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INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jun 21 14:40:36 2012 Methinks Mr. Cappelli hits the nail on the head here. There have been many op-eds depicting recent graduating classes as pretentious cats with a bloated sense of entitlement vis-a-vis jobs. While students certainly aren't perfect, I say it's about damn time someone points out EMPLOYERS' flaws for a change.Here's a link to the transcript and audio; I've reproduced the transcript (with added emphasis by me) below: ===================================================================== Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers An expert blames employers for unrealistically high expectations and unrealistically low wages BY Steven Cherry // Tue, June 19, 2012 Steven Cherry: Hi, this is Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrum’s “Techwise Conversations.” Back in October, an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal with the headline “Why Companies Aren’t Getting the Employees They Need.” It noted that even with millions of highly educated and highly trained workers sidelined by the worst economic downturn in three generations, companies were reporting shortages of skilled workers. Companies typically blame schools, for not providing the right training; the government, for not letting in enough skilled immigrants; and workers themselves, who all too often turn down good jobs at good wages. The author of the article, an expert on employment and management issues, concluded that although employers are in almost complete agreement about the skills gap, there was no actual evidence of it. Instead, he said, “The real culprits are the employers themselves.” That article drew over 500 comments on the Journal’s website and a suggestion from a colleague to expand it into a book. The book did indeed get written and published this month by Wharton Digital Press. Its title is Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It. And its author is my guest today. Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at Wharton, which is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, and he joins us by phone from there. Peter, welcome to the podcast. Peter Cappelli: Thank you. Steven Cherry: Peter, your book starts by taking apart the idea that there’s a skills gap. Let’s look at it, piece by piece. Employers can’t find workers with adequate skills, knowledge, and experience: true or false? Peter Cappelli: The idea of a skills gap—maybe back up a second further—is the employer’s diagnosis of the situation they’re facing. So what they report is that our hiring systems are not producing the kind of candidates we want, they’re not perhaps producing enough of them, or the ones that we’re getting are too expensive. So that’s the phenomenon. Their diagnosis of this is that, as you were saying in the introduction, that it’s something to do with the workers themselves, the applicants, maybe the labor market, maybe the schools. There’s one group missing out of this, and that’s the employers themselves, of course. So one of the things that the skills gap argument does is it leaves the employers out of the picture altogether, as if there’s nothing they can do about the situation they find themselves in. So the short answer to your question—The skills gap, is there one?—I think the answer is pretty clearly no. I think at least in the way most people would think about a skills gap. Steven Cherry: Employers can’t find workers at the going wage. True or false? Peter Cappelli: That’s false, and that’s almost by definition the case, because we know how markets work, and markets adjust and wages adjust. I had an employer write to me the other day saying they had a skills gap, and they really did. It wasn’t wages, because they did market wage surveys, and they were paying what everybody else was paying, and all the employers, by the way, are having a skills gap, so it’s a big problem. Well, if everybody’s got the same problem, and you’re all paying the same wage, it’s probably the case that you’re not paying enough. So the way markets work isn’t you set the wage and say, “Well, this is good enough.” You pay what it takes to get the people you need, and if wages have to go up, then so be it, right? You wouldn’t say, for example, that there’s a shortage of diamonds. Diamonds are very expensive. They cost a lot, but you can buy all the diamonds you want as long as you’re willing to pay. Steven Cherry: Students graduate without essential technical and academic skills. True or false? Peter Cappelli: Well, the employers, if you look at what the hiring managers are saying and what they’re looking for, they’re not, for the most part, hiring people out of college anyway or out of high school. What they want is three to five years’ experience. So the shortages that they report, the difficulty hiring, are for people who have quite specific skills, and those skills are work-experience based. So the shortfall is in those people who can plug and play—that is, they can come right into our company and immediately contribute, because we don’t have time or resources to train or give them time for on boarding up-skilling [sic] that you’d get just by hanging around and getting used to the job. We can’t do that, so you’ve got to be able to do the job perfectly from day one. The only people that can do that are people who are currently doing the same job someplace else. So it’s