I visited a staffing agency a couple of months ago, looking for some work to supplement my meager income. Much to my surprise, there was only one person working in an office that had desks for at least a dozen employees, and she told me that they didn’t have a single job available. Today, I tried a different agency and had more luck. They also had one employee working in an office that could house a dozen workers. But they had two jobs available. I could do light assembly in a warehouse or I could stand in a restaurant lobby and ask people to fill out a survey.
There are literally no jobs in my area for anything. They don’t even have data entry jobs. It’s amazing. I have no idea how these agencies are even paying their rent, although trimming down to one employee helps explain it.
None here either. The agencies i went to had zip-not even temp jobs except for RNs and some IT stuff that I’m not qualified to do.
according to a recent AP article in the local bird cage liner…motto: yesterdays news tomorrow:
l hope the RATs suffer enormously from their opposition to continued unemployment benefits and general obstructionist stances, but the demoRATs are vulnerable as well.
as james baldwin wrote:“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
Data entry? Didn’t all those jobs get off-shored years ago? The unemployment rate in my rural county is 18%!
Craigslist always seems to have plenty of alleged jobs. I wonder how many are scams? Maybe there are a few real jobs around, but people are no longer willing to pay agency fees?
I can tell you that here in Raleigh we have a very active Craigslist community and at least 90% of the jobs in the office/admin category are scams. It’s depressing.
I use craigslist. About 80% of the jobs are from recruiters, go back to school spammers, work from home spam etc.
I’ve never gotten 1 response from any ad I’ve responded to on that list.
I don’t even respond anymore unless they state the company name and I see that at least that is legit. CL needs to do something about the amount of spam and fraud or it will be totally useless as a job search tool.
In my area, Craigslist has imposed a $25 fee for job ads, supposedly to filter out some of the scammers — like the ones just looking to see other peoples’ applications. Still, most of the “jobs” seem to be either outright scams or ridiculous $2/hour work-at-home schemes. Oddly, it doesn’t seem the total volume has changed much over the past couple years, so it’s more about quality.
I applied for a job at a new Trader Joe’s due to open in a few weeks. I’ve since learned there were over 1200 applications for 40 job openings.
Same here in Tennessee. I’m desperately looking to change jobs because my company was acquired by a gigantic multinational conglomerate and the work environment has become almost unbearably unpleasant. There are two or three suitable openings elsewhere per week, on average.
I’m often the best software engineer in the room, but I doubt I’m often the best software engineer in a stack of a thousand resumes. In ordinary times, it has seldom taken me more than thirty days to find a job. I’ve been looking since last December.
The best part is that despite taking a 20% pay cut this past month, I’m not even getting interviews for jobs at my new, reduced pay level.
I know, I know — I have a job, and I’m not living under a bridge like so many people are these days. Believe me, I’m grateful for that much. But let’s just say that I’m not under any illusions that my luck will hold out forever.
This is the great robust V-shaped recovery that the financial channels are crowing about? I guess if your company gives you 1-100Meg for a bonus so that you don’t run to the competition for a job, things are great. For the other 99.9%, not so great.
Watch your stock holding carefully. Dump them if they drop 10%. The second wave is coming.
Aren’t you an attorney? That should count for something.
Me? No.
LOL! No, he’s much too smart for that.
Ha, ha!
exactly how long have you been out of the job market?
when I was laid off from Upenn in january 2004 (conveniently just before my son was born) I was unable to find fulltime work for more than a year. I was so happy to get a job I have never forgotten the date: April 11, 2005 I returned to gainful employment.
2004-2005 was a bad time. now is worse. go back to college, get certified to teach high school.