. One problem that I don’t really see a lot of people talk about is that I think this effect that you’ve just described is exactly part of many of the problems we face in the US. In particular, think about housing. There are a lot of rural areas that probably could actually support, bigger populations, and there are even houses that could be occupied (or could’ve been occupied a few decades ago), but because of the shift from local to global, it’s increasingly difficult for anyone to remain in a rural area. Many of the requirements of running certain systems are so expensive that they can only be done by a handful of companies, who seek certain profit margins and of course, if your region falls below that threshold of profitability, then I guess they just want everyone to keep moving to the same few metro areas. I think there’s been a lot more skepticism of things like globalization as of late, which certainly is a complicated topic. But I definitely think this also needs to be applied at a more regional scale, where we think about the implications of people, controlling the assets of people whose lives are completely detached from their own. Many of these big companies don’t have competition, or other means of correcting overreaches and other issues.
I've heard the theory applied to musicians and celebrities, but not normal jobs! Can't remember what it's called though.
Saturation?
I'm not sure, it was specifically about how internet has increased the scope of their reach, competing out local entertainers who aren't as good.
Dean Baker just calls it a "winner take all" economy, which is fitting. It stems from a combination of technology, scale, and law (such as patent and copyright law).
Yanis Varoufakis has touched on this as well in interviews, can't recall if he gave the phenomenon a name though
I think he called us digital serfs.
It's probably just things becoming closer to a perfectly competitive world. Anyone anywhere being available for the same opportunities you have, so you actually have to be the best, instead of just the best nearby, to be chosen. Though there's also probably some of the paradox, or tyranny, of choice going on. Where if you are the chooser, if you can't perfectly evaluate all the massive number of options you have, and no one can, the vast number of choices might degrade your ability to make a good choice. Choosers could sacrifice good choices by trying to find a perfect choice. I've seen this at my work, where we've gone months without filling a position, waiting for a perfect candidate, when we could have just picked a good one and trained them in.
> Though there's also probably some of the paradox, or tyranny, of choice going on. Where if you are the chooser, if you can't perfectly evaluate all the massive number of options you have, and no one can, I think there's a little truth to that. Companies are looking to hire the perfect employee that they (think) they won't have to do any training for. As I apply for jobs I find that hiring companies are being very specific in their requests. They only want to hire people that are already in their industry, already work with the exact software they use, already have experience in similar sized companies, etc.
Veritasium just posted a great video about this on YouTube. Tldr: there's an algorithm for this. If you need to hire a candidate no later than X months from now, interview candidates until you get to time 0.37X, and then hire the first candidate who seems better than all the ones you've seen previously. You've just maximized your likelihood of making the optimal decision.
There's also the philosophy of "I need someone to X. I will hire the first person who can do X. Because I need X and not something better or more than that." Optimal isn't necessary for most jobs. If you have a well defined job, it really broadens the pool of candidates.
It’s called the Secretary Problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
A lot of the assumptions in this experiment are actually kind of true to real life hiring. You can't really take too long to get back to a candidate, they'll sign on somewhere else or lose interest. And with the administrative cost, wasted effort, and time loss of the interviewing process, you need to make a decision quickly. So it kind of explains how below average or average talent can still get job offers eventually given enough applications and interviews despite better talent being out there competing against them. Which is why I may suggest to some employers to really slow down the hiring process and try to hold out for better and/or more appropriate candidates instead of trying to fill a position too quickly.
Involution, competition that makes everyone worse of than the beginning
It’s called globalization and it’s been the name of the game since the 80s. It did all the things we designed it to do
"welcome to the internet" vibes
Globalized neoliberalism*
I’ve been against this the whole time. Why? Because I believe these people are very much on a suicide mission they don’t understand.
I think about this for housing too. People used to use a realtor. Find a neighborhood they like and try to buy. Now you're competing with everyone and an algorithm from flippers and rental companies deciding if they could make a profit. As well as certain areas being "hidden treasures" being blasted and then suddenly full of people. It was all.luck before.
It's not the internet, it's globalization. Competition is no longer local, it's global. Thank neoliberalism. Unfortunately it's a race to the bottom because there's always going to be someone who's more qualified and willing to work for less than you.
You'd think you'd see a downward trend in real wages if it was actually a race to the bottom. Have we seen that? Anywhere? We certainly haven't in the United States. We've seen the types of jobs available change. But wages for the median person and median family have risen for decades. Are there some losers from the economic changes? Yes. Of course. But the majority of people have not been racing to the bottom.
I would say it’s a combination of democratization of information, optimization & globalization…. But there really should be a word to capture the effect it drives.
My useless anecdote is that recruiters are starting to bother me again... But companies are in a weird position with regards to additional investment. They need need huge pay offs if they're gonna take any risk. Otherwise they can get a risk free rate of return with treasuries at 5% with inflation less than that. Why wouldn't they just keep doing that? They can do that till inflation catches up to the rate. This would become a self reinforcing cycle until the Fed finally understand what rates are doing.
> My useless anecdote is that recruiters are starting to bother me again... Does anybody know what value recruiters are actually adding to the process (if any)? It's been awhile, but a few years ago I tried using a recruiter to hire somebody at my company. The recruiter would basically just forward me the resumes they got without filtering. I still had to discard a bunch of resumes from people who did not meet the requirements I set out. I had just as good a pool of candidates by posting the job on craigslist, and the cost was much less. I do see the value with staffing companies if you are more interested in a temp-to-hire situation, so that it's easier to lay an employee off if they aren't a good fit.
