Someone is lying..worker applied to 60 entry-level jobs in September got one interview

[HAB911]

A worker in Florida applied to 60 entry-level jobs in September and got one interview

https://www.businessinsider.com/worker-applied-to-60-jobs-got-one-interview-labor-shortage-2021-10


Joey Holz recalled first hearing complaints about a labor shortage last year when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida.

"The guy went on this rant about how he can't find help and he can't keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the stimulus checks," Holz told Insider. "And I'm like, 'Your medical professionals quit over $1,200 checks? That's weird.'"

Over the next several months, he watched as a growing chorus of businesses said they couldn't find anyone to hire because of government stimulus money. It was so ubiquitous that he joined a "No one wants to work" Facebook group, where users made memes deriding frustrated employers.
Coleen Piteo, director of marketing at Yours Truly restaurant, puts out a sign that says, "Free Food" and "Hiring all positions" to lure in job applicants.

He said he found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. The expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states ended them early in June and July.

[634-5789]

1. Well, then, He needs to come to Illinis. Jobs abound!

[Freddie]

2. Depends on the business and what they need

My husband is manager of an auto parts store and hires delivery drivers. Corporate is making him put Drivers Wanted signs in all the vehicles even though his location does not need drivers at the moment. Corporate is claiming “they want applications on file.”
OTOH I work for a school district in PA and we REALLY need sub teachers and bus drivers. They raised the pay of subs to $150/day (was $100) but it’s still no guaranteed work and no benefits.

[durablend]

3. Did they get PPP money?

Corporate is making him put Drivers Wanted signs in all the vehicles even though his location does not need drivers at the moment. Corporate is claiming “they want applications on file.”

Sounds like someone keeping their 't's crossed and their 'i's dotted for whatever reason

[Freddie]

5. No

Their business slowed down a bit during the worst of things but they never closed. The majority of their sales is to garages and dealerships, they are not retail. Looks like people kept getting their cars fixed no matter what.
Corporate made all managers take a pay cut in Spring of 2020 fearing the worst but rescinded it (and paid some of it back) when it became clear that they weren’t too bad off considering things.

[Lonestarblue]

4. I see a lot of Help Wanted signs here in Austin.

I’ve also seen more young black and Hispanic hires in stores that never had them before. Perhaps part of the employer complaint about people not wanting to work is that they want to hire whites people. Many women have also stayed out of the labor force because there aren’t enough daycare workers or their wages are too low to make paying for expensive daycare worthwhile. It’s time for workers to have the upper hand for awhile.

[NCDem47]

6. Well...it IS Ft. Myers, so...

The RW narrative runs strooooooong there. If you aren't working for peanuts, you're sponging off the government and taxpayers. Eyeroll.

[doc03]

7. Blame Carlos! I have been getting e-mails every day for Carlos.

Carlos "your interview is Monday October 25th."
Carlos "about your interview"
Carlos "your loan application for $9650 has been approved"
Carlos "we have job openings in sales"

I am not Carlos, don't know any Carlos!

Anyway there are help wanted signs everywhere here in Ohio. Minimum wage is $8.80 and McDonalds is offering $13 and
can't find workers.

[WHITT]

13. Gee

they don't want to risk their lives for $13/hour? Go figure.

[doc03]

16. But where are they? Are they working someplace else? Did they find a better job?

They are not getting the un-employment supplement, so what are they living on now? Are they living with
Mommy and Daddy? Are they homeless? Are they not qualified? Unemployment is 4.8%, those are people that are looking for work
how many more just dropped out? Maybe we do need immigrants to fill jobs?

[Farmer-Rick]

23. Well my theory....death and lost immigrants

A lot of them died. Yeah, State governments combined claim only about 700,000 dead. But do you believe Florida"s numbers? Here in TN our death rate is the lowest in all the world. If you have Covid-19, come here because our death rates are amazingly low.

So I'll bet you a lot of workers died or are suffering from permanent injury due to the virus. I'd give you an estimate but it is way high and I don't want to argue.

Then the racists scared off the immigrants who were taking the $2.13 an hour jobs. That's why the restaurant industry loved immigrants so much. They could pay them nothing and the workers were afraid to complain. But immigrants are being held at the border and Mexican immigration is now 0.

