Don't Move to Indiana To Become a Prosthodontist

I really shouldn't have to tell both of the Prosthodontists in the nation who are currently looking for a job but you probably won't find a job if you drop everything and move to Indiana.   Also I don't know what a Prosthodontist is so let me pause and go look that up.    Turns out that a prosthodontist is a specialization in dentistry that handles restoration of teeth or dentures.

Why am I talking about prosthodontists in Indiana?   

According to this article "The fastest-growing job in each U.S. state" from Yahoo Finance, the fastest growing job in Indiana is prosthodontist.     You can follow that link to see their nice pretty graphic showing the (alleged) fastest growing job per state.    Reading that raised a red alert in my BS radar.      I figured if I've never even heard of an occupation its probably unlikely that its a new boom job.    In fact  all I had to do was click on the source cited " projections from the government-backed Projections Managing Partnership (PMP)" to see that there are currently 0 prosthodontists in Indiana and the projection is for there to be 10.      I do see that going from nothing to 10 is pretty good growth but 10 jobs is nothing.        I don't know how the Yahoo finance articles authors decided that this +10 job growth ranked as the fastest growing job for the state.    There are numerous jobs for Indiana projected to have higher net job increases and high % increases.   The % increase for prosthodontists is actually listed as 0.    The job numbers go from 0 to 10 so theres no valid way to express % increase.   Yet for some reason the Yahoo folks decided this change from 0 to 10 was the biggest increase. 

Two ways of looking at the fastest growing jobs are to look at the % increase or the net increase.   A job that goes from 50 to 75 has a 50% increase and a 25 net increase.     

Pulling the data from the Projections Management website for the 2017 to 2019 projections for Indiana we get :

High % growth jobs for Indiana :

OccupationName	Base	Proj	Change	PercentChange
Artists and Related Workers, All Other	50	60	10	20
Helpers--Painters, Paperhangers, Plasterers, and Stucco Masons	50	60	10	20
Cartographers and Photogrammetrists	100	110	10	10
Set and Exhibit Designers	100	110	10	10
Archivists	120	130	10	8.3
Elevator Installers and Repairers	120	130	10	8.3

Jobs with high net job increases for Indiana: 

OccupationName	Base	Proj	Change	PercentChange
Combined Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Including Fast Food	83720	85620	1900	2.3
Registered Nurses	65480	67330	1850	2.8
Team Assemblers	82420	83850	1430	1.7
Personal Care Aides	29230	30530	1300	4.4
Waiters and Waitresses	51740	53030	1290	2.5

Clearly there are a LOT lot more jobs in food prep, nursing, personal care, than there are in the "boom" 20% growth jobs such as painters helpers.   But if you only look at the % increase then you're likely to chase a job with very few actual openings. 

Oh, also don't move to Idaho to be an 'exhibit designer'.   The Yahoo finance analysis did the exact same thing for that job in that state and decided that going from 0 exhibit designer jobs to 10 jobs is the fastest growing occupation for Idaho.

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What Caused Changes in Labor Force Participation 2007-2016

The below information and the graphic are a direct copy/paste off of the Federal Reserve of Atlanta page

The following factors put downward pressure on the labor force participation rate between 2007 and 2016.

Aging of the population: The aging of the population has had a significant effect on the LFP rate. Without the shifting distribution of the population towards older individuals since 2007, the overall labor force participation rate in Q4 2016 would have been 2.1 percentage points higher.
Rising education: Education has become increasingly important in the last couple of decades. Young people are devoting more of their time to schooling instead of the labor market, and older individuals are more likely to return to school to move forward in their careers than in the past. The recession likely amplified these trends as it allowed youth to delay entry into the job market and gave others an opportunity to retool. Rising school attendance explains about 0.9 percentage points of the overall decline between 2007 and 2016.
Health problems: The percent of the population who say they are too sick or disabled to work has been rising for some time, and the rise has been occurring even among young and prime-age individuals. Holding the age distribution of the population fixed at 2007 shares, the increase has contributed 0.6 percentage points to the overall decline in labor force participation.
Shadow labor force: The percent of the population on the margin of the labor force who say they want a job but for some reason are not actively looking for work rose during the recession across all age groups. The contribution of this factor has shrunk over the last couple of years, but still accounts for about 0.4 points of the overall decline between 2007 and 2016.