obviously pretty hard to find people if that’s your definition—if you say, “We want to hire people, and they’ve got to be doing the job right now”—because as you’ve probably heard, a lot of employers won’t accept applications from people who are currently unemployed. So basically we’re saying we’ve got to hire from our competitors. And you know what? There is kind of a shortage of people if you say, “You’ve got to be working for one of our competitors doing exactly the same thing you’re doing now. That’s what we want, and it’s hard to find those people.” Well, it’s probably true, but that’s not a skills gap. Steven Cherry: Yeah, and you have a potential solution, which we’ll get to in a minute, but I just want to go through a couple more of these. Students aren’t majoring in the right fields: true or false? Peter Cappelli: Well, it doesn’t look like that’s true. The business degrees are now, by far, the most popular major, and that’s where people are getting jobs, so that’s pretty common. Liberal arts, you know, everybody thinks people have got liberal arts degrees. They’ve fallen like crazy. Kids are jamming the vocational schools. Community colleges are jammed with people who’ve already got college degrees, people trying to get practical degrees. The nursing shortage is no longer. Even the employers have said there’s no shortage of nurses now, because so many people were chasing those certificates and those degrees and those learning experiences. So the students are killing themselves trying to get courses that they think will give them a job. So they say they’re not trying? That’s certainly false. Sometimes it probably is true that, particularly in the tech world, skill requirements change year by year by year. The hot skill from the last few years, or certain things with respect to communications circuits and that sort of stuff, well that wasn’t hot the year before. And the question is, “Can you blame a student for not being able to perfectly time what the hot skill will be three years later, when they begin their college career.” You know, the employers don’t have a clue either. Steven Cherry: Yeah, I think a good example of that was the IT job market, which has been sort of a roller coaster ride, except you can’t see where the highs and lows are. Peter Cappelli: Right, and even when you can see them, the problem is it takes four years to get an IT degree. If you’re lucky, you get out in four years, and the problem with that is it could be a booming market when you enter, but by the time you get out, it’s a bust. And it’s pretty clear that that has happened to the IT world. As your colleagues and listeners probably remember, the IT recession in 1991, where on college campuses after that, people began to bail out of IT programs and switch to other fields. That class graduated about ’94–’95, which is just when the IT boom took off, and as real complaints about raising wages and high demand for those people. So then people poured into IT programs. They graduated about 2001, which was exactly when the next IT bust began. And so you got this problem, and you’re always going to have this problem if employers are relying on the schools to produce their skills for them. Steven Cherry: Peter, when I took a course called “History of the English Language” in college, I learned that the cat you let out of the bag is the same animal as the pig in a poke. The idea was that you would get sold an animal, and you’d take them home in a burlap sack, and you wouldn’t let it out until you got back to your farm because it might run off, and when you got there you would open it up and a cat would run out of the sack. A few months ago, we had on the show Peter [Michael] Junge, a recruitment director at Google who’s written a book about job hunting. It’s called Purple Squirrel: Stand Out, Land Interviews, and Master the Modern Job Market. He told us that when clients turn us onto a search that’s particularly challenging, we say that they’re having a search for purple squirrels. In your book you write about looking for a unicorn. I think maybe the unicorn is the same animal as the purple squirrel. Tell us about the unicorn.… Peter Cappelli: One of the things that used to happen is that there were HR managers in recruiting who would look at those requisitions and say, “You know, do you really need that? Do you really think you’re going to be able to find somebody like that?” And there was push back. Those people have largely been eliminated through successive downsizing, so there’s nobody there to buffer those expectations. The next thing that happens is those requirements get built into recruiting software, and the recruiting software is a necessary device now, because employers have made it easy to apply for their jobs. In the past, they wanted lots of applicants, so now they’re overwhelmed by applicants, so now every company will tell you they’re getting thousands or tens of thousands of applicants for positions. You couldn’t possibly screen them all by hand, because you can’t look at them all, so they use automated systems to do the screening. But the screening is never as good as somebody who has human judgment, and the way screening works is you build in a series of typically yes/no questions that try to get at whether somebody has the ability to do this job. And a lot of that ultimately ends up, it’s all you can ask about, is experience and credentials. So you end up with a series of yes/no questions. And you