A lot of folks have learned how to work from home. With a little help from their parents, they figured out how to make ends meet without putting their life or health at risk. The ones who worked through the pandemic at low wage crappy jobs have gone on to better jobs or management positions.

Technically we have about 150 million workers in the US. Just imagine how many of them have gone missing to impact vacancies across the board.

[doc03]

25. My two nieces started working from home last year

and neither one wants to leave home for work now. As far as workers dying from COVID, were there that many working age people?

[GemDigger]

26. Our unemployment numbers are where they were at before covid.

The only thing covid changed was how business owners are now using the excuse of "no one wants to work". When you take the pre covid unemployment numbers and the covid unemployment numbers, there is minimal differences.

I don't understand why new business are coming up all around but no one looks into the normal unemployment rates in the district.

[doc03]

27. Unemployment before COVID was at 3.5% like

a 50 year low I think. Now it's 4.8% I figure that 1.3% difference is at least a million people.

[GemDigger]

28. I should have clarified that a bit.

I was using our local numbers not the national.

Edit: Our numbers are around 2.6 ish

[Zeitghost]

30. Unemployment

Does not factor in those who have left the workforce. If you lost your job but have stopped looking for a job or have dropped off the unemployment benefits roles you are not being counted as "unemployed".

[GemDigger]

34. Unemployment is the basic gauge of the available workforce, correct?

If they have left the workforce then they are NOT collecting unemployment so they would not affect those numbers. So the businesses claiming people are collecting unemployment instead of working isn't exactly true. At least not in the red states that already stopped the covid bonus months ago.

If we have low unemployment then the workforce is low, we have always had a low workforce here in my area for decades. That is my point. Here, they cannot use lazy people as an excuse because they had the problem well before that.

People have been no shows for interviews or their first day for as long as I can remember. Some because they found a better offer and didn't have the decency to call the employer. Some find out the place that hired them has a bad rep, some for personal reasons.

.

[ProfessorGAC]

37. Also, We Should Remember...

...that some public facing industries had a much higher than normal retirement rate, when furlough, or having to work in the pre-vaccine pandemic were the options to retirement.
I know 6 teachers & school administrators that retired 1-3 years early. That's just me, personally, and it's like that all around Illinois.
So, there are schools that can't fill teacher jobs, or they got regular subs (fully certified) to take the gigs, and now they can't find subs. (I sub since I retired. Science & math, grades 6-12. I get so many calls it would he impossible to do them all. I got 4 for today! And, I subbed Monday & Tuesday, so I wanted nothing today.)

[ck4829]

8. K&R

[Ohioboy]

9. Eventually the "stimulus money caused it" argument is going to run out

There are many reasons why there is a labor shortage, including the fact that a large portion of the population is of retirement age. The whole "they're paying people not to work" thing is just a way of blaming the situation on Joe Biden and democrats.

They can't accuse Biden of "killing jobs", so they have to complain that there are too many jobs.

One thing's for sure, Ayn Rand had it wrong. Apparently labor can shrug too.

[Crowman2009]

10. There's also the upward mobility factor.

Seeing that plenty of college graduates working these part-time jobs pre-COVID, I'm sure a lot of COVID victims who had jobs requiring bachelor degrees lead to a lot of openings.

[woodsprite]

12. Yeah, I was wondering the other day the impact that 700k+ dead has had on our work force.

I don't seem to hear that mentioned much. I figure at least 2/3 of those actually were in the work force at the time of their death, but not sure if there are any real numbers on that.

[forthemiddle]

29. Approximately 550,00 of that 750,00 that died

Were over 65, so I doubt that they make a huge portion (much less 2/3) that were in the work force.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge

[Maggiemayhem]

11. Maybe it is because corporation do not want to pay a living wage

I thought Covid was getter better and I would try for a part time job and joined a job site. People are not getting hired is the big complaint. Ageism is a big problem in USA. Why hire someone when you get one employee to do two jobs?

[lark]

14. Incompetent hiring managers abound, especially in restaurants & low end retail jobs.

They complain, but don't want to do the work to hire people, easier just to shut down or have an excuse not to pay someone and expect the paying customers to just suck up the horrible service.