The following factors put upward pressure on the labor force participation rate between 2007 and 2016:

Retirement: A significant factor that has worked against declining participation is that a larger share of older Americans are staying in the labor force than in the past. All else being equal, if those people older than 60 were just as likely to retire in 2016 as they were in 2007, the labor force participation rate would now be about 0.90 percentage point lower.
Family responsibilities: The share of the population who chose not to participate in the labor market because they were taking care of their family declined during the Great Recession—especially among women. This pushed the labor force participation rate of women about 0.55 percentage points higher than it would have been between 2007 and 2010, but this effect has largely dissipated.

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Everyone Didn't Use To Work For The Same Company For Forty Years Until Retirement

There is a belief it seems that in the "olden days" that people would start a job at some company and then work for that company for the next 40 years and then retire.   This picture is capped with a retirement party and the worker getting their golden watch retirement gift.    Nowadays though the belief is that its typical for workers to bounce between employers every few years.

Nobody in my family I know of ever worked for the same employer more than maybe 10 or 15 years.   Nobody worked for the same company their whole working life.   Of course this is just anecdotal but leads me to wonder if this picture of the typical worker putting in 30-40 years with one business is really typical at all.

I found this report by ERBI : Employee Tenure Trend Lines, 1983–2010

Here's how the tenure of male workers looks over history:

(click image for full size)

Its certainly down from the peaks in the 50's.   But it didn't go from 40 years to 5 years.
I don't see data going back before 1951.     I'm assuming that the lower tenure rate for 1951 is a result of WWII.   During WWII a large portion of working age men were occupied in the war effort.   So a larger percentage of men would have changed or started work at different companies after the war was over.

The trend looks different for women.   Its almost the opposite with all the lines trending up over time.

There is also a Bloomberg article that discusses the same data : Sticking With the Same Job Isn't Out of Style
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Changes in Incomes from 1960 to 2014

TheBigPicture shared a link to an article Shifting Incomes for American Jobs from Flowing Data site.
I of course got excited, because I mean who wouldn't get excited?    Flowing Data has created an interactive graphic that shows the distribution of incomes for various general occupational groups for 1960, 1980, 2000 and 2014.    !!!      If you go play around with the graphic and click on the different years you can see circles for each group bounce up and down between the income levels.  

Many occupations gained in incomes over time with more people making higher incomes.    Some occupations mostly stayed the same.  

Unfortunately it looks like the construction industry lost ground overall.   Just looking at the dots in the graphic and doing a manual count it looks to me like the median income dropped from around $35-40k in 1960 to more like $25-30k in 2014.     Overall, then wages in construction were down for most people.     Thats not good.   A handful of people in construction did better but only at the top.     In both 1960 and 2014 about 20% of the trades made over $50k.        However in 1960 nobody made over $75k but by 2014 there are 3 people making that much.  

But as I said, other occupations were either up or flat.    Construction appears to be about the only exception.   Thats good news.   For the most part across the occupations it was the top 20-50% that saw gains and the rest stayed where they were.    

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Why Do Restaurant Tip Rates Inflate? Slower Increases in Food Prices & Minimum Wage

A while ago I asked Why Do We Tip So Much?   I'd been puzzled why we used to tip only 10-15% but now the norm is 20%.

Just now a thought occurred to me... maybe the reason the standard expected % rate for tips has gone up is that food costs didn't go up as fast as wages?   Its a possibility.   I mean if a burger cost $1 in 1980 and is now $2 then a 15% tip in 1980 would be 30¢ and 60¢ today.  Just about doubling.   But what if wages tripled in that period?    Tips wouldn't have kept pace with inflation so it would make more sense to have a higher % tip.

In 1984 the 15% tip was typical (noted previously).   Today we expect 20% tips.

What has the cost of restaurant food done in that same period?

For that lets look too data chart from the Fed. :
Consumer food prices (away fro home ) were up ~155% from 1980 to today.

Now compare that to income.  From the census 

In 1984 median income was $10,417 and by 2014 it went up to $28,757.

From the early 80's to today, restaurant food prices went up ~150% and wages went up ~180%.

