Unemployment Round 345

[ksen]

The point is the position he's describing isn't one for which on-the-job training is appropriate.

That's odd; I could have sworn that someone just said that the skills required are not normally taught in schools. If on the job training isn't appropriate, then where are these skills supposed to come from? The skills fairies?

Of course.

You can find the skills fairies pollinating the money trees where unemployed consumers go to get their daily cash infusions.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

I say Holmes, I note a marked absence of fecal material.

So you are saying that the problem is that they expected somebody else to provide training to their prospective employees. Obviously, if everyone expects somebody else to do something, that thing doesn't get done.

And as training costs money, nobody is going to do it - because their competitors who don't do it can then use the money saved to offer higher wages and poach the trained staff.

Maybe they need an experienced person _now_. Training isn't instantaneous and not every person is equally trainable for any particular position.

As they are offering well above minimum wage, they could mitigate the training cost with a lower starting wage. The drawback is the additional time it takes to get to the desired production level from the individual.

It will take six months for us to get the person fully up to speed. The main qualification for sales experience is that the person has worked face to face with the general public before and has a personality that can deal with various personalities and responses. It mainly that we want reassurance that this individual has the social skills to work with the public before we put in six months to train them.

 

[funinspace]

A few thoughts. My wife, back when she worked in sales at a major dept. store was making $8-10/hr with commission circa 1985. She also had very good health insurance at a pretty cheap price with them. In today’s dollars that would be roughly $17-22/hr. She got that job after 1 or 2 minor jobs, with probably no more than 6 months prior sales experience. I also had a summer job around 1985, at an electronics assembly facility that specialized in small lot jobs. I was paid something like $8-9/hr, and had no prior experience.

Back in the 1990’s I got a half dozen pricey and specialized 1 week training courses, including traveling to the companies site. The next company that hired me, paid my costs to travel across 2 states and a house sale, to pull me in. Until the Dot-com bust, I got further expensive training. I was at a big enough company that the trainer was brought to us. One doesn’t see that very much anymore even in the professional technology fields.

One hears about unemployment/under-employment quite a bit, as median wages are still below where they were in 2007, and is also below the level from the late 1990’s. Sure the unemployment rate has slipped under 6% nationally. However, the U-6 (Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force) is still at 11.5%. And the unemployment rate for millennials is substantially higher than the 6%. And yet, the Case-Shiller housing index has been climbing back up to levels from the previous decade.

So in places where unemployment is actually low, employers are going to have to rediscover what they seemed to have forgotten after a few decades. Hire (maybe at a lower rate), but train employees up. If you really want/need the skills now, then offer more money and/or scout around beyond the city your located; and one might need to “advertise” more…scary thought indeed.

 

[James Brown]

One hears about unemployment/under-employment quite a bit, as median wages are still below where they were in 2007, and is also below the level from the late 1990’s. Sure the unemployment rate has slipped under 6% nationally. However, the U-6 (Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force) is still at 11.5%.

Since U6 comprises of the "official" unemployment rate plus other figures, it's always going to be higher. Fortunately, U6 has also been declining at about the same rate.

I only mention this because some conservative bloggers have discovered U6 and therefore argue that Obama should get zero credit for reducing unemployment. "U6 is still twice as high as the official rate!" they harrumph. Yes, much like temperatures in Mexico City are twice as high as in Ottawa.

 

[Harry Bosch]

That's odd; I could have sworn that someone just said that the skills required are not normally taught in schools. If on the job training isn't appropriate, then where are these skills supposed to come from? The skills fairies?

Of course.

You can find the skills fairies pollinating the money trees where unemployed consumers go to get their daily cash infusions.

Companies prefer to hire people with skills from their competitors. Companies do not like to pay for training anymore.

 

[funinspace]

One hears about unemployment/under-employment quite a bit, as median wages are still below where they were in 2007, and is also below the level from the late 1990’s. Sure the unemployment rate has slipped under 6% nationally. However, the U-6 (Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force) is still at 11.5%.

Since U6 comprises of the "official" unemployment rate plus other figures, it's always going to be higher. Fortunately, U6 has also been declining at about the same rate.

I only mention this because some conservative bloggers have discovered U6 and therefore argue that Obama should get zero credit for reducing unemployment. "U6 is still twice as high as the official rate!" they harrumph. Yes, much like temperatures in Mexico City are twice as high as in Ottawa.

That is correct. My point in bringing it up, was really a short way of adding to the description of stagnating/declining median wages, the elevated percentage of part time jobs, and a generally fairly weak recovery. 11.5% is still a pretty high double number, suggesting that there is quite a bit of head room for improvement 4-5 years into a recovery, for workers still wanting something better.

Just to be clear, I'm not blaming Obamacare for the part time job trend. And I'm not blaming Obama (at least not singularly, as I think it has many actors and factors) for the meager state of the US economy.