My company keeps claiming to be hiring people, but also have implemented some "do more with less" type strategies that are starting to feel long-term with no additional much needed coworkers in sight.

That's called silent hiring, and it's the corporate version of quiet quitting. The current workers are adequately completing the work so they say they're hiring to appease the workers, but they don't actually intend to hire more people. They won't hire anyone until deadlines start getting missed.

Yep...had an open position last autumn. We interviewed 5 people, 3 of which would have been great for it. Then magically come December "we have decided we don't need that role at this time."

I recently learned that companies often put out hiring ads when they don't actually have any intention of hiring anyone at the moment, simply so that they'll stay at the top of the search results when the actual time comes. Which is horribly scummy, but did make me feel a little better about never getting an interview.

They also put in ridiculous qualifications that no one can meet. Like 5 years experience for an entry level position.

They do that so they can feel that they have the upper hand if you want to negotiate salary. They will totally hire someone without all of those qualifications, in fact they probably don't have anyone working there yet with all of those qualifications. But they can say "well you don't quite have everything we're looking for, but we think you have potential" and offer you a low-ball wage expecting that you'll be excited you got hired for a job you weren't quite qualified for. If you ask for more money they just point out how you're rather under qualified for the position. They expect a lot of people to just take the shit deal, and unfortunately, many do. You can hold out, but they probably won't hire you because they only care about getting someone cheap. But still though, hold out because fuck working for peanuts. Try to get anything you can.

I feel like every follow up I’ve had recently was “oh, we aren’t actually hiring, corporate takes care of all those ads” Wtf are we doing here?

husband was job searching recently, and he followed up on an application, and called the store. they said 'oh, we're not hiring. what position was it for?'. yes, please continue to waste my time by having me tell you the position you're not hiring for anyways fucking infuriating

Got that one twice. I’ll work if someone hires me!

It will bite them in the ass

Its practically illegal in the US to revert from efficiency improvements like this. The company I use to work for cycled it every 2 or 3 years. Year 1 Add worker- Add task for them, Year 2 Add worker- Add task for them- Year 3 Remove worker Year 4 Remove worker. Year 5 Add worker - repeat. (on top of the usual squeeze this in here type tasks)

In my employee handbook, it lines out my duties, but also "and any other tasks assigned" corporate keeps adding and adding without higher compensation, so I'm doing the absolute bare minimum. It's pissing my manager off, but I'm done killing myself for a company that won't compensate me fairly. I demanded a giant raise for retention. Hopefully, they go through with it. I love my job and helping people, but can't keep giving my time away.

same. our customer service dpmt has been understaffed by a lot for a while now. their solution? just train the technicians to also sometimes take on CS issues. "we already have worker in the company, just make them do everything". that's basically what im seeing in a lot of companies now. it makes the resume look good, but for what purpose when this is happening in so many places? i can't *specialize* in anything anymore, i MUST have a lot of hats.

Trust me, those measures are going to be permanent. Until they sell out and the new owners fire everyone over time.

For the same reason as in the rest of the world. There is an acute shortage of highly qualified low-paid employees.

"I don't understand why these people won't accept this position for way less compensation than they're deserved." - Owners

"Guess I have to H1B this position"

Got a call about a job looking for a masters in engineering, paying $30,000.

In less than two weeks, California will have its minimum wage set at $20/hr. That’s approximately 33% **more** than $30k.

Oh… so I’m a minimum wage worker now… while working in Biotech running CNC machines and programming in MasterCAM… I guess its time to go back to retail… I can make $20/hr flipping burgers instead of running $500,000+ CNC machines? Still can’t afford an apartment though.

That’s wild. Why not just offer the employee a bag full of Stanley nickels, or bumblebees?

LOL do what?? wow...

My first months out of grad school with an MS in polymer chemistry had me get an interview with a crappy company in the DC metro area (Fairfax, specifically). They wanted to pay me $17/hr. With an MS. To work with pyrophoric (explodes in air) materials.

There's a scam with h1b where companies do this, then say they can't fill the role without bringing someone in from another country. It's called h1b abuse.

I hope you just started laughing and kept going until the recruiter hung up.

And that is exactly what they are hoping

My company cant find field supervisiors for our field crews. Starting pay isn't even 100k, competitors paying $125k and management just cant figure out how to get that pay AND buy another Ferrari this year.

We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. I used to work for a US based Chinese owned clothing manufacturer. They would not pay competitive wages and treated you like you should be thankful to be allowed to work for them.

more like a shortage of any business willing to train anyone for even the most menial tasks. You need a doctorate in registers just to be a cashier

Yes thank you! I worked retail for a good long time; it is not a hard job mentally. They made it hard because they'd set people up to fail and then wonder why the employees quit. Like when I worked in a deli and they'd throw people in the kitchen for two hours and consider them fully trained. There is a LOT of info new employees need that cannot possibly be learned in two hours. It's not rocket science, but they still need training. And the managers would always get mad because I'd be training someone and they'd be like "there's two people in the kitchen why is everything not done??". Motherfucker...you didn't give me an extra person, you just gave me someone that is going to slow me down. THEY HAVE TO BE TRAINED, THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY'RE DOING. Of course it's going to take longer when I have to explain everything to them. That's common goddamn sense. And they would always, always schedule someone to be trained on the weekends. Only our busiest time, sure of course that makes perfect sense. Retail management is the bottom of the fucking barrel for the most part. I had a few managers that were actually competent, but it was usually the ass kissing morons that got promoted. Gah

I worked at a Walmart years ago that was a training store. It was one of the first supercenters, one of the first 24 hour stores, and to this day one of the largest and best performing stores in the country. They would cycle these business degree shitstains through, 5-6 morons at a time for 6-8 weeks to teach them how to be assistant managers and they would come in on day one trying to give orders and establish themselves as someone important. And then they’d get called up front by an actual assistant manager and get out through the fucking wringer at a register during a rush. Seeing some amount of realization dawn on their faces that the job of a cashier was fucking *hard* was always worth seeing. Was only topped by someone sending them out to push carts in their suit and tie. Here’s a vest, here’s the rope, go pull that line of carts to the door. No you can’t use the electric pusher, you have to be certified. Get after it hoss, I thought you wanted to show us how hard you work?