In 1984 the minimum was $3.35 with a 50% tip credit.   So workers would have gotten $1.67 per hour in tips.  (minimum wage history)    Minimum wage for tipped employers (with the tip credit) has been stuck at $2.13 per hour since 1991 where it is today.

 Median hours worked for waiters and waitresses is around 35 hours a week.  

Nationally today waiters and waitresses average $10.40 an hour.   (BLS data)    With a $2.13 minimum they're getting $8.27 in tips on average.

From an old Occupational Outlook Handbook said that "In 1984, median annual earnings (excluding tips) of full-time waiters and waitresses were $9,400."

I'm finding it hard to believe that annual wages for waiters were that high excluding the tips.    I'm thinking that might be an error and that they probably mean to say including tips instead.

If I start with annual wage of $9,400 in 1984 and then work forwards then it goes as follows:

$9,400 in total wages in 1984 would have been a combination of minimum wage and tips.   Assuming a weekly work week of 35 hours that works out to $5.16 per hour.   Minimum wage in 1984 would be $1.67 so they would have made $3.49 per hour in tips.   Thats then $6351 in tips and $3039 in wages.   Assuming a 15% tip rate then the food served would have to be about $42,340 a year to get to that $6351 tip total.

$42,340 in food in 1984 would then grow to $107,967 per year in 2015.
For the $9,400 in 1984 to grow the same as wages in general that would have to hit $26,320 today.
Minimum wage on 35 hours a week would give just $3913  so they'd have to make $22,407 in tips.
$22,407 in tips a year on $107,967 of food equates to just about ... drum roll.... 20% tip rate today.

So theres my answer :

Due to slower increases in minimum wage pay for tipped employees and slower increases in food costs tips would have to go from 15% to 20% in the past 30 years in order for tipped workers to retain the same relative incomes.

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Unique and Rare Employer Benefits

I was curious how many employers offer employee stock purchase programs (ESPP).    I found the answer in a report from the Society for Human Resource Management : 2013 Employee Benefits An Overview of Employee Benefits Offerings in the U.S.   The answer is 12%.    The report also has statistics on a wide variety of other benefits that employers might offer.  Some are commonplace like health insurance and 401k plans.   Others are typical perks like free coffee or casual dress day.     Yet other benefits are unusual and obscure like nap rooms or pet insurance.

Some unique or rare benefits offered by companies to their workers and the percent of employers that offer them taken out of the SHRM report :

Health
Bariatric coverage for weight loss 34%
In vitro fertilization coverage 30%
Retiree health care coverage 23%
Smoking cessation program 44%
On-site massage therapy services 9%
On-site nap room 6%
Financial
Roth 401(k) savings plan 38%
Employee stock purchase plan 12%
Restricted stock options 10%
Nonqualified stock options 9%
Time off
Paid maternity leave 16%
Paid paternity leave 15%
Paid vacation cash-out option 9%
Paid day off for employee’s birthday 8%
Unlimited paid sick time 3%
Unlimited paid vacation time 1%
 
Other perks
Free computers for employees’ personal use 6%
Adoption assistance 11%
Babies at work 2%
Casual dress day (one day per week) 60%
Casual dress (every day) 34%
Telecommuting on a full-time basis 20%
 Free coffee 72%
Vending machine snacks and beverages 50% (full or part subsidy)
Organization-sponsored sports teams 16%
On-site haircuts 1%
Pet health insurance 8%
Prepared take-home meals 3%
Employee keeps frequent flyer miles 69%
Rental car upgrades 15%
Paid minibar snacks at the hotel 10%
Paid travel expenses for spouse 7%
Paid pay-per-view movies at the hotel 5%
Company picnic 55%
Pets at work 5%

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Fewer People Are Working Two Jobs

I worked two jobs for a few months back in college once.   I didn't have a compelling need to do it but I seemed able to manage it and I guess I just wanted the extra money.   I'm proud to say I got straight A's that quarter in college.   I honestly think having to work that much and go to school full time forced me to be a better student.   With such little free time I had to manage my time better to get my school work done.  When I had more free time I had more of a tendency to goof off more as there was ample time to fill and that just turned into more goofing off and procrastinating and homework didn't always get done when it should.   What... what was I talking about?   Oh... yes having two jobs.   Some people do that and I'm assuming most people working two jobs do it because they need the money.  But only a few people really work two jobs and the numbers have been dropping.