have to clear them all, and I think people building these don’t quite understand that once you have a series of these yes/no questions built in, and the probabilities are cumulative right? You have to hit them all, then you pretty easily end with no one that can fit. So say that the odds are 50 percent that the typical applicant will give you the right answer in terms of what you’re looking for for the first question, and a 50 percent that they’ll give you the right answer to the second question. Well, then, you’re down to one in four people who will clear those two hurdles, and once you run it out to about 10 questions, it gets you down to about one in 1000 people who would clear those hurdles. And by the way, the first hurdle is usually, What wage are you looking for? And if you guess too high, out that goes, right? So then you’re at the purple squirrel point, where at the end of the day, you find that nobody fits the job requirement. So in the book I describe one anecdote some employer told me about having 25,000 applicants for an engineering job, a reasonably standard engineering job, and the recruiting process indicated none of them were qualified to do the job. How could that happen? Well it’s not that hard once you start building in these yes/no algorithms, and you run out the list, you end up with nobody who can get through. Steven Cherry: Now, you said that while there isn’t a skills gap, there is indeed a training gap… Peter Cappelli: Yes, and I’d say that’s a big problem for public policy, because what every employer says they want, and if you look at the surveys of hiring managers, it’s clear they want people with experience. There’s not a shortage of people coming out of college bright and ambitious. There’s a shortage of people who have done the job before, and in many fields you can’t easily learn this stuff in a classroom. You can’t learn to be a surgeon in a classroom. We know that. You can’t really learn to be a carpenter in a classroom. We know that. You can’t learn to be a machinist. It’s hard to learn to be a manager in a classroom. I mean, MBA degrees are great, but to be a good manager, you have to be able to have tried this stuff out and had the experience of doing it. So the shortfall is in giving people experience, taking people out of school who are bright and capable, and giving them the basics and getting them up to speed in these work-based skills. And the problem is, employers a generation ago used to do this routinely; now, virtually none of them are willing to do it. Steven Cherry: You argue that leaving positions open costs companies money, and that money could actually be used to pay for training. I gather that you think in-house and vocational training is really the solution here to this nonexistent skills-gap problem, and what is a problem of actually matching up employer’s jobs and employees who want them. Peter Cappelli: Yes, I think that’s right. The training problem is really a financial problem for employers, and the problem is, Can we make this pay? It’s not that we don’t know how to train people on the job. As we said a generation ago, all companies used to do that. It’s a way of making it pay. We also know how to make it pay. We have apprentice programs, for example, long-standing solution to work-based skills. And if you look at how law firms operate, if you look at how consulting firms operate, they do have the ability to take bright people right out of college and train them. The way they train them is on the job. You’re working with senior people. You’re learning as you go along, and that’s, you know, how you get ahead. The problem is, in a lot of companies, they’re not set up that way, and they can’t easily imagine how to turn the jobs and the work into that model. But it’s really not that hard to do. Steven Cherry: You give an example in the book of the Con-way freight company… Peter Cappelli: That company was quite interesting. They had a shortage of drivers, and what they report they did is they set up a training program for the drivers, and as I recall, it’s free to the drivers, but you’ve got to pass the test before they will hire you. So it’s free training. You’re doing all the training before you become an employee of the company, and it provides a stream of drivers now into Con-way and certainly seems to pay off for them. Steven Cherry: And do you think that could work in high tech as well? Peter Cappelli: Yeah, you know, the craziest thing about high tech is the Silicon Valley model, which sort of became dominant in the U.S., replaced the model where IT people used to be groomed and trained from within. And the Silicon Valley model of hiring just in time for what you need came about largely because they were able to poach talent away from these bigger companies that had spent a lot of time training and developing people. But now the problems these companies have in Silicon Valley and elsewhere is that it’s hard to find those people, and everybody wants the same people at the same time. They keep hoping that the engineering schools will turn out what they want, but it’s kind of bizarre if you think about it: if you were, say, a computer company, and you had a product that was all based on this particular chip. You didn’t build the chip yourself. You were expecting to buy it on the outside, and your expectation was just that you’ll be able, as soon as you’re ready, to buy this chip on the outside in the quantity you want at the price you