Inspired by this thread, are there any jobs anywhere nowadays that are substantially noncompetitive? That is, getting the job is pretty much a matter of showing up and showing that you can physically do the job, and you can’t lose it unless you royally mess up by raping your supervisor and getting into a gunfight with the head of accounting.
I’m guessing that if any exist, they are likely to be piecework and/or commission based, as they can pay lower-performing workers less, and also jobs that scale well (i.e. if the company has 20 employees now, they can just start adding employees and those employees will have productive things to do.)
You can always get into the exciting world of multi-level marketing. First, you buy your own sample kit. Then you do whatever you want. Feel like working your ass off? It’s possible you can earn six figures. Don’t feel like doing anything? No problem. You don’t make any money, but it’s no problem.
However, if you expect someone to pay you, they generally expect at least a minimal amount of both competence and effort. Even sheltered workshops have standards of behavior.
You’d have to stoop pretty low, I would guess. This is the first time in history that even freshly graduated RNs are having trouble finding jobs. Respiratory therapists are still in demand, though. Any job that involves dealing with people who are severely mentally or physically incapacitated and you do the shit work (I mean that literally) should be easy to get. They still go begging.
No, I don’t think there are many in the U.S. Back in high school when I worked minimum wage jobs ($3.35 an hour), it still took interviews and usually even some connections to get such a job then you had to work your ass off to keep it. The managers would sometimes bring out a huge stack of applications and shuffle it with their fingers like a card deck to keep us motivated and those were the good times.
I work at a high-level job in a manufacturing and distribution center now for a world famous company. The conditions are harsh for the blue-collar workers there but it pays well and there is a huge line for people to get a job there at all. They start as temp employees through a dedicated agency and can stay that way for up to two years. About 25% of them make the cut if they try extremely hard and get hired as 'permanent employees and the rest get cut for any reason whatsoever. It is extremely competitive and that is for really repetitive and hard labor albeit with good pay and benefits.
The only noncompetitive jobs that I know of would be extremely manual and short-term like doing one-time mass mailings or trash pickup. Temp agencies will give most people a chance at something but they are paid by the clients and usually have enough qualified people to fill the good jobs as well.
There are always plenty of crappy minimum-wage service and retail jobs available and easily obtained. They continually experience high turnover, “bad economy” or not. When people say there’s no jobs out there, they really mean “there’s no jobs out there that I’m not above working at.”
I am pretty conservative and I used to believe such a thing but I don’t think it is true for everyone. I have been laid off and applied to lots of high turnover types of jobs and never got selected for any of them As an able bodied male, I have never had long-term trouble getting upper-middle class jobs but get never got so much as a call back on any of the dozens of applications I filled out for lower level work. I was serious at the time and would have done anything at the time and I have manual labor and retail experience from years ago. I even started leaving off my college education from the applications and still nothing.
If you are a late 30’s male like I am or even worse, an older female that has been out of the workforce for a long time, you literally can’t get anything because there are no points for second or third place on any job interview and there is always a line of younger people that don’t have perceived inherent liabilities. I have a great job now that basically fell in my lap but I think my chances in general of landing any six figure job are actually higher than one at McDonald’s or the local hardware store based on my experiences.
That’s interesting, I never really considered the age angle but I could see that. So I’ll amend my statement to: if you’re relatively young, then it’s really easy to get a service/retail job.
Sure, in western North Dakota. Most of the actual oilfield jobs are somewhat competitive (in that you generally need some sort of experience or qualifications), but there’s massive labor shortages in the service industries and construction. Of course there’s also big housing shortages, so you might be living in your car, but you can get a pretty decent-paying low level service job that you’d have to try pretty hard to get fired from.
As someone who moved to southern California and was willing to do any job until I could get my feet under me, I have to disagree. Not speaking Spanish, I couldn’t even do field work. Nor any other kind of customer service work, no matter how menial. Not even hotel maid. Nothing.
Which is ironic, as I haven’t met a person here who doesn’t speak English as well as Spanish, so…yeah. I know I suck for only speaking English, but everyone ELSE also speaks English, so…gimme a break? Apparantly, not a chance. <sigh>
It’s sad, but in this economy, there is such a thing as being overqualified for a low level job because it’s assumed that you are used to a certain standard of living, and I’m not referring to pay expectations. Low level retail jobs suck not just because they are physically demanding and pay little, but because they often involve a lot of customer service which is a constant assault on your dignity. A good part of your job involves eating shit and crapping sunshine. It’s a hard metabolic shift if you’ve worked in an environment where common courtesy is the norm. In the eyes of management, you are more likely to complain and/or quit than a younger person new to the workforce who doesn’t have as wide a spectrum of what they can/should put up with in a work environment.