The BLS article Multiple jobholding over the past two decades  has the data in graphic and table form.   You can go to their site to see specific dates if you want details.   But I've copied the graph from their site here so we can see the trend :

(click image for full size)

The rate has been going down mostly for the past 20 years.   The rate peaked at 6.8% in 1995 and was down to just 5% as of the end of 2013.   Doesn't seem like the recession had any substantial impact on the trend either.


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You CAN Make 6 Figures As A Welder (... if you work 80 hours a week)

While skimming the headlines this morning I saw this article from the Wall Street Journal :
The $140,000-a-year welding job

And I figured it was another one of those articles touting high paying jobs that don't really exist.   Or if they do exist are special cases.    But I had to read 2/3 into the article to find the real answer on this one and its simple, the welder in question Mr. Friend : "... typically works 72 hours a week" and "His base pay is more than $25 an hour..."

I think its a bit misleading to have a title for an article like that and then bury the detail that he works 72 hrs a week.     Thats like working 2 jobs.     Most people working hourly jobs with overtime can make a lot of money but few jobs have that kind of opportunity for overtime.  

Then theres also this little detail, his employer "sent Mr. Friend to work for a month on an oil project in Ghana".    People willing to travel can often find better compensation.  I don't know much of anything about Ghana but it doesn't appear to either much of a hot tourist destination nor a warzone.
  
Welding can be a pretty good job.   Its got pretty fair wages and it can be  in fairly high demand.   Overtime can be common as well.   So I don't fault the idea that welding can be a pretty well paid job, I think that the fact that you'd have tow work 72 hrs a week to get that $140,000 is very key and shouldn't be buried in the 2nd page of the article.

I think the real message of the article is that : If you work a ton of overtime then you can make good money.    But thats not news.

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Working at Amazon is Better than Being Homeless

I recently read this article : 'Being homeless is better than working for Amazon'

I"m sure that articles title is purposefully sensationalized to attract attention.    But no, sorry, working at Amazon isn't worse than being homeless. 

Points the article makes :
"Superb performance did not guarantee job security."
 Thats actually true at most jobs really.

" it would be six months before I could receive my first unemployment compensation check."
I don't know why.   Shouldn't take 6 months and thats not under the control of the employer.   Is there more to this story?  What?

" I “flew a sign,” street parlance for panhandling with a piece of cardboard: ... I went to my usual flying spots around Seattle and made more money per hour protesting Amazon with my sign than I did while I worked with them. ... I created carefully crafted signs with cardboard and a Sharpie and, just like that, I was making money again. Hundred-dollar hours became the norm, not the exception."

I bolded the bits above for emphasis.   What this woman is really doing is begging for money and getting apparently quite a lot of it in Seattle.    Thats not "being homeless" thats being a professional panhandler with a successful gimmick.
  
I think this is the actual story here:   Being a panhandler in Seattle who complains about Amazon is very lucrative.

I'm not saying that I think working in an Amazon warehouse is fun or that they treat their workers well.   I have no personal experience working in Amazon nor do I know anyone who does.   There have been several reports describing the working condition in their warehouses and it doesn't sound fun (see several links in this article).   A lot of that seems to be basically saying that working in an Amazon warehouse picking orders is a pretty crappy job.  Its hot or freezing, its boring, they have mandatory overtime or send you home when theres no work.  its exhausting tough work, they will fire you if you're late too many times, they demand performance quotas, etc.   A lot of that is not so much about Amazon but more the nature of the job of working in a warehouse picking orders.


The 3000+ reviews of Amazon on Glassdoor give it a 3.3 score which they put in the 'OK' category.   So Amazon as a whole doesn't seem to be either a great nor an awful place to work, but simply well... OK.      Its also important, I think, to note that a lot of the people in the warehouses seem to work for temp agencies rather than Amazon itself.   While Amazon is responsible for managing those temp agencies they aren't directly at fault for poor treatment of temp employees working for a third party.

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What Percent of College Students Work While in College?

