Also, another growing trend is where employers will not hire the unemployed:
Maybe we need more regulations?
A few other possibilities I’ve seen:
The same job is posted in several places. So, there are less than 3.2 million openings.
The same job is posted multiple times on the same site under different headings. So, there are less than 3.2 million openings.
The position is not yet funded. The company is posting the job to see who is available and they use this information to help get the postion funded.
The company has no intention of hiring anyone. They just want to interview employees at competitors to try and get information.
I have to say the main reason is mismatch between skills/experience and requirements. Companies are being very specific about the background of people they hire. I’ve seen companies who will only hire people who have recently worked at specific organizations. This clearly prevents the majority of the unemployed from even being considered.
In addition to the points discussed above, another factor may be the extension of unemployment benefits. I’ve read stuff saying that many unemployed only start looking for a job when the benefits are about to run out. So, a large number of the unemployed may not really be looking.
Interesting speculation. Get back to us when you have data.
Or the job posters are scumbags who are trying to prey on people.
Real life example #1 Job listing for a project manager (residential construction) I’ve done this, I’m good at it, it usually pays low 50’s to mid 60s. These jokers want to pay MINIMUM wage, I pay gas on the company truck BUT BUT BUT!!! I get 50% commission on any work I manage to con the homeowner into agreeing to AFTER the contract is signed and the installers are in progress. Riiiiiiight, the bastard actually had the balls to tell me I had unlimited potential!
Real life example #2 Kitchen designer. Again, I’ve got 15 years experience, I know the industry in and out and I’m a damn good designer if I say so myself. OK, This is commission, I can handle that. Go to the interview, guy says I’m not allowed to deal with anyone who walks in the door, only contacts that have NOT contacted the company. NO draw on commission, 100% paid 45 days after final payment for project is received. What this means is say I start today, find a customer this wee, spend a couple weeks selling the design, getting the contractors (oh yeah I’m responsible for that too) and ordering the product. Wait a month or so for the product then figure 2-3 months for the job to be done. If the customer pays on the day the punch list is completed I’m looking at 6-9 months working full time before i see a cent. Oh and the customer has 30 days from the end of the punch list to pay, they get net 3% if they pay cash which comes OUT OF MY COMMISSION.
The best part of that clusterfuck? I’d be required to work in the showroom at least 20 hours a week helping customers who come in knowing that I would not get a single cent for doing so.
First time in 41 years I told a prospective employer they were so full of shit their eyes were brown.
](CapitolCommentary.com - Politics Domains for Sale - Buy Premium Government & Campaign Domain Names | DomainMarket.com Domain for Sale. Call 888-694-6735.[/quote) For the record, all the data on that page is from Denmark.
First, that’s not true at all, it also quotes some WSJ articles discussing Americans, and has other related data about Americans (i.e., effect of amount of UI on unemployment).
Second, do you have any reason to believe that Danes are different from Americans on this score?
In some cases, yes. At my company, I know of at least a couple of people who’ve recently been promoted or moved to different departments whose previous jobs are unfilled (and will very likely remain so in the near future).
It’s not the Danes that would render the data irrrelevant, it is the Danish system of unemployment. You are presuming it is similar.
I was told by one company that they wouldn’t hire me because I was overqualified and would leave as soon as a better job came up. A lot of the jobs are low paying but still require training such as a truck driving.
On a side note, one of the companies near me stated (on the news) that they couldn’t find people to work for lack of even a basic education. Translate that as you will.
My current job pays about a third of my last job and the application ratio was 1000 to 1.
That doesn’t say what you said it did. People start looking for jobs right away, but look for one that pays well. Once your unemployment benefits run out you will take something less desirable. Why not take a bad job right away? Well if you do, and then a better job comes up it will look odd that you are applying for a new job when you have only been at your existing one a few weeks of months. If they do hire you, then you may find an even better job and it will now look doubly suspicious. The job hopping will be part of your employment history forever. Lie about it on your resume and you could get fired even if you do get hired. Taking a lesser position may also make you look less desirable even if you stay put for a while: “Let’s see, he used to be a system administrator and now he is managing a 7-11. What’s wrong with him?”.
It’s game theory, how soon do you take a less than optimum position? Take one too soon and you may reduce your lifetime earnings. Take one too late and ditto.
Perhaps. But while it’s posted, it’s an “unfilled job posting”. It’s not unfilled because nobody’s applied for it; it’s unfilled because it’s required to be open for a certain period of time.
Yeah, these figures are kind of misleading when you consider that. I looked at the BLS report for “Job Openings and Labor Turnover” for July 2011. There were indeed 3.2 million job openings at the end of the month, BUT 4 million new hires were also made during the month. That gives an average job listed to filled time of just over three weeks. Much ado about nothing it seems.
I find that a puzzling statement because every state I’m aware of requires that people on unemployment provide proof of job searching to continue to receive those payments. If you stop looking you stop getting money.
When I was on unemployment I was audited at one point, needing to prove the validity of the job applications I had been making while on it.
Certainly, when the checks stop coming you might get a lot less fussy about which jobs you consider, but the notion that there are masses of people slacking off while collecting unemployment is something I’ve seen no proof of, just accusations.
Keep in mind, too, that unemployment doesn’t replace one’s entire salary. Very few people can actually pay their bills on it, so the average person has incentive to find work simply to cover monthly bills that UB simply doesn’t stretch far enough to cover.
Why are employers not offering on-the-job training?
In addition to what you said, the story linked to in the OP says that the number of job openings has fluctuated in the 2.5-4 million range for the past decade, i.e. well before unemployment benefit extensions came into play. It would be interesting to see some further analysis on just how many of these openings employers are truly having a hard time filling and how many are “open” due to the normal hiring process.
I’m currently writing an ad for a new full-time professor (actually, two) but there is a very good chance that before the job begins (in September 2012)
a) one of the jobs, if not both, will have been defunded
b) or will have been filled from within (in which case, we probably will need to get by for a year until we can go through the hiring process for 2013)
c) or will screw up in some other way–as has happened before, we will narrow one or both fields to a very few candidates, all of whom will have found better jobs by the time we make an offer, or we will offer few enough perks/salary/terms and conditions for anyone to find our job offer attractive.
At least one of these is being offered at the Associate/Full level, so we will be hiring (and in effect promoting) someone who already holds a job somewhere else, so we will be providing zero net jobs on the national level even if we are successful.
I just changed jobs, and if my experience in filling open positions at my previous company is any guide, then the posting for my position will be open for at least 3 months, and likely a fair bit longer. The job market for skilled people in my field is fairly tight right now, but it’s unlikely to affect the overall job market, both because the field is fairly small, and because becoming skilled takes some years of actually working in the field.
Because OJT doesn’t really make up for the guy with 15 years of experience in the field.
Less snippily, it’s very hard to justify the risk of training someone who might, in a year or two, be able to most of the job you need done now. For the time it takes for someone to come up to speed on a job you’re paying both the person getting trained and the person training him while getting about half the effective work of one of them. And, of course, the odds are once you’ve trained someone, you’ll get maybe a year of work out them before they move on; after all now they’re experienced and employed.
Because from the employer’s viewpoint it’s cheaper and more efficient to only hire trained workers and let someone else pay for that training.
On-the-job training used to be routine, but sometime during the 90’s businesses decided to dispense with it and just poached trained people off each other.