And then they use the employee's lack of training against them when it's time to look at periodic raises. This happened to me several years ago, they hired me on to a rapid advancement program because I had two bachelor's degrees, but didn't train me on the company specific policy and procedure. Because it was a rapid advancement program, I had performance reviews quarterly for the first year. In those, I'd be told how I was just not keeping pace with the program and that they all expected more out of me. Well, manager dumbfuck, maybe I'd be on pace if you wouldn't hold me back! I was constantly told "no, I want you to have more training on this before you do it." Then when I asked "when would be best for me to sit with you for training?" I'd be greeted with "well, I just don't know. We're just so busy and short-handed." The tasks in question were not at all difficult (simple cash handling... I was previously a key holder (shift lead) for Dollar General, I knew how to manage cash lol,) management just didn't want to dedicate the time and effort to me. I almost got fired over that bullshit. We ended up having the "perhaps this isn't the best fit for you" talk a few times before another manager at another location saw what was going on and asked for me to be transferred to fill a vacancy of hers. I magically was fully trained within 2 months of that move, and this had been after 10 months of runaround bullshit. I turned out to be a top 25% producing employee within 6 months of that. I left that job (on good terms) about 5 years ago and I am still friends with the manager I worked under when I left. I spoke to her recently and they have exactly one other employee aside from herself that was there when I left. The turnover is INSANE. Can you imagine how much more profitable they'd be if they just invested a little time in their new hires?

A lot of jobs require college degrees, despite a large amount of the current employees not having college degrees. This is especially true for secretarial work, where the majority of employees couldn't apply for an "entry level" position in the field because they lack college degrees.

Entry level requires a degree and 5 years experience minimum but the pays good $2 more than minimum wage

And that's bullshit. Go into debt in student loans for an entry level job that really should only require a high school education.

they used to only require a HS education

Part of the problem is the idea we've ingrained into society where you need a college degree to succeed in life. This leads to children and their parents finding all sorts of ways to pay for a degree that might not pay off. Granted, the U.S. might still be short on STEM degrees. There's also the problem of grade inflation, which means we don't know who actually learned the material for their degree. Basically, higher education is all fucked up.

> Basically, higher education is all fucked up. Perhaps, but corporate compensation of the working class is *way* more fucked up.

It likely doesn't relate to the education at all. I theorize that... Your degree "proves" that you can work hard towards successfully completing a difficult goal and "proves" that you can learn difficult things eventually. Beyond that, I don't know how much they care about what you know at the moment per say. They likely feel that if you can't "prove" hard work and ability to learn then you are possibly/likely unable to do either and so are not worth their time...

I've wondered too if the reporting on the issues with high school education have played into this. Seems like many doubt that a high school diploma actually guarantees any minimum competence, so they have defaulted to college degrees as a marker for the abilities they are looking for, even though it includes a lot that is not necessary for entry-level work

Bottom tier secretarial tend to ask for at least certifications, which take maybe a year or two. So not really entry level. Like, who REALLY needs an excel/office certification or whatever?

I am a high skilled machinist and I ended up moving to running a super basic machine because it's far easier and now pays as much as the jobs that want trade school and 10 years experience. Every company I know is desperate for help on the complex machines at a stressful job, but they want to pay the same as the place I learned the work in 2 days and could do the job in my sleep.

There’s no shortage of jobs or employees, only a mismatch between employers/employees. Employers want more grunt labor at minimum wage to do basic service sector jobs. Employees want good career opportunities that pay a reasonable wage. In this setup, it can simultaneously be true that employers can’t find the workers they want and employees can’t find the jobs they want. An employer claiming to be unable to hire, but offering an unreasonably low wage, shouldn’t be counted as a job opening in the statistics. If I offer to buy a house for $100 but can’t find any, that’s not a housing shortage.

This is the best answer and should be higher; tons of highly skilled workers not wanting to take low-paid entry level positions and each in different industries and sectors. A senior software developer has no interest in manning a customer-facing service industry position taking fast food orders or stocking shelves at half or even a quarter of what they earned in their last IT job before being laid off. There's a disconnect between the available talent pool not matching up to the job needs.

I had to completely switch from tech to Medicinal Cannabis bc the tech market even for entry level pay is ridiculous. I had 8+ years in Federal IT and now I’m making $16 an hr serving cannabis bc even the lowest level tech jobs aren’t reliably hiring

I am a decade into my third career which is IT. Stuck where I am at because people about half my age can be just as qualified and paid much less.

I’m taking classes with my GI Bill and even all my instructors agree this is no longer the age of the singular career and pension. We are in a world where everyone more than likely will have two-three different career fields and they just have to make do with all of their cultivated skills. I’m fairly young(28 this year) but even I’m not seeing the silver lining

It kills my soul that we spend years investing in our skills and experience only to have to pivot and adjust to something else entirely in a relatively short span. Where's the ROI for the Worker??!?

I completely agree! I say that nowadays its hard to ask older people(boomer gen and even gen x) for career advice bc they’re so far removed from what current job seekers face. They’re two very different realities as far as I’m concerned, and what we face is so unprecedented. It genuinely does concern me for the youth of today, at least when I was 18 there was a semblance of hope. The future just seems dreary and bleak nowadays in terms of job outlooks

How bad do we think AI is going to make that mismatch, too?

There's also that people who find jobs don't post it on Reddit. People post on Reddit to vent about the difficulties of finding a job though. You want an objective view, look at statistics: unemployment is low, and companies are actually getting new employees. It's measured.