want to pay. You’re just expecting the market will kick it up to you, and that’s pretty much what happens with labor, right? The software engineers, the systems architects, are often the key component in these companies, expecting to hire them right out of college, and they don’t really have much relationships with the colleges, you know. They don’t get close to their suppliers; they’re just hoping it will come up. If you did that with a chip, your board of directors would probably fire you for terrible risk management, but when it comes to skills and employees, it seems to be kind of a standard practice. Now, you leave the U.S., you don’t see that. If you go to India, for example, where the IT companies are booming, those folks are growing all their talent from within. They’re doing it because they have to, but it’s not rocket science as to how you can do it. Steven Cherry: Very good. Well, thanks a lot. It’s a great book, and as you said, it’s a quick and very easy read. It’s about 100 pages, and I read it in an afternoon. So thanks for writing it, and thanks for joining us today. Peter Cappelli: Thank you. We’ve been speaking with management expert Peter Cappelli about his new book, Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It. For IEEE Spectrum’s “Techwise Conversations,” I’m Steven Cherry. ===================================================================== Discuss, if you so desire. visit my blog! |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by SMAZ on Thu Jun 21 18:27:06 2012, in response to INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jun 21 14:40:36 2012. Great article |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Rockparkman on Thu Jun 21 19:24:05 2012, in response to INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jun 21 14:40:36 2012. All of this crap started with the rise of Human Resources. Let a manager interview some grads and let him pick one that he thinks he can train. Ship the HR "schmexperts" off to the mail room where they can't do too much damage and let managers manage. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by SelkirkTMO on Thu Jun 21 19:40:31 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Rockparkman on Thu Jun 21 19:24:05 2012. Nope ... as we've learned here on OTchat, putting the idiot in the mailroom doesn't work either. :) |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Rockparkman on Thu Jun 21 20:14:02 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by SelkirkTMO on Thu Jun 21 19:40:31 2012. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by JayMan on Thu Jun 21 22:17:00 2012, in response to INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jun 21 14:40:36 2012. Interesting.I will argue that all of these problems might be solved by doing one thing: shutting off the flow of immigrants. And by that, I mean legal and illegal. Take a look at this:  The top graph is the degree of income inequality in America. The bottom graph is the share of immigrants in the population. A huge problem is that presence of immigrants—both high- and low-IQ—reduces the bargaining power of workers with respect to businesses. They don't have to take steps cater to workers, as in say pay them a decent wage, because labor isn't a scare resource. I wouldn't be surprised that without immigrants, firms would actually have to train new workers for the jobs that firms need, since that is the only way companies could get new workers. But now, companies don't have to, since if they wait long enough, someone will drop into the spot at the wage the firm wants to pay. In address to points raised by Spider-Pig to me elsewhere, I'd even bet than even in a world with automation (which is a job killer), without immigrants, there would be enough jobs for everyone. Better still, there is a distinct racial disparity in unemployment. The White unemployment rate in America is actually comparable to those in the Northern European countries; unemployment is a (non-Asian) minority problem. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jun 21 22:45:28 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Rockparkman on Thu Jun 21 19:24:05 2012. The funny thing about the interviewing process (at least with a few interviews I recently had) is that a company may have HR cats and managers interviewing you; in some cases they'll do so in one sitting and in others it's a series of interviews.Notwithstanding that, the HR cats often know next to nothing about what some jobs entail (unless, I suppose, they're HR jobs)... visit my blog! |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Fri Jun 22 00:59:02 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by JayMan on Thu Jun 21 22:17:00 2012. Interesting graphs and accompanying blog post, though I believe the data don't tell the whole story because...I wouldn't be surprised that without immigrants, firms would actually have to train new workers for the jobs that firms need, since that is the only way companies could get new workers. But now, companies don't have to, since if they wait long enough, someone will drop into the spot at the wage the firm wants to pay. ...of this. Indeed, it is true that immigrants (legal/illegal) gained the most from the last decade's worth of job growth, while native-born U.S. citizens continue to struggle. Even if you "shut off the flow," it may not be enough to incentivize employers to offer jobs at higher wages or train new hires. You've already