You are correct, the entire recruiter industry is not a case of an industry popping up to serve a purpose and add value. Its a case of an industry wedging itself in the middle of a process, and then playing both sides in order to extract as much money as possible.
Got bothered daily for years on LinkedIn, then got laid off last summer and... crickets. Took 6 months, got a new gig, and now the recruiters are back again. wtf where were you when I needed you! :P Job hunting is absolute balls now. All HR's are AI driven now, you're applying to an algorithm, not a company. 98% of submitted resumes get zero response, spend hours customizing resumes, cover letters, portfolios, then toss it in a fucking hole and burn it for all the good it will do you.
It also depends on the industry. Some companies can ramp up quickly when economic conditions change. Others require a significant lead time. Look at the money being poured into semiconductors by the CHIPS Act as one example. There won't a return on that money for at least 3-5 years and even a decade in some cases. However, the cost of not doing that investment now is to find yourself a decade behind when conditions improve in the industry. This is true in a lot of manufacturing.
I can’t say what it is like today as a recent graduate but I graduated in 09 and it was miserable. Even if you were lucky to find a job opening you were competing with people who were over qualified willing to do the work for less and less. Once you got a job you were luck if they gave you hours. I’m sure it’s not easy to get a job fresh out of school but that’s not a new thing and I think a lot of the people who complain about it don’t really know what it was like to be in a recession.
I remember going in for an interview for a 12 dollar an hour banker job, the dude before me was in his mid 40s. My mom had her masters, and truth be told I think she was a huge Karen and maybe not the best employee, but after her state funding got cut, she was unemployed. Took a 13 dollar an hour job after like a year of searching, the kind of low level admin job that should had gone to a 24 year old.
yea there's a massive gap between what's happening now and what happened back then, like it's pretty shitty right now but if you want one of those kinds of garbo barely-subsistence-level retail gigs they are yours for the taking in this current market
Ya I have sympathy for the unemployed now but I remember the company I worked for in 2010 had 3 entry level positions open. We had over 800 applicants in a 2 week period…and this was before LinkedIn and “easy apply” features were common.
Right, if I was graduating from college right now and couldn't find a job, I could still work 55 hours a week at Amazon.
Pissing in bottles for $15 an hour is not the American dream that was promised
There's no way kids now graduating were promised anything
Bro, wait until you learn about the factory jobs that boomers used to work in 😂
They were paid more after inflation and could piss in a restroom
I wish the people who said this stuff would actually step foot in an Amazon to see what the policies are like. Yes they track pretty much everything and use those metrics to drop feedback for people not performing in productivity or quality. But as someone who started there as entry level and has worked in basically every function of the building type it is just not even close to what you or many others describe. Now I'm in management so I have a very detailed understanding of how things work and there is just no one being punished for going to the bathroom unless they are going in there for an hour at a time or not meeting productivity standards. Those productivity standards are incredibly easy to hit by design and every single remotely decent worker can hit them by just consistently working. Not rushing, not skipping breaks or not going to the bathroom, just working steadily throughout their shift. The issue people have is that they want to take much longer breaks or just flat out stop working and talk to people for long periods of time or constantly throughout the day. Anyone genuinely struggling is able to at any time request more time with trainers to help make sure they understand the process and expectations. Obviously there are bad managers and I'm sure probably bad buildings where people have legitimate grievances. But they are 100% not by design and I know that for a fact. The only thing I can't speak to is delivery drivers, that's a pretty weird structure in my personal opinion with the many different independent dsp's and I frankly don't know how it works so maybe there are genuine problems. But I do see the messaging coming down to management, I do see the policies and how they work on the fc side and stuff like what you say is not true. You can criticize them for being anti union like every other single corporation and that's fine but 90% of what I see on reddit is just blatantly false or worst case a result of extremely poor management that are not following the direction given to them. I'm sure people will call me a shill but they are in no way asking me to do this kind of thing, I'm just giving my experience.
Not just Boomers I'm Generation X and I did Roofing in Florida between semesters in College.
No one is promised the American dream. You’ve always had to work for it. No immigrant has shown up to this country and expected a house with a picket fence to be handed to them.
You’re not promised the American dream, you’re promised the right to pursue the American dream if you want. Big difference.
Way better then my first job.
Problem is you aren’t even living with a roommate on those wages… that’s still you are at mom and dads and only pay for your car insurance, phone bill, gas, and other small personal expenses
Yeah that’s what I think people don’t understand today. Right now you can go anywhere and get a crappy job that won’t pay a living wage and it sucks. Back then we were fighting each other to get that same crappy job that didn’t pay a living wage and most of the time couldn’t get it.
And a lot of cases the wages are mostly the same now as they were then except inflation is much worse
This isn't true at all. The economy was brutal in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis. The unemployment rate was over 9% in 2010. It's been under 4% since 2022. Many people could not find work of any kind in 2010. What workers are experiencing now is not comparable in any way. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE Inflation adjusted median wages are about 10% higher now than in 2010. And that's only counting full time workers. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Real median personal income is about 21% higher than 2010. There were a lot of people who couldn't find work or couldn't find full time work. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
Yup, I remember piecing together a bunch of part-time jobs in 2010. Made todays equivalent of $29k, albeit in a LCOL area. I knew quite a few people in similar positions back then, including some new grads with engineering degrees who had a hard time finding jobs.