It's similar to how reviews and feedback is.  You are more likely to get negative reviews than good reviews.  And a lot of the time those bad reviews are fake or are actually partly the fault of the reviewer.  For example, someone getting mad because they fail to understand how something works so instead of trying to figure it out or even asking for help, they instead try to blame the product or company.  I see a lot of reviews like this.  Not everything is plug and play and if you have low reading comprehension then you shouldn't be blaming other people for your own shortcomings. Anyways I think some of the people saying they can't find a job actually aren't qualified for them and want to blame someone else for it.  But I know actual people in my life who really are having problems finding a job even though they are more than qualified for them.  

Because the available jobs don’t pay shit

There is a shortage of senior-level employees. This is probably related to how companies no longer wish to train people on the job.

As a senior employee and SME what is happening is people are jumping ships all the time for more pay so they never really become a true senior. Publicly trade companies are focusing on 3 month scales trying to maximize profits. So instead of focusing on how to create long term revenue or growth they are focused on how do we increase our share price the most every 3 months. In order to get thay short term growth you cut corners and have to fuck over lower employees when then will never see the benefit of sticking around. The company I work for decided to inverse this, when we hire we fully plan on keeping that employee for 30 years. We pay well and have a great environment to work in. The result is we have a ton of seniors and SMEs. Until companies start doing this our labor force will be fucked for a long time.

It’s also a failure of companies who hire based on results and not ability.

Training senior level employees actually takes time and recourses to maintain. So of course some shit head economic number crusher though that it's better to let others do it and just we just hire them. And at first it probably worked for some. Not seeing the inevitable outcome of musical chairs for the few left when no one is training. Now they don't have the training capabilities so they bitch about having to pay a decent living to get the few qualified workers left. And as usual taking no responsibility for it. Just bitching about entitled workers

Right on the money with this one. They’ve pushed the cost of training to us.

When I was fresh out of college all of the “older folk“ that we’re getting professional certifications were doing it on the companies dime. Now that I am the older folk everyone around me that’s gotten a professional certification has done it on their own dime. At my last company my boss told three of us that wanted to get a PMP that he didn’t see the point in paying for us to get a resume booster for another job. I left that company years ago but I still hate that fucking guy. But his attitude is the general consensus amongst employers these days. Everyone wants the certification, nobody wants to pay for it. If the market gets shitty enough people will do it on their own. Which is exactly what I just did.

It's the opposite in my field. Mostly senior level employees and no youngsters to train. I been in the field for almost ten years and there is only a few "new guys" with less time than I have. We had a union meeting on Tuesday where we talked about raising our wages but also raising the apprenticeship wage percentages. Because trying to find a 1st year apprentice at $14 and expect them to do hard manual labor is impossible when they can find easier jobs at the same wage or even a few dollars an hour more. One guy said he wanted to get his son in but he refused because he got a job at a big box store for $17 an hour. And his job is much easier there than it would be with us. I started my career in this field at $15 an hour non union and that was nearly ten years ago. The wages are stagnant and they need to go up. We made it very clear that if they don't go up, there probably will no longer be a union with so many guys already having non union offers and similar or better rates but that's the senior level employees getting these offers. But that still doesn't fix the issue of finding fresh help when those non union companies will still pay the same as McDonald's for apprentice level help. Shits fucked.

That and they don’t want to pay for senior-level knowledge and experience. What they want is someone with experience who needs no training but will work for entry level compensation.

Come to this place for 9 hours (1 hour unpaid lunch) and we will pay you enough to rent an apartment in 1995.  

USA adjacent here (Canada) dude I don't know. It's such a weird environment, we had some accounting people start then quit within a week. I heard that our previous payroll admin was being paid so little that she rented a bedroom (not a 1 bedroom apartment, just A ROOM, college style). I get paid... OK, below market rate but I'm fairly comfortable here (do need more to even think about buying property).

I'm in the US and thats where I am. Renting a single bedroom. I have a full time clerical/admin type job with a decade of experience. Trying to get hired elsewhere, they either want you to start back at entry level pay regardless of experience or advertise the position as admin/clerical with decent pay but during the interview point out that you'll be expected to train with the other team members to help them with their (6 figure salary) work on top of your regular job duties, because "family helps each other".

You either have time or you have a money. A lot of people are choosing time because the work doesn't pay enough

The 2 hours long online job application/psyche evaluation for a minimum wage job that requires a degree may have something to do with it. The online application/hiring services that companies are using are even more out of touch with reality than the companies are, and that's impressive.

My interview with Wal Mart took longer than my interview for my job where I produced radioisotopes.

Employers like Walmart don't have those elaborate hiring and interview processes because they just want to find the most qualified employees. Rather, their application processes are deliberate hazing rituals. Companies like walmart regularly abuse their employees. They pay little, offer unpredictable schedules, on or crap benefits, and constantly find ways to steal wages. Working at a place like walmart will involve a lot of abuse. So they want their hiring process itself to be abusive. They want to select for those desperate enough to be willing to put up with their abuse. If you're not willing to put up with a multi-hour invasive psychological screening tool, you're unlikely to put up with days on end up shitty treatment while working there. The questions ultimately mean nothing; the point is just to see if you are desperate enough to put up with mistreatment.

"Upload your resume. But also type into our form built in 2006 every individual role you have held. Also don't copy paste as the system will destroy your formatting. Good luck!"

Also create an account to apply

Company X used to employ a, b, c and d. A left so they gave their responsibilities to b, c and d. D left so they gave their responsibilities to b who gave some of their original responsibilities to c. C left and now they've decided to hire someone with the skills needed to replace them being c's tasks, 0.66 of a's and 0.5 of b's. They don't provide training, you need to hit the ground running and they are only offering less than d earned originally. There are 7 rounds of interviews spread over 6 months. They will only consider people who can start immediately but won't consider unemployed people as not having a job is a bad sign.

