Why is it so hard to find a job despite low unemployment?
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
HR is using AI application tracking systems to screen applicants, and it's doing as good a job as AI and software does. Don't have $EXACT_KEYWORD1 and $BUZZWORD2? Your application will never get seen by a human.
A better metric would be total employment: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons
It has increased since the pandemic, but so did the US population. If the linear trend (pre-pandemic) carried on, the US should be at 165 million total employed. However, currently it is sitting at 161 million. So there is 3-4 million jobs missing.
And while on paper a few are theoretically great (20+ years experience as a software engineer), they don't want to learn React or newer versions of Java.
Do you understand what a layoff is? The market is flooded with great developers who got let go by CEO's and managers who are either incompetent or negligent.
That said I'm trying to stay less than a 15% pay cut. There are jobs... And I'm about to go ahead and take the 25% pay cut a lot of the jobs are at.
But it still sucks. I'm applying and seeing literally over a hundred others have applied to most things.
I'm also so sick of boilerplate rejection emails. If I haven't spoken to a human, I'd rather not get any email at this point.
I posted on that “who’s looking?” thread here on HN I’d say a month or so ago, had one guy reach out for a job working with WPF. I’m guessing if that weren’t enough to turn me off, the pay would’ve been.
I will say the best-paying SWE jobs are never going to be with C#.
I pulled out with one company before getting a final offer, but they said it’d be around $130-140k and it’s mundane C#/React/MSSQL which I’m actually trying to get away from. I don’t know if it’s still the case today, but 2 years ago there were many companies who’d hire you despite having 0 experience with their language (usually something newer like Go).
I’ll just keep on with house projects and reading and relaxing for a while longer. It’s been 5 months and I still don’t need the money. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up taking a pay cut.
The last time,.I started taking regular vacations. The COVID period limited that a lot. I like road trips, but given I was advised by my doctor and medical issues to not vaccinate at that matter it pretty difficult.
People are willing to learn anything and everything to land and keep a job. The problem is the HR/Recruiting process using buzzwords/jargons/fads to screen applicants in a all or nothing manner.
And those first two states you pretty much need to be as arrogant as possible... If you're honest and say you're a 7 at something, they drop you for not being a 9... May as well lie.
And by 7 vs 9, to me a 9 or 10 is someone who literally someone who works on the language or platform... I've used JS since 1996 and know it far better than most, I still don't feel comfortable calling myself a 10 with it...
It’s absurd that you’re expected to know things like SOLID like we say a pledge of allegiance every morning about it… I, like most, follow SOLID (more or less) without realizing it.
What i was unemployed last year I experienced what I already had seen other friends experience: the whole unemployment system is designed to prevent you from using it and if you work remotely it’s even harder as you have to file twice and maybe they accept you.
* incorrect i was working on bad information
That's false. From the BLS:
>Classification as unemployed in no way depends upon a person's eligibility for, or receipt of, unemployment insurance benefits.
>There is no requirement or question relating to unemployment insurance benefits in the monthly Current Population Survey.
By the definition they are correct. The definition is fake as in the formula is changed to suit political goals and doesn't reflect what an unemployed person is.
If a period of time passes where you still can't find a job you get excluded. You are no longer unemployed. Tell that to your parents/wife. That alone makes the entire definition more than suspect. Onr might even say fake.
What do you mean by "ever changing definition"? The U-3 definition has been used for decades. At some point you've just got to admit you had the wrong definition rather than blaming other people for using "fake" numbers.
>If a period of time passes where you still can't find a job you get excluded. You are no longer unemployed. Tell that to your parents/wife. That alone makes the entire definition more than suspect. Onr might even say fake.
I'm not sure what you got that from, but this contradicts the definition from the BLS:
>In the Current Population Survey, people are classified as unemployed if they meet all of the following criteria:
> They were not employed during the survey reference week.
> They were available for work during the survey reference week, except for temporary illness.
> They made at least one specific, active effort to find a job during the 4-week period ending with the survey reference week (see active job search methods) OR they were temporarily laid off and expecting to be recalled to their job.
I'm not sure what you mean by "represented"? Someone who doesn't have a job in order to be a caretaker or keep up a household would count as not employed, even though those people are still doing work. (The same would apply for people without jobs and spend their time in school or volunteering.)
They do ask why people aren't working in government surveys, so that information is available to analyze. I wasn't able to quickly find an overall recent figure, but there is a figure for people who are technically in the labor force but haven't looked for work in the last month: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm. And I also found an older figure: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-4/people-who-are-not-in-....