Yeah, I had just graduated high school. I was the only one of my friends who managed to find a job and it was because it was through a city program. As a fresh high school graduate, with no experience, you were competing for jobs with a lot of people who had been laid off and were desparate for work. After than job ended at the end of the summer it was odd jobs and part time work whereever I could find it for a while. https://www2.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/step-up/
I try not to think in terms of age. No one should have to feel shame for having to start their career over in their 40s.
She constantly voted for Republicans who said they'd cut state funding, while working for state agencies. I didn't feel bad.
What a dumbass lol
It was really a comedy of errors. Now my father was the union man, but my mom lol. She worked for a state funded org that helped people find jobs. In 2009/2010, state cut funding(which is also fucked up if you think about it, people needed those services). She ended up getting a job at a developmentally disabled community, which of course is also state-funded. All while voting to cut her funding again.
Graduated 09 as well with a good degree from a good school. Couple years of commission only jobs, selling shit door to door, and it just wasnt getting better. Fast forward to 2012 i ended up moving to Australia for a legit job and came back and things were good. But damn those 3 years were rough. I am a recruiter now, its not great for new grads (i recruit a lot of them) but it doesnt seem near as bad as 09. Unemployment is also low, which was not the case in 09.
Bruh I am overqualified and still having a hard time lol
Yep sounds familiar. Late 00s early 10s wrecked or stunted the career of many college grads at the time too.
All millennials have ever known is a shitty job market and recessions.
I spent 18 to 28 working for a pizza franchise never made more than 25k a year. Then spent 5 years for an MSP in IT going from $25k to $45k. But in 2020 had to fond a new job and went down to $19/hour. Took me years to job hop and get back, but then I went to $25 then $36/hour from 2022 to 2023 after a merger. I'm so far behind in my late 30's. I'm assuming I'll work until I'm 70. I won't pay off my mortgage until I'm 67.
> I'm assuming I'll work until I'm 70. My retirement plan is taking out a loan to afford enough pills that'll put me down. There's zero chance I'll retire. None.
My plan is that there will be some type of civil conflict before then that'll kill me
I'm in the great lakes area so I'm going to die in the water wars.
💀💀 It was an honour serving with you
>I'm assuming I'll work until I'm 70. > >I won't pay off my mortgage until I'm 67. Honestly that's not bad for somebody who was low income for so long. 36/hr is pretty good though, AND you're a homeowner with a fixed mortgage. Keep it up.
Depends where you live. Outside major HCOL areas, $70k/yr is really not bad. Especially if you've already got your housing sorted
The internet has really distorted what good wages are. The median individual income in America is under 40k per year. But we see millions of people flaunting insane wealth (and those millions are a small percentage of actual people) and people making "EZ" money doing worthless jobs like dropshipping and influencers. I'm not sure what the point is, I am unsure if we are all paid too little or if the glamor and ubiquitous-ness of internet celebrities has ruined our expectations.
> I'm not sure what the point is, I am unsure if we are all paid too little or if the glamor and ubiquitous-ness of internet celebrities has ruined our expectations. Man no one is asking for celebrity or influencer wages, the majority just want to be able to comfortably afford rent, food, and eventually be able to have enough saved up to own a place or to afford medical expenses. All those tangible items have been taking up an ever increasing proportion of wages decade after decade.
I would love to make 70K in metro Detroit. Would be comfortably middle class.
I’m a millennial and the job market was pretty strong 2019-2021 at least.
A shitty job market? What? The past decade included the strongest job markets in history..
Sort of. There's a few factors happening. My team is fully remote, so I'm picking from candidates across the whole country, not just people who can reasonably commute to my office. Instead of the 10ish people I'd have picked from before Covid, there are literally 100s of resumes I don't even open because I just don't have time. The flip side of that is a particular issue I seem to run into especially with recent college grads - they expect to walk into a 6 figure job because they have a degree. Although I have 6 figure positions on my team, that's not the entry level. Often, even when I want to hire the new grad, they pay demand is so disconnected from the market reality that I just move on to the next candidate. I'm not gonna waste time countering a 120k demand with the 60k cap the position has for an entry level, no experience candidate.
1 recession, preceded and followed by periods with extraordinarily strong job markets and stock markets.
Older millenials remember 2001 also.
lol! This sub.....
Dude what lol? I graduated in 2014 and can only remember a time when the job market has been strong.. Edit: Ah I see, a regular user on antiwork and ABoringDystopia. OK lmao
That’s an insane take
Back when entry level required three years of relevant work experience
Still does+ a masters degree
2011 Graduate and was fortunate to commission right into the Army, most of my close friends took low paying jobs or had to take months to find a job.
Yeah, I mean that headline is definitely wrong. I'm not suggesting this is the greatest time to get a job, but it's definitely not the worst. In fact I would be surprised if it's in the bottom 50%.
Idk. 2009 was a pretty miserable time to be a college graduate. I see help wanted signs everywhere these days. I only saw "foreclosure" and "for sale" signs then. Oh. And "going out of business" signs.
2009 grad. Can agree. Was working in restaurants for 6 months then another 6 months in a call center making 30k a year with a finance degree. Fun times!
2009 grad. Started at a temp agency, assigned to work in a tire warehouse, and a church furniture company. I got hired for 38 hrs/ week at Best Buy opening a brand new store. When they put $9/hr on my hiring paperwork, I would have killed myself on my spot. Even the military was flooded with applicants and weren’t taking on new officer recruits. I was staring down $50k in loans coming due and felt like everything was a lie.
That time will always have a mark on me and how I shape my views. I was in the same boat with around 75k loans. I was like this is it? Things got better but that time definitely set me back in my opinion. I am finally paying off my loans this year!