I almost always had a part time job during college and I think most people I knew worked in college as well.   I remember one guy in the dorms who didn't work at all and his parents were paying for his college and giving him an allowance of some sort.   At least one other guy was an athlete on scholarship and he didn't have a job.  In fact I'm not even sure scholarship athletes are allowed to have jobs while on campus but thats beside the point.   One guy had a part time type job as a street musician of all things.   I don't think his roommate worked.    But overall most people I recall seemed to work. 

I found data at the Dept. of Education in their Digest of Education Statistics :
 Table 503.20. Percentage of college students 16 to 24 years old who were employed, by attendance status, hours worked per week, and control and level of institution: Selected years, October 1970 through 2012

As of 2012 : 41% of full time students are employed and 72% of part time students work.

The rates are very similar for 4 year public, 4 year private and 2 year public schools as follows :

	FT	PT
4 year public	41.0%	77.6%
4 year private	40.4%	84.4%
2 year public	41.2%	66.1%

Here's the history over time for all students :

As you can see in the past 10 years theres been a fair drop in the % of students working.   I'm guessing thats a result of the recent recession and the employment environment, but thats just me speculating.

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How Much Severence Can You Expect If You Lose Your Job?

If I lost my job my employer would pay me a severance package.   At least that is what they normally do.  There  is really no promise or guarantee that I'd get severance but whenever I've heard of other people losing their jobs they've gotten severance.    In the past the company has had some large lay offs and they shared tables to estimate the severance amount you would get.   The severance here works out to roughly 1 week of pay per year of service.

I went out to find data on how much severance companies usually pay.  I didn't find a lot of information but I did find a couple sources.
This AARP article Read This Before Accepting a Severance Offer claims that "Slightly less than 50 percent of employers provide some amount of severance pay to workers whose employment is terminated."
An article in the CNN Money Ask Annie column How Much Severance Pay Can You Expect? says: "about half of employers offering two weeks' salary for each year you've worked there. Slightly more than one in three pay one week's salary per year of service; and fewer than 20% offer less than a year's pay per year of service."

If I add both those pieces of data then I estimate the following rough approximation for how much employers pay out in severance. :

Of course this is based on two unattributed data sources and I don't know how accurate either is so it should be taken with a large grain of salt.

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Who's left the job market? Comparing 2007-2010 to 2010-2013

Recently Reuters ran this article : U.S. jobs market dropouts increasingly likely to stay out

And they had this nice bit of information : 

''According to economists who have analyzed Labor Department data, 6.6 million people exited the workforce from 2010 and 2013. About 61 percent of these dropouts were retirees, more than double the previous three years' share.

People dropping out because of disability accounted for 28 percent, also up significantly from 2007-2010. Of those remaining, 7 percent were heading to school, while the other 4 percent left for other reasons.

In contrast, between 2007 and 2010, retirees made up a quarter of the six million people who left the labor force, while 18 percent were classified as disabled. About 57 percent were either in school or otherwise on the sidelines.''

Lets look at that graphically :

and

Thats a pretty big shift.   

The more recent 3 years we can see that most of the people leaving are leaving for retirement.  Thats a demographic change we'd expect due to the baby boomers retiring.   Theres also a fair amount of people going into disability, and I assume many of them are baby boomers too.   Thats also a pretty expected trend.

Compared to the 07-10 period when most people left to go to school or 'other'.  Annoyingly the article doesn't break down the % of people who went to school versus other reasons and lumps them together.   But clearly that large of a drop in the labor pool for school or other is not explained by demographics and is not expected. 


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Employment - Population Ratio by State 2013

The full BLS doc : Table 2. Employment-population ratios of persons 16 years of age and over by region, division, and state, 2012-13 annual averages


The 10 states with the lowest rates are :

West Virginia	50.1%
Mississippi	52.0%
Alabama	53.1%
Arkansas	53.9%
New Mexico	54.1%
S. Carolina	54.4%
Arizona	54.6%
Michigan	55.0%
Tennessee	55.6%
Kentucky	55.7%

And the highest are :

N. Dakota	69.4%
Nebraska	69.2%
S. Dakota	67.2%
Minnesota	66.8%
Iowa	66.3%
New Hampshire	65.6%
Utah	65.6%
Vermont	65.5%
Wyoming	64.9%
Kansas	64.3%

Here's the full list of states alphabetically :