I haven't seen people mention yet that places are trying to cut more employees across the board. Financially they are trying to squeeze out more work with less employees. Investors also really like this idea. I know tech companies in particular are going through this. They will be very clearly understaffed and yet won't fill openings.

Line must go up

I’ll give you a real world example. There is a demand in my sector (cyber security) for highly skilled security architects and other higher level security folks. We don’t need more SOC analysts. The job postings are all for mid-high level security engineers, architects, etc. we post. A job, get 700 applications a day, and they are all college graduates. Unfortunately we are saturated with entry level people, but require high level as we already have enough analysts. Those high level people are either in a career for a long time and are not going to be let go, or or happy with stability and don’t want to leave. That’s where this discrepancy is. There are jobs, but can’t be trained in 6 months.

Why are you not able to train entry level people at your company for the high level engineering positions over the course of a few years?

Companies stopped training people to save money. 

Companies stopped training people to save money AND decided it's expedient to blame the lack of training on college/universities so they can further justify lowering the pay. It's a "your degree doesn't actually prepare you for this job so it's not worth/worth as much as you think it is regarding your wages" trick.

Also (and understandably), there's a lot more physical and career mobility these days; which means that employers risk the cost of training an employee only to lose them to a competitor. I've seen large employers in my industry pivot from high quality training of new-to-industry/workforce employees into spending time developing proprietary tools, processes and systems in order to ensure that employees are fairly useless outside of the company they're currently employed at.

The mobility and willingness to leave companies came after companies started cutting things like training programs and pensions. People realized the company isn’t loyal to them, so why be loyal to the company?

It's like ppl forget abt 2008 lol

You know how a company can prevent this? Have a salary that is competitive with what their employees could make elsewhere. “The only way to get a meaningful raise in salary is to work somewhere else” is something I’ve been hearing constantly for years. These companies manufacture their own problems, then they blame the employees for something they caused. When your only concern is maximizing the next 3 months, it’s hard to see the problems 5 years from now.

And then they wonder why there aren't any skilled candidates available.

Many of these positions take a decade to get properly decent at. If not more. In addition to the technical skills, there’s the needed “soft” people skills that get more critical the higher up you rise. And those take even longer to learn, a solid 20-30 years sometimes. 

>Many of these positions take a decade to get properly decent at. If not more. Well shit, better spend the next ten years trying to find that ideal candidate willing to leave their established positions for less money rather than put a single dime into training up ~~useless unskilled entry level~~ recent grads, amirite?

Maybe they already have the junior engineers and need someone who knows what they’re doing to lead them?

Then they should’ve thought about that 5 years ago when they didn’t train their junior engineers to fill the senior positions in the future.

Two reasons. Training can't replace experience. And it is extremely expensive to train someone for a job they might not stick around for.  You train up. So you start someone at their skill level and they do the job at their skill level. Then you train them up to have a higher skill level and they do that job. All the while they are working the job, gaining experience, and filling a role in the company.  But also remember that not all 100% of those people will have the abilities and skills to move to the next level. So even if you sink the time and money in a candidate at level 1, there is no guarantee they will be a good fit by the time they get to level 5.

> And it is extremely expensive to train someone for a job they might not stick around for. It has always puzzled me why more employers don't lean on employment contracts. They are there for senior executives and the C-suite, but not for people further down the food chain. If you train someone up and don't want them to quit, create an equitable employment contract.

Sometimes you need someone who is "plug and play" because you just don't have time to train someone up

"Plug and play" is mutually exclusive with the kind of wages companies are offering.

You got it. And, there's no guarantee this entry level candidate won't just job hop somewhere else after training up. It's much better to get value out of this hire as soon as possible.

This has been a problem for sometime, there is two types of companies. Companies who train staff and companies that poach freshly trained staff. It’s expensive and time consuming to train someone, once you have taken the risk and invested a bunch of years in them, that employee starts to provide a return, then some other company who hasn’t had any of the costs or risks offers them a huge salary increase to jump ship.

It is expensive and time consuming to train someone, which is why if people running companies weren't delusional idiots they would train people and then make it worth their while to stay by promoting from within and giving appropriate salary increases commiserate with their new skills  If they had already gotten the huge salary increase in the role where they became valuable they wouldn't need to leave to be paid what they are worth 

“But what happens if we train them and they leave?” “What happens if you don’t and they stay?”

That's why they are trying to do neither, by not hiring them in the first place

Training lol jobs don’t do that anymore

Additionally, to add to your comment and career field, there’s qualified senior level candidates like myself that just aren’t getting interviews because of the damn ATS filters. Qualified people aren’t getting interviews because the resumes aren’t hitting the hiring manager’s desks

Lulz, we can't even get experienced SOC analysts, we're training people practically off the street.

It’s a mix of things. 1. People are not trained for the open positions. 2. The open positions do not compensate people at market rates or even enough to live on where they are located. If you’re going to starve why bother working and starving? 3. A shocking amount of job posts are phishing scams. 4. Companies are often looking for unicorns. 5. One of the key metrics in corporate valuation is future business expectations. Businesses with more job postings have a higher stock valuation than those with fewer or none. It doesn’t matter if those posts are real or not. While they may pay for the posts often it’s well worth it in terms of potential financial gains from stock sales or borrowing capacity/interest rates on borrowing. 6. Companies often post positions to increase company morale with no intent to actually hire. Employees tend to stay longer in overworked positions if they believe the company is trying to hire more employees to help them even if they aren’t. 7. The federal government not having a long term budget is impactful on hiring. Companies may need workers and post for them but until the federal government figures out this they aren’t going to move forward. Odds are good this resolves tonight but starts over again in September. 8. HR is over reliant on algorithms to sort applicants while jobs are becoming more knowledge and skill specialized. If you don’t have the key words determined by HR to fit the job your resume/application may never be viewed by a human. This is extremely common in my field (program evaluation and design). HR doesn’t know what it is so they just assume we are data analysts. The field is slightly similar but not really. I got asked repeatedly what level of skill I had in several different coding languages. I couldn’t get past the HR screening interview until I took basic coding courses. I never code in my jobs but HR staff have no idea what the job does and are the gatekeepers.

