Obviously then what we need is to raise taxes on the poor and middle class, and give tax breaks to Mitt Romney so he can send jobs overseas.

Confabulat: Has there ever been "full employment" in the history of ever?

No. Somehow, some batshait insane people manage to squeeze their candidate into the white house to keep us protected by Jebus, and we all lose when that happens.

You want full employment? Dismantle section 8 housing and bus them to farms.

Confabulat: Has there ever been "full employment" in the history of ever?

"full employment" is around 5% unemployment since its not really possible for everyone in the workforce to be simultaneously employed.

Confabulat: Has there ever been "full employment" in the history of ever?

I was wondering the same thing, I thought a "normal" unemployment rate was around 3.5-4.5%

Marcus Aurelius: We could cancel a few free trade agreements to get back to full employment too.


THIS.

That, and make it harder to not hire people. Employers are not entitled to a steady supply of perfect, pliant candidates.

OhioUGrad: Confabulat: Has there ever been "full employment" in the history of ever?

I was wondering the same thing, I thought a "normal" unemployment rate was around 3.5-4.5%

For business, they'd rather have ~8-10%. Not enough to cause a crisis, but enough to make sure that there are plenty of people to prevent market-based upward pressures in wages.

That's if you're even considering that the U-3 isn't even telling the truth. If you were to look at the labor participation rate, you'd see a lot of people swept under the rug as they no longer qualify under the U-3 definition of unemployed.

sethstorm: Employers are not entitled to a steady supply of perfect, pliant candidates.

The perfect employee works 24 hour shifts, 6 days a week, for less than a dollar an hour, and lives in the company dormitory and LIKES IT!

Kuroshin: So improvement is bad?

Depends on who you ask. It's bad for opposition party politics.

OhioUGrad: Confabulat: Has there ever been "full employment" in the history of ever?

I was wondering the same thing, I thought a "normal" unemployment rate was around 3.5-4.5%

A steady amount of 3.5-4.5% would not only be normal, but favorable to US citizens. It would actually favor people of all skill levels, if there were no long-term unemployed/underemployed, or any guest worker programs in existence.

There was 3.5-4.5% a few years ago, but a ton of offshoring that distorted the job market. Never mind those buried under when the dotcom era went bust.

So what you're saying is in order to afford a sufficient economic stimulus package, we'll have to cut funding to not only NPR and Planned Parenthood, but also PBS? Get the House Republicans on the phone immediately, they've been all over the jobs problem for years now.

AmorousRedDragon: sethstorm: Employers are not entitled to a steady supply of perfect, pliant candidates.

The perfect employee works 24 hour shifts, 6 days a week, for less than a dollar an hour, and lives in the company dormitory and LIKES IT!

But don't you dare give them any benefits since that would make them inefficient!

Sarcasm aside, I never thought that the company town would come back, and be scaled up to be used as a weapon against freedom. Or that profitability would be divorced from balance between employer and employee, much less see the distrustful European model of contract/agency labor come to places where it should not be.

/Two generations away from relatives who worked in the US predecessors of today's company town.
//Trying to make everyone entrepreneurs is nothing more than trying to jam a square peg in a round hole.
///Some people are just good workers when they don't have to worry if their contract is going to get renewed.

Sun Worshiping Dog Launcher: So what you're saying is in order to afford a sufficient economic stimulus package, we'll have to cut funding to not only NPR and Planned Parenthood, but also PBS? Get the House Republicans on the phone immediately, they've been all over the jobs problem for years now.

No, they'll just replace it with the 700 Club, then bring back contemporaries of Falwell and Bakker for another network.

Maybe we should stop cutting all those public sector jobs if we want the numbers to look better?

Damn, Bush really and truly farked this country.

GameSprocket: Maybe we should stop cutting all those public sector jobs if we want the numbers to look better?

Yes, but where else would the folks in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and the other pattern-legislation states focus their envy?

Confabulat: Has there ever been "full employment" in the history of ever?

"Full employment" is a phrase that means something, and the thing that it means is not what the article writer graphed in the article with "full employment" in the title.

So yeah, fark that title, and it's not subby's fault.

Still, "time until we recover all the jobs we lost since the recession started" is a thing worth looking at. January's official rate of growth was about 230K if I recall; eyeballing the chart, that puts us in around 2019 before we get back to having as many jobs as we had in 2007.

mitEj: Lets see

Jan 2009 lose 750k per month in jobs
jan 2012 + 250k per month in jobs.

that looks like a + 1 million per month jobs improvement Assmitter.