Alabama	53.1%
Alaska	63.4%
Arizona	54.6%
Arkansas	53.9%
California	57.0%
Colorado	63.2%
Connecticut	60.1%
D.C.	63.5%
Delaware	56.7%
Florida	55.8%
Georgia	57.9%
Hawaii	57.7%
Idaho	60.1%
Illinois	59.4%
Indiana	58.0%
Iowa	66.3%
Kansas	64.3%
Kentucky	55.7%
Louisiana	55.9%
Maine	60.9%
Maryland	63.0%
Massachusetts	60.1%
Michigan	55.0%
Minnesota	66.8%
Mississippi	52.0%
Missouri	60.1%
Montana	60.5%
N. Carolina	56.9%
N. Dakota	69.4%
Nebraska	69.2%
Nevada	57.2%
New Hampshire	65.6%
New Jersey	59.4%
New Mexico	54.1%
New York	56.8%
Ohio	59.0%
Oklahoma	58.8%
Oregon	56.7%
Pennsylvania	58.8%
Rhode Island	59.3%
S. Carolina	54.4%
S. Dakota	67.2%
Tennessee	55.6%
Texas	61.1%
Utah	65.6%
Vermont	65.5%
Virginia	62.7%
Washington	59.1%
West Virginia	50.1%
Wisconsin	63.6%
Wyoming	64.9%

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Work Stoppages from 1947 to 2013 - Nobody Goes On Strike Anymore

From the BLS recent information on Major Work Stoppages in 2013  

(click for full size)

You can see that the frequency of strikes was huge back in the 50's and 60's compared to nowadays.   And these are only the large strikes of 1000 or more people that lasted at least a full work shift or longer.    The # of stoppages peaked at 470 in 1952 and hit a low of just 5 in 2009.    In 2013 there were 13 strikes.   Every day or so there was a large strike back in the 50's but now its only about once a month.

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22% of People Work From Home

I thought this was an interesting data bit:     22% of people work from home.   

From the BLS :  Percent of employed persons who worked at home on an average workday

The 22% figure is just for people who have one job.  People with more than one job are more likely to work from home.

Its notable that for the people who work from home 56% of them are self employed.  

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The Probability of Becoming a Pro Athlete

Most people probably know that very few people end up with professional sports contracts.   Most people play sports as kids and very very few people end up as pro athletes.    But what are the actual probabilities? 

NCAA website has a page on it breaking down the total number of people who play sports in high school, in college and then in pro leagues.   The % of people who start in high school sports and then end up in pro sports are as follows :

Mens Basketball	0.03%
Womens Basketball	0.02%
Football	0.08%
Baseball	0.51%
Mens Ice Hockey	0.10%
Mens Soccer	0.03%

I'm actually surprised that baseball is that high.  But there are a lot of minor league teams and those jobs pay almost nothing.  So getting into 'pro' baseball via a minor league may not mean all that much.     Ice hockey is higher than most but there are not many kids who actually play ice hockey at the high school level since the facilities aren't as wide spread.   I think football is higher than basketball or soccer probably because the NFL teams have so many players on their rosters.

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OES Maps - Number of Jobs and Wages by State or MSA

Lets say you're starting or thinking of starting a career in a particular job and you are wondering how many jobs there are in your area or other parts of the country.   For example lets say you've read that petroleum engineering is a good job and you live in Hawaii.   Are you likely to get a petroleum engineering job in Hawaii?  Well no.   But where can you get such a job?  Where are the jobs?   Some occupations have ample jobs in every region and every state: elementary school teachers for example are employed everywhere in the nation.   However some jobs are mostly concentrated in certain states or even certain cities.     In addition to knowing where the jobs are you'll also likely want to know how much people get paid in different areas.

You can use the BLS' Occupational Employment Statistics maps to find out what states have the most jobs in a given occupation as well as find wage data for the jobs.

The map generator lets you pick a general occupation field, then a specific occupation and then show the employment, quotient or wages by state or MSA.

For example we can do so for Aerospace engineers :

Say for example you're an aspiring aerospace engineer, can you get a job in Wyoming or Idaho or Maine?  Not too likely.    But if you're interested in living in California or Washington then you can find a lot of jobs in those states.