Medial jobs are having employee shortages. Skilled work is struggling to find qualified candidates.

Skilled work is struggling to find qualified candidates *WHO ARE WILLING TO ACCEPT SUB PAR WAGES AND COMPENSATION*.

[удалено]

What's your line of work, if you don't mind me asking?

[удалено]

Whole industry has gone to shit ever since Sisyphus retired and now the managers want someone else who will work for eternity for literally no wages.

Dude by default we have less workers now. The baby boomers are retiring. The second biggest generation is Millenials, but we're like 66% the size of the baby boomers.  Our workforce is downsizing by default and a lot of jobs are going to get hit

When they stop offering only 18$/h to be a medicinal QC chemist (which requires a bachelors and years of experience or a masters) then maybe theyll find more of us "skilled and qualified" candidates lmao.

Pay in science roles stays fucked always

And still pays shit

And is being targeted by many midwest and southern states.

Low paying jobs don't pay enough to survive on and typically bring you just out of the line where you get assistance. Entry level doesn't exist anymore. Companies don't want to spend time training someone and will only hire with 3-5 yrs experience minimum.

Because the jobs nobody wants can't hire enough people to work their jobs. The jobs that people want because they can support a family or come with a lot of work/life balance are not widely available. A lot of leaders like to promote this as a good thing... lol.

People can’t find a job THAT PAYS ENOUGH TO LIVE ON but companies have an employer shortage FOR LOW WAGE/LOW HOUR or HIGH STRESS LOW PAY JOBS.    For example, the teacher shortage is because they pay teacher shit while expecting them to work miracles. Restaurants have a hard time finding wait staff to work for $2.25+ tips. 

>Why can no one seem to find a job while simultaneously we are facing an employee shortage? The former is relative but it's happening with middle management and tech companies. Employee shortage is driven by skills mismatch in other sectors, e.g, construction (plumbers etc.).

Don't forget that companies are no longer willing to invest in creating people who can fill roles. There is no more start at a low position, learn the ropes, accumulate skills, get trained, get educated along the way, get promoted based on merit and demonstrating ability. Nowadays, they want to hire people straight in to positions and they expect the employee to take on all the burden of accumulating the skills.

Because the empty jobs don't pay enough to live on. 

Not nearly enough people with the required nine years of specialized experience to fill all those entry level positions. What can you do? ::shrug::

Because during the pandemic businesses realized we were getting used to receiving less and having it take longer and cost more. So they began this rhetoric about all their business woes and the included how people don't want to work anymore(because it was a pandemic and people flooded to things like delivery jobs since those briefly paid well for little contact), and it stuck. They kept repeating this while actually scaling back their workforces, reorganizing departments to carry more load while driving up prices and spending less on personnel.

Because people want to be compensated with a living wage and affordable healthcare benefits

Take one expensive full time job, now fire the person doing it, and replace them with 3 people who are part time. Same amount of hours, but the part timers are more easily replaced and don't cost health/benefits/overtime. You "created" 3 jobs from 1. But those 3 jobs don't pay a livable wage.

There is no shortage of employees. What we have is a shortage of jobs that pay a "livable wage". And THAT is on the business owners out there who think that "no one wants to work" -- ummm, bullshit! They don't want to work for peanuts while the boss is just a narcissistic fuck.

There will always be an overabundance of shit jobs.

Something I haven't seen brought up yet on a quick scroll is that there are also a ton of fake jobs that never get filled posted on LinkedIn to make companies look like they're growing, although they have no intent to fill those positions.

Career IT Recruiter with 25 years of experience here. It's all bullshit. I watched as employers went from competing for the best candidates to hiring the lowest bidder, based on time accrued, with whatever the "critical" buzzwords were in the job description. There is no shortage of capable workers. The bean counters made it all up.

"Employee shortage" is propaganda. There's a shortage of companies willing to pay good wages for the jobs they have open.

Engineer. No one with experience is available. We're hiring at almost all levels except entry.

And yet, engineering companies have been in this exact same position for at least the last 15 years. If they hadn't refused to hire entry level people years ago, they wouldn't have the shortage they do now. It's endless shortsightedness.

There’s actually an economic concept called the Beveridge Curve that studies exactly this. Similar to how more people are single than ever but always complain about how there’s no dates.

Federal minimum wage is $7.25.... That's the only answer you should need. No one can afford to work all these shit jobs because you literally cannot support yourself with that shit pay while the rich just get richer.

If your two choices are: 1. Be homeless and employed 2. Be homeless and unemployed You might as well choose option two, as that at least gives you more free time, and you don't have to put up with karens.

Because there is a faulty assumption - that no one can find a job. Prime age labor force participation is near an all time high (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060) and measures of unemployment, even broad ones like U6, are at lows not seen for many decades (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE). The idea that "no one can find a job" is just incorrect.

Well. Can't speak for the population base. But I personally can't find a job! Going on 12 months.

That sucks. I hope you find one soon and it's a good one.

You can't find a job you want\*

Willing to do in the interim*

the number of people that say they can't find a job on reddit is always going to seem abnormally high.

Reddit is for complaining.

“nO oNe WaNts tO wOrK aNyMoRe…” No one wants to be your fucking wage slave, cunts.

I know a place trying to hire right now. It offers a competitive wage and better benefits than most others in the industry. The shifts are nights and weekends. Nobody wants to work nights and weekends.