read the OP article where employers masking these problems as a "skills gap" problem...incidentally, since a core problem is finding cats with specific experience, even immigrants may be subject to it (though I'm sure a lower wage barometer attracts employers)... Now, I think you know my position on immigration - definitely agreed on killing illegal immigration (more e-Verify, greater border control, etc.), but I'm still iffy on constraining legal. Methinks one should discourage illegal immigration and hiring of such persons and see if that has an effect before tackling legal immigration. I'd even bet than even in a world with automation (which is a job killer), without immigrants, there would be enough jobs for everyone. But would employers want there to be "jobs for everyone?" Already you have companies who'd rather pay overtime to current staff than hire new staff and who refuse to hire cats out of work despite education/experience. Would the tight immigration controls you propose in and of themselves incentivize hiring of native-born Americans (and even then, would they be hired at reasonable wages/salaries)? Better still, there is a distinct racial disparity in unemployment. The White unemployment rate in America is actually comparable to those in the Northern European countries; unemployment is a (non-Asian) minority problem. For those of lesser education yes, but things get interesting once you consider unemployment by educational attainment. Below is a partial list of the 2011 unemployment rate broken down by the following categories (respectively): Less than HS diploma, HS diploma but no college, college but no degree, associate level degree, and bachelor level degree or higher; pay close attention to the last two: TOTAL (%): 14.1 / 9.4 / 8.0 / 8.7 / 6.8 / 4.3 WHITE (%): 12.7 / 8.4 / 7.0 / 7.7 / 5.9 / 3.9 BLACK (%): 24.6 / 15.5 / 13.1 / 13.6 / 12.1 / 7.1 ASIAN (%): 9.5 / 7.6 / 7.4 / 8.0 / 6.5 / 5.2 LATINO (%): 12.0 / 10.3 / 9.1 / 9.3 / 8.8 / 5.7 (Click here for the complete table, which includes 2010 numbers for comparison; for the record, the overall U.S. unemployment rate as of last month is 8.2%). Hence, for bachelor's degree/graduate degree recipients, the problem is not as pronounced - and for Hispanics, the bachelor+ unemployment rate is comparable to that of Asians. Even more interesting, the unemployment rate for Associate degree holders is higher than that of cats who didn't finish college, which might say something about the utility of such degrees. But my point is this - you're not gonna make much headway on the jobs scene just by altering demographics; changes need to be made in the HR/management culture also. visit my blog! |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Fred G on Fri Jun 22 06:21:50 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by JayMan on Thu Jun 21 22:17:00 2012. I think the fact that a lot of jobs were union manufacturing jobs is more responsible for the top graph than the effect of immigration. Workers were paid better against the cost of living and were getting a bigger slice of the pie.your pal, Fred |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by orange blossom special on Fri Jun 22 07:57:15 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Rockparkman on Thu Jun 21 19:24:05 2012. I was just going to post that we need to get rockportman to help us ship all the HR people off to camps, and then i saw your post. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by JayMan on Fri Jun 22 08:55:38 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Fred G on Fri Jun 22 06:21:50 2012. Yeah, it's hard to tease out those effects. While the correlation between the graphs looks interesting, it could easily be a fascinating coincidence.That said, while manufacturing does produce goods, and is a primary source of revenue in the economy, there is nothing, as far as I see, special about manufacturing work such that jobs in other industries couldn't benefit from the improved wages/conditions that comes with unionization. Traditionally, immigrants have weakened the strength of unions by giving employers an alternative. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by 3-9 on Fri Jun 22 09:35:32 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jun 21 22:45:28 2012. I think HR's job is just to primarily weed out the "personality" problems, maybe throw in a test to check their bsic abilities. |
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Correction Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Fri Jun 22 09:47:58 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Concourse Express on Fri Jun 22 00:59:02 2012. Addendum/Correction: The third percentage in each row is the unemployment rate among the population of cats who either went to college but did not finish OR got an associate degree. Hence, the second to last number is the associate grad unemployment rate, which is pretty low (except for blacks and to a lesser extent Hispanics)...so disregard my comment on the little utility of associate degrees.visit my blog! |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Fri Jun 22 09:49:52 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by 3-9 on Fri Jun 22 09:35:32 2012. You've got a point there...visit my blog! |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Fred G on Fri Jun 22 11:20:09 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by JayMan on Fri Jun 22 08:55:38 2012. That shadow workforce that undercuts wages is why you'll never see immigration rules getting too strict.Your pal, Fred |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Spider-Pig on Fri Jun 22 11:32:37 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Fred G on Fri Jun 22 11:20:09 2012. Because we live not in a democracy but in a plutocracy. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Rockparkman on Fri Jun 22 15:34:29 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by orange blossom special on Fri Jun 22 07:57:15 2012. Nah, they ain't worth feeding. Use them for office entertainment. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Fri Jun 22 15:43:21 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by 3-9 on Fri Jun 22 09:35:32 2012. I think HR's job is just to primarily weed out the "personality" problems, maybe throw in a test to check their bsic abilities.That's pretty much how HR works at our employer. In our case, HR weeds out for basic skills and to ensure you're not "questionable" in a general sense, while the department head and manager aim for questioning whether you fit within the department and position. I've seen people who make it through the first interview, but unit management doesn't want them because they've had poor experience with that type of employee before, or the department feels that the candidate isn't what they're looking for in terms of skill set. |
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Re: Correction Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Fri Jun 22 16:04:26 2012, in response to Correction Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Concourse Express on Fri Jun 22 09:47:58 2012. which is pretty low (except for blacks and to a lesser extent Hispanics)Admittedly, that does leave one questioning why the unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics with degrees so inflated. While we have the statistics, I think we're going to need to determine whether the problems exist due to other factors as well. Is suburban job growth hurting inner-city non-white populations? Is employment location in certain states hurting those populations stuck in other states? Are we looking at the effects of degree choice as well where whites and Asians more like to have professional and high value degrees like engineering? Is Affirmative Action scaring off employers from valuing their non-white employees, or have previous experiences put them off from employing non-whites? Or do we have to blame everything on racism whether it be of what I call the natural variety (HBD) or man-made variety (e.g. we don't employ those people here)? |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by SelkirkTMO on Fri Jun 22 17:59:23 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Rockparkman on Fri Jun 22 15:34:29 2012. Nah ... spread 'em out in the parking lot to keep vehicles from exceeding 5 MPH. :) |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by JayMan on Fri Jun 22 18:19:56 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Concourse Express on Fri Jun 22 00:59:02 2012. I have to say, there isn't much like your thoughtful responses on Subchat. :)Indeed, it is true that immigrants (legal/illegal) gained the most from the last decade's worth of job growth, while native-born U.S. citizens continue to struggle. Even if you "shut off the flow," it may not be enough to incentivize employers to offer jobs at higher wages or train new hires. But you see, the reason employers can get away with crap like that is because they have 1,000+ applicants for every position they put out. And the reason that is true is in part because of the availability of immigrants. Employee wages and benefits are determined, in good part, by supply and demand. Right now, the supply of labor is high, so the price of labor is necessarily low. Immigrants serve to increase supply. By choking off supply, the "value" of labor will eventually increase, allowing wages to rise accordingly. And high wages benefits us all by increasing the amount of money consumers have to spend, and consumer spending is what drives the economy. But would employers want there to be "jobs for everyone?" No, and that's the crux of the issue. Employers like the supply of labor to be high, because then workers are cheap; it is in their interests to keep having throngs of applicants for the few positions they put out. That way, the employer has all the bargaining power. Already you have companies who'd rather pay overtime to current staff than hire new staff and who refuse to hire cats out of work despite education/experience. Yes. Laws limiting work hours and closing the loophole of "salaried" positions may be called for, if for no other reason that it would be vastly more productive for businesses to do so. As well (here's that awful word), "socialist" policies such as mandatory ≥5 weeks/year paid vacation would also increase the number of workers firms need to hire; but those workers would be more productive. Would the tight immigration controls you propose in and of themselves incentivize hiring of native-born Americans (and even then, would they be hired at reasonable wages/salaries)? No, it would it take time and would act as market forces come to bear on labor. Businesses would be forced to (eventually) hire American or to automate. However, the productivity gains from automation may serve to increase company profits such that they could afford to hire more workers or pay the ones they have