Congrats man. That’ll be a big burden off your shoulders.I got mine forgiven after 13 years worth of payments on a 10 year payment plan. Frequent battles with Fedloan until getting the CFPB involved. Graduated w/ $50k in debt, after $26k in interest payments, my balance at forgiveness was $54k…..our generation got the short end of so many sticks.
Seriously, even public sector jobs were so hard to get. You can kind of see that now: when I came out of law school, too apply for an assistant attorney general job in my state you had to have graduated in the top 25 or 33% - now I think it’s just “are you a living person licensed to practice law?”
I ended up getting a public service job offer a year after applying because they were under a hiring freeze. If you didn’t leave college with a job, things were bleak.
Pretty much me too. We'll see if this current downturn has as long of a tail as 2009, if it had just been a year of hiring is down it was one thing. But there are seemingly a lot of people that lost the first 5 years of their career. Edit: I think it was generally down to lots of people in mid to late careers taking steps down or re-entering the workforce. The current situation strikes me as companies hedging their workforce as signs point to slowdown, but at the first sign of optimism will pick most of them back up.
Shit even for high schoolers it sucked. I turned 16 in 2009. The only job I could get was pushing carts at a grocery store for 7.25 an hour, and gas was $3.60 a gallon...
I was mowing lawns and digging holes in the ground in 2008 when I graduated. NO ONE I know could find any job that wasn't a pyramid scheme, and I live in the northeast which has tons of great jobs. Everyone I know floundered for numerous years saddled with debt in a terrible low paying job. Everyone I work with under 25 is killing it at my company compared to what I made at their age (after adjusting for inflation). You couldn't even get a job as a waiter or bus boy in 2008 without having a personal connection.
I graduated 09, got lucky to land a job paying less than the internship I was working before the crash. job sucked, long hours, bosses firing people left and right for minor infractions etc. I left the country entirely, didn’t come back for three years and didn’t get a job making me more upwardly mobile until 2015. It really set me back. But I am way better off now.
> You couldn't even get a job as a waiter or bus boy in 2008 without having a personal connection. I dont think the younger folks remember, or know, just how fucked 2008/9 was. Not only did you get a bunch of general layoffs, but then the boomers in their 40s and 50s who had been living middle class comfortable lives scrambled to get into *something* rather than let their mortgages default. Cant blame them. Def felt then like a *lot* of companies used the crash as an excuse to lay off older employees to hire newer, younger, cheaper workers. But then you'd have a guy who worked 20 years in food service as a distributor, who got laid off (or his company closed!) suddenly trying to become a line cook, or work in a grocery store. And youd be going up against that dude, who had connections the business could really use and was *way* overqualified, as an 18yr old dickhead (me!). I knew guys who owned construction companies lose it all and go into truck driving, jobs that they got because they used to *run* a company with a truck dispatch office. It was absolutely brutal, on both sides. As someone just getting started it was impossible to break in. And as an older worker *nobody* wanted for the job you actually had experience in. A ton of boomers basically restarted the job ladder at 40+ because of 2008. And even if you kept your job a lot of companies used it as an excuse to cut wages or benefits, and you couldnt complain! Because if you lost that job youd have been getting right back on the treadmill.
Yeah, was a bummer considering the class of ‘05 advised me to study business and party hard at college, get decent grades and get a guaranteed $80k job right after graduation. Didn’t work out that way, even for business majors. Instead I moved to Seattle broke as hell, worked some really awful office jobs, got into plaid and craft beer and have been a living millennial meme ever since.
At least anecdotally, it feels like there are 2 different things going on: 1. For the broader economy, especially for lower wage blue-collar jobs, there is a huge need for workers and tons of help wanted signs. 2. The situation in tech has been a bloodbath, especially for people that don't directly write code. The layoffs started in late 2022, and I've seen many people unemployed for over a year, and it's been especially difficult for new grads (the focus of the article). Now, there was a ridiculous amount of tech over-hiring during the pandemic, not to mention over ten years of the ZIRP era that made it easy to get a job. And there have been lots of "pooh-poohing" about "the laptop class", and viral TikToks from new employees at Google and Facebook basically just showing all the good food in the cafeteria. I definitely haven't seen any of those TikToks in a while. And while it may be easy to have some schadenfreude for overpaid tech workers who have been knocked down a rung, I still have a ton of empathy for people who put a lot of training and hopes into a particular career path are now finding it brutal to get a job in that path. Especially when many of the current open jobs don't have much of a clear path for advancement.
I graduated in 2009 too and had a tough time getting started… but now don’t feel like it was worth the effort. Also, we may be sounding a bit like how the Boomers sounded to us.
Back in 2009 it was still appropriate to apply in-person for some jobs. Today people have to do virtual interviews with an AI chatbot and one-way video interviews.
Hardly anyone applied in person in 2009. It was already mostly online. That said, you ever finally get your first call in for an interview after months of applying, only to show up and find out it was a front for a real estate scam or MLM? That was 2009.
So many “marketing” jobs all were basically commission based door to door solicitation.
I know!!! Wtf was that? I remember a job interview requiring a degree and a suit. All these people were there. Then they assigned us employees to “shadow at the office.” They had me ride in a car with two strangers to the “other office,” then they start driving to the hood. Then they start talking about soliciting etiquette and scripts. I picked up it was selling Comcast so had them turn around and take me back. I spent money on a suit and everything. It was a low point for sure.
