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Comment by DoctorOW | Hacker News Reader

...and what happens when you can't find one? The narrative that there are all these jobs being turned down is false. The jobs that would hire someone like Stackhouse are all pretty much the same as the one he has. This wouldn't matter so much if it wasn't matter of a life and death but they won't even let someone survive anymore.

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> and what happens when you can't find one?

sounds like what you're saying is that without this employer, this employee would have a worse or no job; if you start from that and then give them this job then it sounds pretty positive

> they won't even let someone survive anymore.

who's they?

You're circling the answer. Every industry is experiencing a massive amount of consolidation. While people have discussed the lack of competition's impacts on consumers, this is getting close to mentioning that even though there are technically more jobs there's fewer actual employers.

do you have data to back that up?

I can't find a good actual link to the entire data set with but looking at the data in the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' website you can see both the average number of hours worked are trending downwards, having not been above the 35 hour threshold for a full time job since the 1980's. I have not found reputable data that differentiates full time employed into "One full-time job" vs. "Multiple part time jobs".

Chart: https://i.imgur.com/Ah5YKd0.jpg

Why we all go to your house and you start paying us to do jobs that you don't value. This is the new safety net and it's an improvement in expecting a corporation to do it.

You make yourself more attractive to employers by acquiring or improving your skills or learning to market yourself better.

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