more. Thanks for finding the numbers of unemployment by race. A key problem (that will take time to sort out) is that there are so many people on the bottom in the labor market. Dysgenic fertility among Blacks and the large numbers of Mexican immigrants pouring in means that the U.S. has an over abundance of "low-skilled" (i.e., low-IQ) workers. We have far more of them than the economy could ever need, I'm sure. As your numbers show, the problems of unemployment mostly impacts this group, so even if increased automation were to make this group economically obsolete, the problem will be no worse than it already is. However, if wages could rise for productive workers, tax revenue would also rise, supplying enough for welfare to pay to support those who are economically useless (covert or overt eugenic policies could weed them out of the gene pool for future generations). To recap, it seems that immigration—low- and high-IQ—may be a problem for native-born Americans, and discouraging employers from sharing their profits with the workers who make it possible. As always, if we do shut down the immigration train, I would advocate that all existing legal immigrants would be grandfathered in, and that efforts be made to eventually deport the illegal immigrants. For more on my solutions, see my blog. |
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Re: Correction Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Mon Jun 25 12:21:00 2012, in response to Re: Correction Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Fri Jun 22 16:04:26 2012. I wouldn't say racism is the sole cause of the disparities (though an example of what you call the "natural variety" - HBD - is attribution bias, which leads to what you've described as the "man-made" variety).I can't speak for other occupations, but in my search for engineering gigs I found some of the states/locations with the most positions open (depending on the company, of course) were upstate NY, NJ, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas, California, Virginia, and a few others; the one constant is that many of the gigs aren't in city centers. Hence, if cats aren't willing to broaden their job search to include other states or suburban/rural locations, their chances of landing gainful employment drop. Another important factor (specifically relating to the dilemma recent college grads face) is that, despite the apparently low unemployment rate for degree holders, the rates do not count cats who either haven't looked for work for 4+ weeks or "discouraged" workers; more on that here. visit my blog! |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Mon Jun 25 15:11:32 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by JayMan on Fri Jun 22 18:19:56 2012. Let's see if my response can survive the intermittent SubChat outages...I have to say, there isn't much like your thoughtful responses on Subchat. :) Thanks! I enjoy intellectual discourse; even when there are disagreements, it sure beats the waves of nonsense and BS in politics and other areas... But you see, the reason employers can get away with crap like that is because they have 1,000+ applicants for every position they put out. And the reason that is true is in part because of the availability of immigrants. Employee wages and benefits are determined, in good part, by supply and demand. Right now, the supply of labor is high, so the price of labor is necessarily low. Immigrants serve to increase supply. By choking off supply, the "value" of labor will eventually increase, allowing wages to rise accordingly. And high wages benefits us all by increasing the amount of money consumers have to spend, and consumer spending is what drives the economy. Agreed w.r.t. supply and demand. There definitely is a surplus of supply. Also agreed with your statement on discretionary income (I assume that's what you meant in the last sentence). However, this goes back to what I said earlier - incentives should be in place for employers to hire American workers at respectable wages; even if the supply of immigrants decreased significantly, it won't mean much if employers continue to offer lower wages/salaries. (I would also back policies that "punish" companies that take advantage of illegal labor). With the cost of living increasing and wages stagnant or even decreasing (see this blog post of mine for proof of the latter w.r.t. college grads), discretionary income (and thus, a means of stimulating the economy) is vanishing rapidly. No, and that's the crux of the issue. Employers like the supply of labor to be high, because then workers are cheap; it is in their interests to keep having throngs of applicants for the few positions they put out. That way, the employer has all the bargaining power. And even with this, cats still give unions hell (not that unions are 100% innocent, but methinks employees will have a much tougher time if they lose bargaining rights)... Yes. Laws limiting work hours and closing the loophole of "salaried" positions may be called for, if for no other reason that it would be vastly more productive for businesses to do so. As well (here's that awful word), "socialist" policies such as mandatory ≥5 weeks/year paid vacation would also increase the number of workers firms need to hire; but those workers would be more productive. That's an excellent article, but once again, we need INCENTIVES. So long as employers/management continue to be penny wise and pound foolish in