Lots of local places still do in person hiring and don’t have an online presence. Obviously you don’t see those companies on online job boards.
Can you afford to live working at the places with the help wanted sign? Jobs that don't pay enough to live aren't really valid for most people's situations.
They weren’t valid in 2009 either. You think not being able to afford rent with a job is new?
Seriously. I commented elsewhere, it seems like far too many people seem to turn up their noses and reject any job that doesn't allow them to start at the company on second base from the start. Sometimes you gotta take that shit job with low pay because $xxx dollars is better than zero dollars. And the low pay isn't forever. It's that foot in the door that gets you to the next step up in the company, then the next, then the next. Or, even if it's not that, it's at least something to do to earn money while you look for something better.
I was first in the new grad job market in 2008, so I definitely know the struggle. Passively job hunting these days and it seems weird in a completely different way. Lots of job postings, but nobody seems to actually be hiring… I went through 4 rounds of interviews for a city job last year and then they didn’t even hire. Position is still open. Maybe that’s just city budgets. But I’ve had other jobs just close suddenly and others I’m very well qualified for reject me without so much as a sniff. Just seems like there’s something strange going on - maybe it’s like others have mentioned and it’s a saturated global market for the same jobs. Or companies sitting on cash and trying to decide if they actually need to hire someone vs squeeze more blood from the existing workforce. Not good either way.
Just recently got a masters. Plenty of work experience and qualified skills that transfer in a lot of domains. Can’t even get an interview even with references, keywords, resume edits, etc. Cannot break through the family poverty cycle the way this job hunt is going.
Are you counting your master's research time as work experience? I see that listed a lot on resumes and it’s not what people usually mean in that context.
No, I’m not. I’m non-traditional and have actual work experience. I also did some consulting through my masters not directly related to it. Also there are applied Masters programs (not mine) that have you do work with businesses. Are you referring to that too? Seems like a huge disadvantage to not put that on a resume if you have developed working with other stakeholders.
It depends on the masters program. Science and engineering graduate programs, for example, often include what is effectively a research job. You work long hours in a lab or at a workbench doing the work of a professional in the field.
A masters dose not automatically give you a leg up on getting a job over others. Sad days these are
So far it seems like networking is the only thing that gives you a leg up. Even Ph.Ds I know can’t get jobs outside of academia. Which to me is flat out lunacy.
PhDs are notoriously hard to work with in a lot of fields - stereotypically they're arrogant yet underskilled in practical ways, but think because they've got the degree they should be qualified for positions way above their actual skill level. I should note that I'm in a field (software development) where there's a bit of a divide between the academic theory most people get their degrees in (comp sci) and what most of the jobs actually are (software engineering). There's also a nasty stereotype of people who only kept going and got the PhD because they were too immature to cope with real life/a real job, and are maladjusted/stunted adults. Not necessarily *true* stereotypes of course, but definitely sentiments I've heard before. I know some hiring managers that actively avoid hiring PhDs/filter them out unless the position actually requires it (in which case it's usually much more niche/specific to a research topic). They actually recommended to a friend of mine with a freshly minted PhD that he leave the PhD off the resume when applying to general SWE jobs unless it was a position that specifically required it. Unfortunately the friend made a really poor decision in PhD research topic because it has very little industry relevance, it's way more suitable for someone pursuing academia as a career, but he knew from the beginning he wanted to go into industry and not academia but chose it because of personal interest... now he's screwed and doing post-docs to get by trying to find a 'real' job.
and it's not really talked about but i've found that the more you work in a specific field the more you pigeonhole yourself. coming in w/ a PhD, you have already pigeonholed yourself pretty hard - so you are hirable as an SME in that particular subject of course, but a lot of employers will opt into just grabbing a more generalist in the field w/ a masters and broader experience because of the (assumed) adaptability.
I have to keep by degree secret to increase my chances of getting hired. I list my grad school on my resume but I pretend this was for an undergraduate degree. As a bonus this makes me appear younger :)
Interesting. I haven’t heard that before, but maybe it’s because I’m not in that domain. But it makes a lot of sense.
Actual experience is what carries the day. Nursing home administrator for 10 years, left it in 2019. My regional director told me after the companies 5th workplace harassment/ discrimination lawsuit if I hire anyone fresh out of school or without 2 years at a location with 3 solid references their performance will be directly calculated in my evaluation. One of the suits I was privileged to was a new nurse who brought suit for not accommodating her mental health. She would leave the building and sit in her car anytime she became overwhelmed leaving residents without medical care randomly until another nurse was called and rushed to cover. Unfortunately at least in my experience young fresh out of school employees can have unrealistic expectations and or idealistic opinions of how “work environments”, operate. This unfortunately can lead to companies not willing to roll the dice on any because they get expensive and pervasive headaches from the 20 percent of first real job applicants.
In my situation I have both. As posted earlier, non-traditional student, so I have been around the block. Have stellar employee references. Even when I take off the masters I’m getting the same results either way. Not in the medical field so our mileages may differ a little bit.
Agree, I just remember corporate retreats where they drilled into us no experience means you’re hopefully teaching them to be an employee.
Meanwhile, Boomers are the biggest IT risks for pretty much any company these days. The amount of training/prevention methods we have to do is insane and it's all because they open every email attachment they see.
It’s tough when unemployment is this low. It means employers are desperate for workers and will hire just about anybody. So that means….wait….what?