I’m young and while I was working at Trader Joe’s (retail) it took me 1.5 years to find another job. I finally got a better-than-retail job by networking with friends, but for 1.5 years I applied at every retail store I could find with not a single callback. Your information is very out of date.
Also in 2001 when I was 16 I applied at approximately 38 retail stores before getting my first job at Burger King, before that I got NO call backs or interviews even when I was calling in to follow up with my applications.
I’ve been employed since 19 with almost no gaps in employment, and retail jobs are by far the hardest to get.
In the small town I live in, the two biggest employers are a hospital and a university. It’s somewhat difficult to get a job in either of them (but not impossible) and from what I hear, once you’re in, you’re in. They will not fire you for less than some sort of illegal activity.
The university is like that because it’s unionized, and from what I hear the union makes it extremely difficult to fire someone. The worst case people just keep getting moved from one position to another. My mother worked there for a while, and I remember her complaining because they were forced to hire someone who flat out did not do any work. She was already in the union, though, so they had to hire that person even though there were other candidates that would have been a better choice. The other candidates were unfortunately from outside the university and union, so thus they were not able to hire them over a union person. I like a lot of things about unions, but this kind of crap is why they have such a horrible reputation.
The hospital is also about unions, but in the opposite way. They refuse to fire anyone because they don’t want to get their employees riled up enough to form a union. So once again, if you get a job there, you have it for life unless you commit a crime.
Both these places have horrible reputations as far as what it’s really like to work there, though. All the people I know who have a hospital/university job routinely hate it. However, these places are also some of the few employers who offer OK wages and decent benefits, so people feel stuck.
Its one of the great sadnesses of modern western life that there seem to be no “broom pushers” now. Back when i was young there were nightwatchmen, street sweepers etc. all recognised as a sort of social service by companies for the virtually unemployable. Now days it seems you have to climb all the time and “advance” constantly and live in worry your whole life. Its an illusion of course most of the "advancement " is pure bull and people seem to climb to spots just above their own compitance and work at covering up their mistakes all day.
A friend with a MA in Ship design once got a job welding, he gave it up as they kept asking him to do things far beyond his level of pay. They simply could not understand he was sick of it all and just wanted to be left alone.
After 29 years in the restaurant business, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t get hired onto the crew at a fast food place. “Overqualified”, and the manager would probably think I was after his/her job.
It is not accurate to blame all this on the workers. You can downplay your previous experience on applications (such jobs rarely expect a resume’ or CV) but you also can’t get hired if you show long gaps in employment, or sound weaselly about what you did while at company X. Employers are very reluctant to hire overqualified people, and not without good reason. An unemployed aerospace engineer might well be willing to mop floors or wait tables to make ends meet, but is also going to be looking to move on to something more challenging, and better paying ASAP. Not to mention the physical toughening element needed for many jobs. You really can’t pull an office worker out of the cubical they have been setting in for 20 years and expect them to pick tomatoes all day in full sun without debilitating pain…assuming they don’t pass out from heat stroke.
Beyond pay, physical toughness, and working conditions, they might also know a few things about employment law, OSHA rules, EPA, etc. and report your ass for failing to pay overtime, provide toilets, locking the emergency exits, pouring solvent down the sewer, etc. Much better to hire an undocumented alien, or meek high school kid you can push around.
Coal mine work. Due to the very negative PR, people are very hesitant to work underground. I know some management people with a large coal company. They advertise, not to sell coal, but to alter public perception of mining as a career.
Multi-level marketing and similar programs are pretty uncompetitive. Unfortunately, few people ever actually make money at them. The majority require you to shell out money up front to buy your own “sample products” and the like.
Even labor pools are “competitive” in a sense; you will only be dispatched on any given day if you are qualified for the available postings. Some will always be “putting things in boxes” and similar roles that require no education and no skills, but even those will be assigned to long-time labor pool employees first.
I guess it depends on your definition of noncompetitive. Wouldn’t government office-type jobs be that way? Pencil-pushing at the FDA or the Library of Congress, that sort of thing. How about military? Accounting/bookkeeping jobs seem like low stress and consistent work.