Wow math is hard.

The NASDAQ composite index still hasn't recovered from the Clinton Recession...

sethstorm: Marcus Aurelius: We could cancel a few free trade agreements to get back to full employment too.


THIS.

That, and make it harder to not hire people. Employers are not entitled to a steady supply of perfect, pliant candidates.

I'm a business owner. I'm not looking for perfect, pliant candidates. I'm looking for someone who can do the farking job! So far I've interviewed 1 raging alcoholic, 2 losers who have had more jobs in the last five years than five; including one who wanted me to defer paying him so he could run out his unemployment, and two good candidates who were so tied up with non-compete clauses that I wouldn't be able to use them for two years.

Should I be forced to hire the alcoholic, or the dishonest job hopper to represent my company?

/Protip- don't show up for an interview drunk
//Protip2- don't give professional references who say you were fired for showing up for work drunk

isn't dividing a number by anything asymptotic when approaching 0

jobless rates were cut in half this year. if we continue at this rate, we will be at 0% employment in the year infinity

BigBooper: sethstorm: Marcus Aurelius: We could cancel a few free trade agreements to get back to full employment too.


THIS.

That, and make it harder to not hire people. Employers are not entitled to a steady supply of perfect, pliant candidates.

I'm a business owner. I'm not looking for perfect, pliant candidates. I'm looking for someone who can do the farking job! So far I've interviewed 1 raging alcoholic, 2 losers who have had more jobs in the last five years than five; including one who wanted me to defer paying him so he could run out his unemployment, and two good candidates who were so tied up with non-compete clauses that I wouldn't be able to use them for two years.

Should I be forced to hire the alcoholic, or the dishonest job hopper to represent my company?

/Protip- don't show up for an interview drunk
//Protip2- don't give professional references who say you were fired for showing up for work drunk

CSB. Have you seen the average ad on a job board? Entry level 5 years experience required must be willing to work for at least half of what should be market value?

Brostorm

Or better yet- 5 years of experience for entry level and those 5 years of experience are for a technology that isn't even 5 years old!

BigBooper: I'm a business owner. I'm not looking for perfect, pliant candidates. I'm looking for someone who can do the farking job! So far I've interviewed 1 raging alcoholic, 2 losers who have had more jobs in the last five years than five; including one who wanted me to defer paying him so he could run out his unemployment, and two good candidates who were so tied up with non-compete clauses that I wouldn't be able to use them for two years.

You're talking about people that would be extreme cases in a good economy. I'm talking about a very screwed market where otherwise normal people are being farked over by historically unique high levels of unemployment as well as large amounts of time between jobs.

But don't let hyperbole get in the way of reality, since your tax dollars are going straight to the people that are unemployed. Most people would rather have a legitimate & secure job so they can prosper. You on the other hand, would rather paint all the reasonable people as drunkards, frauds or job-hoppers.

BigBooper: I'm a business owner. I'm not looking for perfect, pliant candidates. I'm looking for someone who can do the farking job! So far I've interviewed 1 raging alcoholic, 2 losers who have had more jobs in the last five years than five; including one who wanted me to defer paying him so he could run out his unemployment, and two good candidates who were so tied up with non-compete clauses that I wouldn't be able to use them for two years.

If that's the best you can reel in in the juiciest labor glut in a generation, you're probably not offering enough.

moanerific: Brostorm

Or better yet- 5 years of experience for entry level and those 5 years of experience are for a technology that isn't even 5 years old!

For those who have been under a rock or otherwise without the knowledge of said scams...
The PERM scam, brought to you by Grigsby & Cohen. Shame that what they do in that video isn't considered treason, since Grigsby & Cohen (along with plenty of others in the labor relations industry) fit the definition of the word in multiple ways.

Brostorm: CSB. Have you seen the average ad on a job board? Entry level 5 years experience required must be willing to work for at least half of what should be market value?

moanerific: Or better yet- 5 years of experience for entry level and those 5 years of experience are for a technology that isn't even 5 years old!

Yep. My best friend has a bachelors in computer science, and a masters in mathematics. Graduated with a 4.0, and has spent the last five years teaching and doing statistical analysis for companies on the side. He can take hundreds of pages of data and compress it down into a high level report that even the densest management team can use. He just took a job as an administrative assistant because no one would hire him full time with benefits.