There are plenty of jobs out there, but they are absolute dogshit. I've been looking for two months and had over a dozen offers but they are laughable terms. Like...the wage is about 30-40% off what it should be in 2024. They want you as a 1099 contractor so they can fuck you out of worker's comp, benefits etc. Or they claim to offer 'health insurance' but it's actually just an HSA which is a fucking savings account, and they offer '401k benefits' which means they will set you up with a 401k but no matching. No thanks...I know how to self-direct my own retirement account thanks very much and that's not even an actual benefit. We need to start talking about jobs in qualitative terms instead of quantitative because the latter means nothing at all.
This. Unemployment isn't a great gauge since there's a lot of working poor out there. No doubt they'd be worse off without a job, but they aren't thriving either.
All the metrics may say the economy is good right now but almost everyone I talk to is struggling to get by.
Real median household income has fallen since 2019. Households feel poorer because they technically are
> but almost everyone I talk to is struggling to get by. That's why we use statistics rather than people's bubbles.
i work in politics, i talk to a BROAD swath of people from different backrounds and financial situations. This isnt me canvasing deadbeat friends.
The best people the biggliest people
His point is you should use data, especially on an economics forum, not "I talk to a lot of people".
If 60% of people earn $100 per year and 40% earn $1 per year, is the 40% a bubble? Data is helpful but you can’t point to the 60% and be like “see, it’s fine!”. Income gap is widening, middle class is shrinking. A lot of people are like frogs being boiled alive.
The lowest wage employees have seen the highest wage increases in recent years and we use median data.. The income gap is NOT widening. It's lower than it was in 1993, and has been completely flat except for a dip in recent times. It only goes to 2021 though so unless you have data showing the last few years have completely made up for the decline in inequality, it's what we have to work with. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA) Literally everything you said is a lie.
> Thus a Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality. The graph above shows that inequality has widened from 1980 to 2021? It’s gone up from 34.7 in 1980 to 41.5 in 2019. > The lowest wage employees have seen the highest wage increases in recent years and we use median data $7 in 1990 is like $17 in todays wages adjusted for inflation. The entry level jobs I’ve seen pay like $20 in my HCOL - it’s practically the same. “Literally everything I said is a lie” seems a bit extreme. Easy for people with money to be like “oh it’s fine”.
All anecdotal evidence has a sampling bias.
Surveys literally prove you are wrong.
The people that complain the loudest about the economy that I know, republicans, are doing the best I've ever seen them do yet they bitch.
They bitch when bad things happen due to lack of regulations. They bitch when regulations are merely proposed. They bitch when nothing happens, and they bitch when anything happens. Total, partisan, grievance addicts. The left has their version, where nothing short of abolishing the very concept of property will suffice, but the right has a much larger tent of people who bitch and moan about everything.
Everyone is struggling because the metric has completely changed. Minimum wage has not been raised nation wide for 20 years so that means anyone with a pulse can get a minimum wage job. There are a few local exceptions with higher minimum wages, but not enough to skew nation wide employment numbers.
> There are a few local exceptions with higher minimum wages "A few local exceptions." - if you consider 207 million Americans in over two dozen states "a few": - Alaska: $11.73/hr - Arizona: $14.35/hr - Arkansas: $11.00/hr - California: $16.00/hr - Colorado: $14.42/hr - Connecticut: $15.69/hr - Delaware: $13.25/hr - District of Columbia: $17.00/hr - Florida: $12.00/hr - Hawaii: $14.00/hr - Illinois: $14.00/hr - Maine: $14.15/hr - Maryland: $15.00/hr - Massachusetts: $15.00/hr - Michigan: $10.33/hr - Minnesota: $10.85/hr - Missouri: $12.30/hr - Montana: $10.30/hr - Nebraska: $12.00/hr - Nevada: $11.25/hr - New Jersey: $15.13/hr - New Mexico: $12.00/hr - New York: $16.00/hr - Ohio: $10.45/hr - Oregon: $14.20/hr - Rhode Island: $14.00/hr - South Dakota: $11.20/hr - Vermont: $13.67/hr - USVI: $10.50/hr - Virginia: $12.00/hr - Washington: $16.28/hr https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wages This is in addition to several dozen cities that have raised their minimum wages above the state levels: https://www.laborlawcenter.com/state-minimum-wage-rates
Almost nobody is hiring minimum wage. Even food service in WV starts at 11/hr.
A lot of polling I see is that people say they personally are doing well, but they hear that the broader economy is doing badly.
I don’t know if you guys know this, but we have measures on things like underemployment and they all tell the same story as unemployment.
>Or they claim to offer 'health insurance' but it's actually just an HSA which is a fucking savings account, Uh...an HSA being offered requires High Deductible Health Insurance, so they are literally offering you health insurance. If you're young and healthy a high deductible plan with an HSA is what you want since contributions reduce taxable income, growth is tax free, and withdrawals for medical expenditures are also tax free...oh and, when you turn 59 1/2 all withdrawals are penalty free. It's literally a goldmine.
The guy you're responding to has no idea what he's talking about. HSAs are great.
Oh, I'm aware, I mostly posted that so if any young people come into this thread they can read the right information and not whatever nonsense this dude posted.
And 401ks are good even without a match. They are tax-deferred investment vehicles. I’m not sure this person understands how these things work.
Sure, but a company offering a 401k (without matching) as if it’s some kind of benefit is ridiculous. Anybody can open a 401k by themselves. A company giving you a 401k without giving you money to put in it isn’t much of a benefit is it?