terms of exploiting overtime for short-term savings, we won't see much progress here. To recap, it seems that immigration—low- and high-IQ—may be a problem for native-born Americans, and discouraging employers from sharing their profits with the workers who make it possible. As always, if we do shut down the immigration train, I would advocate that all existing legal immigrants would be grandfathered in, and that efforts be made to eventually deport the illegal immigrants. For more on my solutions, see my blog. What an amazingly long blog post (there is a glaring typo in the title though). I will address your proposed solutions in the context of the thread topic: Eugenics: Disagree 100%. Voluntary sterilizations are already available; I know you want incentivized voluntary sterilizations, but the problem (well, one of many, actually), is coming up with criterion on how to What I do agree with, however, is this: Planned Parenthood programs could be expanded and heavily marketed in underclass areas (both White and non-White), and could offer (and promote) plenty of free contraception, especially injectable long-term versions. In addition, an information campaign detailing the consequences of having children while broke could be run. I highlighted the underlined part since I said something similar in an earlier discussion (though it was more prudish; let me state for the record that I favor contraception much more than abortion - not favoring the latter except in cases of rape, incest, and/or a clear and present danger to the mother's life). As an aside, here's an article from 2009 that highlights results of a research study on the viability of premature babies. Immigration reform: You know where I stand on this; your views, as espoused on your blog, are similar to mine. I agree that a modified DREAM Act could work (particularly the provision for all employers to use e-Verify and to disqualify criminal elements; though I'm not entirely in favor of the Act). Fertility: Methinks some of the HBDers' fears - extinction of Whites and high-IQ elements - are unfounded; yes, there may be downward trends in fertility of higher-IQ elements and a surge in that of the low-IQ elements but the latter is bound to plateau sooner or later. Somehow I don't believe that, even with incentives, you'll be able to convince consequences-conscious cats to pop out more kids than they desire and/or have the means to support. visit my blog! |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by JayMan on Mon Jun 25 22:22:40 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Concourse Express on Mon Jun 25 15:11:32 2012. Thanks! I enjoy intellectual discourse; even when there are disagreements, it sure beats the waves of nonsense and BS in politics and other areas...It's a welcome change of of pace. ;) There definitely is a surplus of supply. Also agreed with your statement on discretionary income (I assume that's what you meant in the last sentence). However, this goes back to what I said earlier - incentives should be in place for employers to hire American workers at respectable wages; even if the supply of immigrants decreased significantly, it won't mean much if employers continue to offer lower wages/salaries. (I would also back policies that "punish" companies that take advantage of illegal labor). But if the supply of labor fell, to the point where it was below the demand, then the "price" of labor must rise to compensate. Wages would rise if the supply of labor became scare, as employers would have to offer more pay—out of necessity—to attract the workers that they need. This is true even for the lowest-level jobs. If employers had spots that they couldn't fill, and couldn't find a way to automate, you can bet that pay would go up. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by bingbong on Mon Jun 25 22:35:11 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by JayMan on Mon Jun 25 22:22:40 2012. Economic expansion did precisely that in the 1990s. That won't happen with the current trend towards republican embraced austerity. All that will do is double dip a recession. Look at th eUK and EU to see where that goes. Look at 1937, same thing here. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by JayMan on Tue Jun 26 02:03:41 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by bingbong on Mon Jun 25 22:35:11 2012. Exactly. Today's Republican Party is so disconnected from reality that they can't be trusted with the levers of government. |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by SelkirkTMO on Tue Jun 26 02:23:42 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by JayMan on Tue Jun 26 02:03:41 2012. And WHATEVER you do, don't EVER let them hold your wallet! :) |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by Fred G on Tue Jun 26 03:15:10 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by SelkirkTMO on Tue Jun 26 02:23:42 2012. Yes, yes, keep it in your pants!your pal, Fred |
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Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers |
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Posted by SelkirkTMO on Tue Jun 26 03:36:20 2012, in response to Re: INTERVIEW: Why Bad Jobs - or No Jobs - Happen to Good Workers, posted by Fred G on Tue Jun 26 03:15:10 2012. Pity THEY can't. :)(didn't think I'd score my fourth cheap shot today - thanks for the straight line!) |
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