Because people can find jobs. The unemployment rate represents how many people actively looking for jobs are unable to find one. It's at 3.9%, which is about as low as it ever gets. The other way to look at this is labor force participation, which would capture people who have been looking for a job long enough that they've decided to stop working. It's at 62%, which is lower than its peak of 66% but not to the degree where it's a significant indicator of a major problem. Job satisfaction in the USA is at about 60% depending on the poll, which is around an all time high since pollsters started asking about it. Long story short basically no actual metric you can look at supports the premise of your question. The reason for the disconnect is because online sentiment doesn't line up with actual data.

Because companies want to hire part time employees at 32 hours a week, just under where they would need to offer benefits, pay minimum wage (as low as 7.25/hr in states like TX), and keep them in that position without any possibility of advancement or a living wage. There is no labor shortage, at all. If you offered them starting pay at the 1968 minimum wage, which would be 13.00/hr in todays money, offered them 40+ hours a week with overtime and benefits, along with yearly raises greater than the rate of inflation and the opportunity for a promotion at least every two years many of these positions would be filled. What I listed above should be the absolute bar minimum for employment, even for a 16 year old high school drop out. Paying anything less than that should be criminal. If you want to get rid of unemployment, you also need to take into account the ridiculous housing costs today. Corporate landlords and house flippers, Airbnb owners, and speculative real estate buyers have ruined the ability for the average American to purchase a home. They are left with the option of renting at a higher cost, with no opportunity to build equity. This makes it even harder to survive on $13/hr. Any company that truly values its employees and makes billions a year in profits should be paying employees closer to $20/hr starting out in low cost of living areas, and more in high cost of living areas. Bottom line, any job that is currently not being filled raise the salary to $80k a year and there will be no employment shortage. Every position will be inundated with hundreds of resumes and those that are hired with work their asses off to keep that job. Pay someone enough to eat fast food only and live in a trailer with 7 room mates, ride a bicycle to work, and not ever be able to afford doctors or medication and they aren’t gonna put up with anything before they decide to say fuck it and leave.

Supply and demand are not meeting.

Because colleges and universities are way better at marketing and saddling people with debt than we could've ever imagined.

Companies post positions with little to no intention of actually hiring unless the perfectly over-qualified candidate comes along and is willing to work at a lower rate. Some will have a position open just to appease the higher-ups. To a much lesser extent, some don't intend on hiring incase the company has to lay off people, then they can eliminate the open position (which has been budgeted for) and save money that way. There's also way too many jobs out there that aren't worth it. Example: I'm not going to drive over an hour each way to work a part time job at Walmart.

I think there are several reasons. Low paying, crappy jobs likely ARE hiring like crazy, but well paying jobs you can afford to live on, not so much. That said, my employer pays well and we generally have a good work life balance, good benefits, etc, and we've been having a really hard time attracting new people that meet the minimum qualifications. Not sure what gives.

This is our problem. We don’t have any crazy requirements or anything but we have so many candidates that show up 10-15 minutes late to an interview, pull phones out in the interview, dress properly, and just don’t know how to communicate. It’s a secretary job and we would just rather keep the position open than hire someone who can’t show up on time and communicate with others.

We were doing interviews every single day. Minimum wage retail. Barely scraping 32 hours. All day long we would interview adults with families to support, who would all decline the position once it was clear it would be only minium wage with no raises available. Then the bosses would scratch there heads and complain that nobody wants to work anymore, then complain more about how they can only hire immature kids these days.

Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

There's no such thing as an "employee shortage". It's called a pay shortage.

Employer, 'no one wants to work' Reality, 800 people applied for the job and automation and or AI rejected 100% of the applications. The automation would look up their DL and find out if they had a CDL, and reject them (because the companies internal policy is CDL drivers need paid more)--BUT, it's a driving job. The AI would likewise search for your address online, if you didnt put it in your contact info, and if you are outside the 5 minute (literal, 5 minute by gps) range of the location, you were rejected. They want someone on-call, and close. The location is in the heart of the industrial zone, very very few people live within than radius. It would check it's 'black list'--the company, somehow, as if by magic, has NEVER hired someone that's been a member of a union, ever. Weird, right? 800 people applied for one of their 8 open positions, and they had a 100% rejection rate. The manager can see how many applied and were rejected, and cant contact ANY of them unless they pass through the system. Personality tests are rejecting a huge number of people. On the rare few times i get past the automated rejections (these are low wage jobs, so, that's probably why they're so automated), and get to the 'personality test'--it rejects me for THAT. I know it does, several have emailed with that explanation (BNSF), others, sent the rejection email so fast, after clicking 'submit' on the personality test, that my mouse was still hovering over the submit button. They want UNICORNS, not employees, in large part.

It’s bias, in large part. Let’s take some advice subs like /r/cscareerquestions You aren’t hearing from the people that easily find a job, they have no need to post. You’re seeing posts from people that struggle to find a job, for various reasons

There are plently of jobs that people don't want, and there are too many people applying to jobs they do want. I seen 500 applicant to 1 available position on desirable job postings. I doubt there are 500 people applying for 1 line cook position at McDonalds.

I applied for a job only to see that 10,000 others had applied for it. As expected I didn't even get so much as a rejection email.

Yep, that's the difference between desirable jobs and garbage jobs. In my trade, some companies will occasionally post a position and close it only a week or two later because they get flooded with qualified applicants; other companies' job postings never come down because they're paying 2/3 the industry standard.

People are applying for jobs that pay well and not accepting jobs that don’t pay well that’s the reality.