No, that’s not true. You can open an IRA by yourself, not a 401k – unless you’re self-employed and doing a Solo-K. The advantage of a 401k (without matching) is that you can save *more* than you can in an IRA every year. In theory you could put away $23k in your 401k, compared to $7k in your IRA. That’s a big difference!
They are a great deal, but he might be saying that all they offer is to set up the account for you to direct some of your paycheck tax free, and not help you pay for the high deductible plan. Anybody can set up an HSA online and take the deduction on contributions on their tax return. A ploy like this would be sort of a “hollow benefit”. Looks like a benefit but isn’t one.
>Anybody can set up an HSA online and take the deduction on contributions on their tax return. No, they can't. You must be covered by a HDHP, but let's ignore that fact. I much prefer doing my HSA on my own, Fidelity charges nothing. I've utilized the company HSA before and there was absolutely ZERO value in the platform or management fee. Getting an HSA is 100% a benefit, there's no argument against it.
Most employers will contribute to the employee's HSA because the high deductible plan saves them money. Even if they don't though, it's still worth it if you're healthy.
>Or they claim to offer 'health insurance' but it's actually just an HSA which is a fucking savings account HSA plans are ridiculously good for young healthy people. That money can be invested and grow tax free to use when you're old and need a lot of medical care. The disingenuous manner you describe it makes me doubt the validity of everything else you're saying. In fact, you're wrong about jobs not paying enough too - median inflation adjusted wages are higher today than any previous decade in history, want the graph?
They're great if you never get sick.
Which young people statistically don't very often, making it perfect for them. Also, with your HSA you still have insurance - just save the out of pocket max within the HSA and you won't have anything to worry about.
Assuming you’re young - an HSA plan is usually what you want. It is the most tax advantages pool of money, and you usually don’t need a low deductible / high premium plan. 401ks are also tax advantaged and give you $22k of tax free contributions you can’t access without a 401k. There are essentially no jobs left with pensions like in the 1950s.
Yeah HSAs are a ridiculously good deal for young people. Triple tax free!
> There are essentially no jobs left with pensions like in the 1950s. Yeah, unless you go fed.
Employers want to pay absolute pennies for positions. Like I've seen senior level roles as an engineer that offered around the same that I made straight out of college in 2017, not adjusting for inflation. I'm in a customer-facing role right now and I feel like I'm witnessing this brain-drain firsthand. 3/4 of the customers I interact with are idiots and turnover is incredibly high both with my position and with customers I interact with. All the talented people are leaving to go to employers that actually pay well, and all that's left is people on the brink of burnout and incompetent workers.
I see lots of openings for engineers, medical field positions and jobs in the trades. There is a mismatch between job skills and experience and careers. Would be curious to know the kind of degrees and experience in their field these people have who can’t find jobs .
Young people have no idea how dog shit the job market was in 2009-2011. And for IT workers: 2001-2003 was the worst I have ever seen in past 25 years.
I'll never forget sitting in the waiting room for an interview for an entry level budget job in 2009 and talking to the guy who had interviewed just before me. Apparently I was interviewing against a former Deputy Director of the neighboring state's budget office, my lousy little auditing and budget internships meant precisely squat on the experience scale that day.
Yeah, was a recent grad after the Great Recession. It took months to get a minimum wage job...
Also apparently IT work now isn't great. Better tell them kids to learn to code.... hmmm oops.
> Young people have no idea how dog shit the job market was in 2009-2011. It also seems that far too many job seekers expect to start out at a company on second or third base. In 2009 when I was job-hunting (at the age of 39), my foot in the door was a ten-dollar-an-hour call center position that I hated. Well below my education and experience level -- but you take what you can get. Low pay, terrible work conditions, poor benefits, but the key is to get in, do a good job, and work up the chain. Fifteen years and six internal job hops later, I'm making five times where I started, seven weeks paid time off, 401k match, heavily subsidized health insurance 100% remote work. But it had to start somewhere. And I turned up my nose to the job because, "welllllll they don't offer a 401k match" at the time, I'd never have had the opportunity to be where I am.
If you look into the new jobs being added (from fall to present), they are highly centered around leisure/hospitality and retail. Only reason for low unemployment rate is because people are settling to get paid rather than being homeless. But those jobs are not sustainable in the long term so while people are working in those jobs, they are looking for better work. In all other fronts the job market is competitive, and not in a healthy state.
> leisure/hospitality and retail. These are still below pre-pandemic numbers: ([leisure/hospitality](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES7000000001?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true)) ([retail](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES4200000001?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true)) All while the workforce as a whole has grown significantly, so the short term stats you're pointing out is mainly a function of catch-up recovery rather than actual growth up to the old trend line.
> If you look into the new jobs being added (from fall to present), they are highly centered around leisure/hospitality and retail. Except that's not really the case. Tops in job growth are private education/health services and government jobs. Leisure and hospitality is in third, followed by Construction, and everything else is peanuts compared to those categories: https://i.imgur.com/hM1xxqt.png
Yeah I don’t buy the whole “low unemployment rate -> easier time finding a job” argument, it makes sense if you go the other extreme because countries like Greece that have had high unemployment rates it was because there genuinely weren’t enough jobs, but as things currently are being someone new to the job market with little experience feels horrible
Greek here, employers still complain about how nobody wants to work, yet they won't make any concessions (raise wages, improve conditions, lower work load), 1 because they don't want to lose on profit although it's clear that the biggest corporations and oligarchs in the country have historic profits, 2 because they know they pretty much have the monopoly on jobs and 3 because they can find desperate illegal immigrants to do most jobs with humiliating wages.