I know a lot of IT guys who can't get work because if their jab hasn't been shipped overseas, or it's been taken by a temporary foreign worker who agreed to work for half the rate of pay.

On the other hand, a lot of my clients have open positions that they can't fill. These are good paying jobs with benefits. Some of these companies are so desperate that they are paying for candidates to get trained. Now driving a cement mixer, or running and programing a CNC miling machine may not be sexy, but you can earn 40k with good benefits. Many of these jobs are unfilled because my employers can't find skilled people.

Confabulat: Has there ever been "full employment" in the history of ever?

BigBooper: I know a lot of IT guys who can't get work because if their jab hasn't been shipped overseas, or it's been taken by a temporary foreign worker who agreed to work for half the rate of pay.

The more reason to kill all guest worker programs, as all they do is just distort the US job market with fraud.

BigBooper: Some of these companies are so desperate that they are paying for candidates to get trained

That is the right way to handle it - to treat the worker as a long term investment, not as a (temporary labor) prostitute.

BigBooper: Brostorm: CSB. Have you seen the average ad on a job board? Entry level 5 years experience required must be willing to work for at least half of what should be market value?

moanerific: Or better yet- 5 years of experience for entry level and those 5 years of experience are for a technology that isn't even 5 years old!

Yep. My best friend has a bachelors in computer science, and a masters in mathematics. Graduated with a 4.0, and has spent the last five years teaching and doing statistical analysis for companies on the side. He can take hundreds of pages of data and compress it down into a high level report that even the densest management team can use. He just took a job as an administrative assistant because no one would hire him full time with benefits.

I know a lot of IT guys who can't get work because if their jab hasn't been shipped overseas, or it's been taken by a temporary foreign worker who agreed to work for half the rate of pay.

On the other hand, a lot of my clients have open positions that they can't fill. These are good paying jobs with benefits. Some of these companies are so desperate that they are paying for candidates to get trained. Now driving a cement mixer, or running and programing a CNC miling machine may not be sexy, but you can earn 40k with good benefits. Many of these jobs are unfilled because my employers can't find skilled people.

driving a cement mixer of CNC milling machinery jobs would STILL require 5 years experience at those jobs to even get an interview in this economy because of the massive glut of available trained labor, which was my entire point. Business can be as picky as they want with near 20% under employment

I think we would have to assume that an improving economy would have a snowball effect vs. a straight line extrapolation.

clancifer: So long as there is a Democrat in office, Republicans will fight to the death to prevent having a healthy economy*.

*China's economy not included

You must have missed 1994-1999

Brostorm: driving a cement mixer of CNC milling machinery jobs would STILL require 5 years experience at those jobs to even get an interview in this economy because of the massive glut of available trained labor, which was my entire point. Business can be as picky as they want with near 20% under employment

Then remove the ability for business to be picky.

dragonchild: BigBooper: I'm a business owner. I'm not looking for perfect, pliant candidates. I'm looking for someone who can do the farking job! So far I've interviewed 1 raging alcoholic, 2 losers who have had more jobs in the last five years than five; including one who wanted me to defer paying him so he could run out his unemployment, and two good candidates who were so tied up with non-compete clauses that I wouldn't be able to use them for two years.

If that's the best you can reel in in the juiciest labor glut in a generation, you're probably not offering enough.

In my industry, the problem is that the losers are cast off, and anyone who's worth hiring is tied up with draconian non-compete clauses. It's the non-compete clauses that tie employees to jobs they don't like, and employers that they don't want to work for. I'm competing against large companies that have far more resources than I do. They can and do sue smaller companies like mine not to win the lawsuit, but to drive me out of business because of legal costs. Many of the non-compete clauses go well beyond what's legal and enforceable. However, the mere threat of a legal challenge stops smaller employers like me from hiring these employees. And that's not even getting into the pressure that large companies can bring to bear through underhanded means.

For example, I hired my office manager after she left another company when they wouldn't hire support for her. She had been working 60+ hour work weeks for several years. She's fantastic, I'm paying her more than she was earning for less hours worked. The cost to me? The old company has actively tried to block me from getting contracts with new companies to sell for. And then when we bid on the same client, if they find out I'm bidding against them, they will remove all pay from their bid. That's right, they will work for free to lock me out.

Sue? The reality is that the level of proof that I would need it enormous. And so would the cost. Even if I did win, they could tie up the process for years, and I wouldn't recover anything for years. Year's and money I don't have.