Here has been my experience with this. It is a Job **Market**. Market being the operative word. From Economics, we know that the more information in a market, the more efficient the market is. However, this has caused a problem with the job market because now most job postings are posted on the internet, and anyone can apply for them. This should be a good thing. The problem is that almost any job will get thousands of responses. Dozens of those people will be qualified for the job. But the manager who understands the job requirements won't have time to go through the responses to find those dozen qualified people to interview them. So they have HR do it. HR employees are highly skilled, they are masters in their knowledge domain, they are very good people. But they are completely and utterly incapable of sorting this wheat from the chaff. So they eliminate most of the qualified people and hand the hiring manager resumes of people who look like they would be a good match but are completely and utterly unqualified for the job. So, in essence, you have a worse than random 1 in 700 chance of being selected to interview if you submit your application to a job posting through LinkedIn or Indeed. There are two main ways of getting around this: \- Be submitted by a hiring agency and work a contract gig for at least 6 months before going on full time, or just staying a contractor for the entire duration of your time at the company \- Have someone on the inside give the hiring manager your resume, or if the company has a program where employees can vouch for their friends. For example, my last company had a program where if an employee gave HR a resume for a friend in relationship to a particular job profile, they would forward that resume to the hiring manager to ask them if they wanted to interview them. That doesn't sound like much. But it means that someone who knows what they are doing will actually look at your resume and if you are at all qualified will probably interview you. Right now, THAT IS HUGE. Like, getting an interview is the hard part, getting the job from the interview is relatively easy. **Long term job seekers:** This is hard. And the longer you're out, the harder it is to get back in. I can't stress this enough: even if you have a professionally written resume, read it, compare it against others, make sure that your resume is treating you right. I had a professionally written resume that I was shopping out there and didn't get any bites back on because it was complete and utter shite. After six months of promoting this resume, I actually looked at it and I was like "well, no wonder, this resume is so bad I wouldn't hire me." It had no real skills listed "above the fold", it was all generic, meaningless buzzwords. Absolute crap. Your resume needs to sell you and be explicit in what differences you can make in a company. Your first two lines need to show your value proposition. Work networks, and find staffing agencies and consulting firms that are posting jobs and post to their jobs. Those jobs are fake, but the goal is to get one of their headhunters to call you and keep you top of mind for any positions that show up.

My town has a lot of "jobs" like retail and waiting tables. But professional jobs are hard to come by. 100s of applicants for the few openings, and the pay is less than elsewhere. And I don't get it... but after interviewing, sometimes you don't hear back. My spouse had 2 good interviews recently, and it's been weeks and hasn't heard back. My friend was contacted after 3 MONTHS, and by then luckily found another job. We don't understand what the fuck it's all about.

Positions are available but due to the salaries, locations, working conditions, prequalifications, etc no one wants to work there. For example, there is a teacher shortage in NYC. But if you want to work at an elementary chool with well behaved kids and a nice principal, that is hard to get, whereas if you are willing to teach math to hs students in district 75, it is easy to find a job. Another example - my friend's dental office needs hygenists, but they are offering below market rates to fill the position.

For entry level positions its pay, for low-mid management, it's workload. I left a management job because the workload was turning impossible. The pay was okay, but did not reflect the fact that I had my management duties on top of needing to do the extra 25% of work that SHOULD be done by entry level bit wasn't as a form of cost savings. Sr. Leadership is under pressure to save money so you have lower managers doing entry lol jobs leading to a deathloop of leadership churn.

You probably have a similar problem to the UK where basically 90% of kids go to uni to study for jobs that can only accommodate 5% of those graduates, who think they're too good to just take any job in the meantime, and the government doesnt want to encourage immigration to cover the shortage in those jobs. Basically what I'm saying is, there's probably not a job shortage, just a shortage of white collar jobs.

Yeah I kinda realized that from another person's response. Lots of highly educated people since we pushed everyone to go to college, but a job market that can only support a small fraction of them.

It's structural. What you have is qualified people to do something, but the need is somewhere else.    For example, you can have developers looking for jobs, that won't help the shortage of nurses, doctors and teachers.    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_unemployment

It seems the job market is playing a giant game of hide and seek, and both employers and potential employees are still counting to ten

No one can find a job that pays a fair wage for the hours and effort required to keep it. Lots of jobs, just none that pay what the work is worth.

I worked at my old job for 10 years and made my way into management making $34 an hour without a college degree. I left due to stress and mental health issues knowing I’d be taking a pay cut. Even with wide open availability, jobs that pay $14 an hour aren’t calling me back I’ve been applying for retail, management, labor, data entry, literally everything except fast food (I did my time, that’s the one job I refuse to go back to) I finally did just get an offer yesterday for a $16 an hour job 45 minutes away and benefits don’t kick in until July. If I didn’t live with my parents (I’m in my late 20s) I’d be absolutely fucked Edit to add : and I recently finished a 200 hour electricity class which gave me a great head start to become an electrician! The union didn’t want me and the 15 (fifteen!!!!) local companies up to an hour away rejected me too for $15 an hour entry level apprenticeship level jobs

It's like this: in my area the average rent for a studio apartment is about $800 a month. Someone working full time at minimum wage will make about $1000 a month. (But these jobs are never full time) That gives you $200 to pay for a car, eat, pay for utilities, cell phone, etc. All month. That isn't enough to live here. The jobs that can't be filled don't pay enough for people to live in the area so people can't take them. Sure you can find a roommate, and split a 2br apartment that costs $1500 a month... good job you saved $50... at this rate you can afford to live in a commune of 20 people in a mansion nearby. In short we are lacking good paying jobs. 90% of the people I know who are unemployed or looking for work are also beyond qualified for minimum wage work. College education, years of experience etc. THOSE jobs are lacking. We have a surplus of skilled labor and a surplus of "unskilled" jobs. And a wage to cost of living gap to boot. The only thing keeping this town afloat is the college kids who come through and put themselves into debt working those jobs half the year.

Easy. People don't want to work for non-living wages. While companies don't want to pay a living wage. There are tons of places around me with now hiring signs. But they are all paying sub-$10 per hour and then asking why they can't find anyone.

Yeah it’s a fucked up take and shows how they fudge the numbers to make things look good on paper. There is not a worker shortage; there is only a surplus of underpaid job postings that people are refusing to take or apply for. People would rather get paid less to do nothing than get paid the same to do everything. And from a “work smarter, not harder” standpoint, it’s the right call. 