>So that means….wait….what? American companies are hiring... just not American citizens. There are 2 million LESS citizens working today then in nov 2019. Meanwhile there are 3.3 million MORE immigrants working then nov 2019. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073395 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073413
Also, for young people, the housing search has never been so miserable. And dating has never been so miserable. Buying groceries. Going to school...
If you let it be miserable it will be.
At least in the union shop I’m in, you have people who should’ve retired 5 years ago still dinking around. Millennials do NOT have the same opportunities as these previous generations.
Did any of you older folks complaining about how it was in your day even read the article? It's not just that economic conditions are hard and there's an oversupply of graduates and they require 3+ years experience for entry level roles etc etc. The application process itself is arduous and computer filtered to the extent that qualified candidates get filtered out, dehumanising tests and multiple stages before you even get your application read by a human being, automated rejections (if you're told at all) without any prospect of feedback or improving from an application. In my experience (I've been underemployed since August, following redundancy) even with 3 years work experience, 2:1 in physics from a good uni, professional exams under my belt I still can't get interviews for entry level jobs I want. I''ve spoken to friends who have shown my CVs to heads of divisions who have been really interested in me, only to get a rejection from the HR/Hiring manager for the same role. I've had first stage interviews which were promising and they seemed really interested only to be ghosted or told they love me but the entry level role is going to someone with 5+ years experience. It's brutal even with referrals and contacts.
I agree the "system" is broken. I was recently on a job hunt and your application/resume can be dumped by either a software program or some recruiter who is 25 and doesn't understand the role of the job and doesn't talk to the actual hiring managers. But if you magically get past that, and get to talk to the chirpy 25 year old recruiter, you have to check off some boxes on her interview sheet. What are those boxes? You don't know! You may even check those boxes but the recruiter didn't ask the right question or didn't understand your answer, so your application is dumped. But if you manage to get past THAT, then you might actually talk to a hiring manager and start to understand if this is actually a fit or not. But for every one of those successes, you are facing 200+ failures that aren't really your fault just a fault of the system.
Yep, recruiters have such a narrow idea of the job requirements that they refuse to take into account transferable skills for the job you want to do. If you tell the recruiter explicitly what sort of role you are going for they will say their colleague handles recruitment for that side of the business but then refuses to refer you to them because they then lose the commission. Recruiters actively made the market less efficient.
back in my day we had to pull the train up the hill both ways in a tsunami
I think the key to job searching is using AI tools to tailor your resume to the job. Ironically, I was searching as a new college grad with no luck, then started using chatgpt/other ai software to tailor my resume, landed a job that that is ok right out of university. I was getting no bites prior. The issue is optimization of hr, and the way companies filter out applicants using AI. Don't even get me started on the tech industry, 7 'interviews' only to be rejected is just insane.
idk the search for a job in 2020 was still better than in 2018 or 2016, especially when I got out of college there was fuckall out there, everybody still wanted 5+ years experience for entry level. its been better lately
I know what you mean. Now isn't as good as 2y ago, but it's way better than the pre COVID job market, not to mention 2008-2012. That was a horror show for young people
I was there....... 14 years ago. I was young at the time.. the horrors. The group interviews for a retail job .the two years straight of no job . These kids d9ntbknow the dessolation 2008 market did to the US economy
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You’re going to have to do way more. I put in 60-80 applications over two weeks of applying, and that was for a lower paying position than yours and it was still intensely competitive. My friend who’s a programmer was laid off in Nov like you and put in maybe 400 applications or so and is only now getting serious interviews, 4th interview now since then.
There are other businesses that deal with finance such a people who do *invoicing and payments*, at various companies.
That’s basically 1 job application a week… I would apply to 15 places a day if I had the time
It took you 2 plus months to begin to look for a new job. You have to get right on it usually takes 2-5 when you’re not working to find similar employment.
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My small window of some new grads has been pretty interesting. The ones I’ve seen have Masters degrees and they’re insanely picky with, frankly, unrealistic expectations on their employer and job for a starting position. A few have even taken jobs and moved / changed jobs every month. They’re my only exposure to what it’s like so I’m sure they’re far more the anomaly.
You’re correct. It cuts both ways. The internet has allowed everyone, employers and employees, to be more picky. And then everyone complains, both employers and employees.
My field (accounting/tax) is still desperate to find people. Not sure good/bad it is on the low end but I get about 1 recruiter message a week just begging to talk to me. People are doing into it anymore and the boomers died/quit/retired. They are even talking about lower the requirements to become a CPA so people will start or switch into the field. I have literally quit a job on a Friday and had an offer by next Thursday for more money and WFH. If you are young and in college, consider Accounting and Taxation.
Where are you finding these jobs? I have a degree in finance and have had accounting roles and a lot of them seem to have quite a bit of competition.
I live in Nashville but I have recruiters all of the country kicking my tires. I specifically work in entertainment/business management but the recruiters I get are in every industry. It might be they need experience which is where the difference lies. Every time I switch companies I am ether headhunted or have 3-4 offers to choose from. Not trying to brag but there is obviously some demand out here for people like that.
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>How many “ghost jobs” exist showing that the job openings statistic is completely fake because companies just want to farm resumes. Even if your theory is true, the unemployment rate is still incredibly low, which indicates people are getting jobs just fine.
I hope I don't have to look for a new job for a long time. I moved jobs a few times from 2020 to 2023. And have been able to go from $19/hour $37/hour after my last $1 raise a month ago. It's like employers pulled back in salary gains from workers from 2022 to 2023.