Both the Wall Street Journal and Slate Magazine are reporting on the fact that even with a 9.5% jobless rate and around 15 million people looking for work, companies are still having a hard time filling open positions.
So what’s the deal?
According to the Wall Street Journal, this perplexing situation can be blamed on a number of factors:
- Extending jobless beneftis to 99 weeks;
- Homeowners are now unable to move for job relocation because of increased debt;
- More specialized job openings can’t find the “right people”
But Slate Magazine’s Daniel Gross has another take on the situation:
- Employers are low-balling potential employees to the point where no one can actually afford to take available jobs. He argues that “employers just aren’t offering terms that are good enough.”
I tend to agree with Daniel Gross on this one. While companies are slowly starting to hire again, many companies are choosing to take advantage of these poor saps that walk into their offices to interview for a position which only a year ago, they would not have dreamed of taking. People are desperate and companies know it and they are hoping to collect cheap, underpaid labor.
Oh well, you get what you pay for…