[OldBaldy1701E]

15. Time to add another square to this classic meme.

No matter what is happening, it is all about them. 700,000 human beings dead in this country alone? So what! We cannot get enough people to work for very little to return me to pre-pandemic money levels! THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!

[PatrickforB]

17. I have been in workforce development over 30 years, and

we were asking this question on my first day - why does the labor market embrace some people, and reject others. If you look at the BLS data on average and median duration of unemployment in weeks, and the percentage of total unemployed (U3) that has been unemployed 15+ and 27+ weeks, it tells the same story as Holt. Why?

It isn't completely about skills, either. But what is it? We tell people it is easier to get a job when you already have one, and Holt is already employed, yet he sent out 60 applications and got 2 interviews/no offers. WHY?

[jmbar2]

18. Here is a good Harvard study on that topic

https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/Documents/research/hiddenworkers09032021.pdf

Part of it is the use of overly restrictive applicant tracking systems.

My own experience is that with many years of experience as a freelancer, I have zero luck getting any responses to an application filed online. My work history doesn't fit the parameters of the system.

[PatrickforB]

38. I really appreciate that link! Thank you very much.

We've been teaching job seekers for years about the so-called 'hidden job market.' Now we can begin teaching employers about the 'hidden labor force.' Really good content.

[jmbar2]

39. You're so welcome

I hope this gets widely distributed in the HR field.

It was frustrating for me to try to transition from freelance to being an internal after the 2008 recession. I'm retired now, but the penalty for being enterprising was painful. With more folks depending on gig employment, employers need to broaden their screening criteria.

[Farmer-Rick]

19. Corporations aren't missing workers

They are missing their slaves.

The guy got an interview for part time work at minimum but he had to be available full time. Meaning they could call him in at any time and if he failed to show, bye-bye part-time job.

Yeah signs everywhere here too but almost all of them are offering absolute minimum and that means $7.25 an hour here. You try and live on $7.25 an hour and they take a big chunk of that for taxes. If they make it seem like you get tips they can pay you as little as $2.13 an hour. No one is paying anything decent. They just all want to complain so they can get their slave labor back.

The the filthy rich are angry and the abuse will continue until we all bow down.

[jmbar2]

20. I did a Google search on that story, and it may be questionable

The reporting source is Business Insider, which is a vertical content aggregator, so its stories are only as good as their sources. The other sources reporting it are pretty unknown.

[HAB911]

22. that doesn't surprise me

half the shit I read from all sources..............

[Hotler]

21. Let me channel Sen. Manchin.

As workers we can not allow ourselves to work at or near minimum wage and work shitty hours any longer. That would be contributing to an entitlement mentality within the business class. An entitlement of unending cheap labor.

[ripcord]

24. A friend of mine can't find a job

His company closed, he is 59 and has sent his resume to hundreds of companies and it seems no one wants him, age discrimination sucks.

[Zeitghost]

31. If they can tell his age

From his application/resume, he needs to change things up.

[Zeitghost]

32. I'm curious

As to how he's filling out applications and what his resume looks like. Nobody will hire someone with a solid resume to an entry level position knowing they will likely walk as soon as something better comes up. Being overqualified is a real problem if you are seriously looking to take a step down the ladder.

[ck4829]

35. He said he only applied to firms that said they were hurting for workers, you know...

The “nobody wants to work anymore” types.

Maybe they aren’t all that desperate.

[Zeitghost]

36. Hiring someone...

Who only wants to work for a week or two until a better offer comes up can cost you money and isn't worth the time. Even in a low skill position people need some basic training and experience until they are up to speed and contributing enough to justify their expense. If I was hiring for entry level position and an application came through for a college educated professional, that app would get tossed. Even if I was having a hard time finding workers, it's simply a waste of time pursuing it in most cases.

This guy wasn't really looking for entry level work and it's not unrealistic to assume that may have come across in his application/resume even if unintentional.

[xmas74]

33. After the fiasco of last year

I applied for jobs throughout the winter and into the spring. All were for open,advertised positions. This last week I've heard from 7 places wanting me to contact them for a "pre interview" phone call. None want to interview for open positions. They're all doing pre-screening to possibly interview next year.

All still have open ads on Indeed,Zip Recruiter,etc.