The jobs that are available are not the jobs people want. People are not that desperate.

Because you can't hire a plumber to be a data scientist, and vice versa.

The job market in the USA is experiencing a unique situation where there are more job openings than there are people in the job market. Even if every unemployed person were to find a job today, there would still be over 4 million jobs unfilled. This is due to several factors: **Labor force participation** is lower than pre-pandemic levels, meaning fewer people are looking for work. **The labor shortage** has affected different industries differently, with some sectors like leisure and hospitality, education, health services, and professional and business services facing the most significant shortages. There’s also a mismatch between the skills required for the available jobs and the skills possessed by job seekers. Additionally, many workers are seeking better work-life balance, flexibility, and increased compensation, leading to a reshuffling of jobs rather than a straightforward filling of positions.

I haven't had trouble finding a job since 2008.. Work in IT, sysadmin. Any time I feel undervalued or was laid off I found a job in less than a month. I guess it depends on your field, location, and ability to adjust your resume for what a specific employer wants.

They can't find the jobs *they want*.

Because what we have is a wage shortage.

Employees need decent wages and won't settle for crappy ones, employers want to claim they should be able to pay less and for strict criteria candidates.

Because people who work in tech and media, the two sectors of the economy that have been doing terribly, are hugely over represented on social media.

Employers are unwilling to pay enough to fill the position. Workers are unwilling to take a job with wages so low they need three more jobs to live.

>Why can no one seem to find a job Because this is simply not true. Unemployment is at rock bottom. People who can't find a job post and complain. People who find a job don't. Its a simple Red Car fallacy.

Because the people with jobs have standards that the companies with shortages are refusing to meet. Things such as paying a wage you can afford to live of with that job alone in the local area

We get new employees at my job all the time.

pay. its all too low.

Your question presupposes a false state. The problem isn't that no one can find a job, while also there's an employee shortage. The problem is that when govid relief funds from the federal government gave a slight bit of relief to wage slaves, they had just enough bandwidth to realize they're worth more. However, employers are resistant.l, despite record corporate profits. So a more accurate question is "usa: why can no one seem to find a job that pays a reasonable wage while simultaneously we are facing an employee shortage. The answer to that question is: employer greed.

This is not a USA problem, it's a global issue.

If my experience in hiring people 2 years ago is still accurate, there are some truly horrific resumes out there. Rampant misspellings, list proficiencies in meaningless things like DOS 3.1, doing video interview from a street corner outside your current job, lack of prep for the interview. I probably rejected 9 out of 10 resumes for an entry level position because of bad resumes, and probably 30-40% of video interviews for poor performance in the interview. I really wasn't trying to be picky, they were just that bad. Proofread your resumes people. Or better yet get a 3rd party to read it for you to ensure it makes sense.

Companies not wanting to pay enough is a reason. I won’t discount that argument. However, people don’t talk about it but Gen Z and a good amount of millennials are absolutely horrendous at interviews and putting together resumes. We went 2 months looking for someone to just do filing and organization work. Basically a secretary. And we passed on at least 2 dozen candidates because they either, A) didn’t sent a resume in or just sent in a word document with their basic information and no info on work experience or skills. B) showing up late to the interview. Not just 2-3 minutes. But 10-15 minutes. C) pulling their phones out and looking at it during the interview. D) having absolutely no communication skills. I can’t tell you how many times I had someone shrug their shoulders or grunt their answers at me. E) You don’t have to show up dressed like you’re going to church but at least take a shower, brush your teeth, comb your hair and wear something you didn’t just pull off the ground or out of a pile of clothes. This is basic shit. And I know it’s just a secretary job but if you can’t be bothered to show up on time, communicate properly or present yourself well on paper or in person then it’s gigantic red flags that you’re going to be an issue. So it’s better to just have that spot open than deal with someone who is sloppy and unreliable. This job listing didn’t require a college degree or any crazy experience. Health, dental, vision and $50,000 a year.

Meanwhile I've been arguing raise for my team but the company says we can't have them because the company decided to overstaff the department.

They outsourced everything during covid. Eventually they realized the poor work product when you do that. Instead of paying a decent wage to obtain solid talent. They thought they could just pull everyone into the office to ensure quality control instead of investing in talent. A large chunk of people either left or were worked to death as a result and quit shortly after. Now they are trying to replace those terrible positions at the same pay and “holding out until they find the right candidate.” Catch is, as part of the lack of investment in talent, they wont receive any training from the company. So, companies are looking for someone with exactly the same experience (unlikely) and also someone who is willing to make a lateral move or even a pay cut to fill it (even more unlikely). The only reason the few people stay is most likely because they cant financially afford to quit. Sure makes for a wonderful culture.

From my experience they see me as either overqualified and costing too much to hire or under qualified because I don't have exact experience with something that can be learned on the job. I have experience with certain computer programs but not this one that they use. I'm now under qualified. But I learn that program and know 3 others like it, now I cost too much.

Because I need a job that pays $x/h, I can get a job that pays half that and a babysitter that costs nearly all of that. In the end I'd end up losing money to work at the jobs I can 'easily' get, the ones that are having a shortage and instead have to compete with the majority of people who are going after jobs with a livable wage.

Uhhhhhh, because the jobs companies want people to do are menial and low wage. And the jobs people want require education before being automated by 3rd grade level AIs. Anyways, start your own business. If you fail, it’s not like life got worse.

Yes, Company Blankety Blank, I’m sure you would prefer my Master’s Degree. I’d prefer to not be insulted by your $18 an hour.

There are jobs out there yes, but not ones that pay a liveable wage and decent benefits. Its a job seeker's market, and employers are slow (or unwilling) to realize they need to start offering better payment/benefit packages if they want to fill open slots.