Now it is also useful to drill one level deeper and look at metropolitan statistical areas  (MSA).   When we do that for Aerospace we see those jobs are really limited to certain cities :

If you want to find wages you can do that too.   Here's the wages for elementary school teachers by state :

If you go to the actual OES site and look at a map there you can get the specific numbers per state by hovering your mouse over an individual state.    For example if you want details on teacher wages in Wyoming you can see that :

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Are Employees Unskilled or Picky or are Employers Too Picky?

Notice :  this is a semi-rambling, venting and opinionated article.  Just giving you fair warning.

I ran across this article Why Millions of Job Openings Are Unfilled which seems to claim in general that many jobs aren't filled due to lack of skilled applicants.   They talk of "scores of employers practically begging for new hires to fill openings to no avail". I'm not sure if they realize that score means 20 and that scores means 40 or more.   So in relation to the USA economy thats a minuscule drop in the bucket. But thats OK I will set that nitpicking aside for now so I can get on to the bigger complaint.

Here's the bit I really wonder about...

They have this quote : 

"Another cause of the supply-demand imbalance is a persisting stigma towards blue-collar jobs. Many people simply believe that certain jobs are "beneath them" and simply aren't interested.

Krystal Wells, owner of Portland, Ore.-based cleaning service The Other Woman, recalls how difficult it has been to find good workers to join her staff.

"I have gone as far as contacting over 400 different individuals that I took the time to read their profiles to see if from what I read they would be a fit and custom pick the people who most fit this job to call," Wells said. "After all the people I contacted, I had one person that was interested and never showed up to the interview."

OK first of all they refer to "contacting over 400 different individuals" that she "took the time to read their profiles".    I"m not really clear whats going on there.    That sounds like she's skimming Linked-in or something looking for possible candidates.   Then she says she was looking to "custom pick the people who most fit this job to call".    It really sounds like this woman didn't put out a job ad but instead went browsing somewhere for people she might hire.  I don't know what she was looking at.  Theres no mention of where these profiles were.   I'm really confused.    Maybe she's reading the profiles of 400 applicants?    If she got 400 applicants then couldn't find someone to hire then that doesn't mean that people think the job is "beneath them" but instead means that there are literally 100's of people wanting that job.   But that doesn't match what they said, cause they are saying that many people think this job is beneath them.   So there must not be 400 applicants and so she's just browsing Linked in?    I'm confused.    If you want to hire someone you don't just go ask 400 strangers if they want to work at your company.  You post an ad to Craigslist or wherever and then sort the replies.   Pure and simple.


And the thing is that the woman is looking for people to clean houses.   I have to think that if you're looking to hire people to clean houses and you browse 400 profiles to look for the "custom fit" for the job that you *might* just be a little too picky about who you hire.    That sounds more like the job search process some Fortune 500 companies put into hiring their CEOs.

Of course there is no indication of what she wants to pay them and I have to wonder if its a minimum wage job.    I found the companies website and it doesn't list a wage and says the work is 25-30 hours with 1 week of vacation after a year and no mention of any other benefits.   I don't know, and its quite possible that she wants to pay handsomely.   But it doesn't say that anywhere.  It doesn't say "and I was going to pay $15/hr or $20/hr".    Sounds more like lowish pay with virtually no benefits and not even full time hours.     Now thats common enough for house cleaning work I'd guess, but its not really going to entice the best applicants.

I honestly doubt there are a lot of people who prefer to clean houses for a living.   Some people do enjoy that work and it can be a fine job for those who do it but I think most people really prefer other jobs if they can get them.    So yes I bet that most people aren't interested in such a job.    As an employer seeking to hire people for this work you have to understand that kind of thing.  You aren't going to get a line of 100 highly skilled people lined up with awesome resumes begging to work hard for relatively low wages.    Maybe I'm assuming too much here but the woman talks of reviewing 400 profiles (a lot of hunting) in order to get a "custom pick" for her job which sounds to me like someone who's really very particular and picky about who they want to hire.  As an employer its easier to be super picky when you have a ton of interested applicants but you don't have that luxury if there aren't as many interested people.     If you really do insist on being very particular about who you hire and only want to make sure you get the absolute best people then you really do have to pay more.   I see no mention of paying more and honestly I have to assume that the opposite is likely the case and I'm guessing its low pay.

You know what they could do to find fill that job opening?   Stop being so picky or pay more.   Its not that hard to figure out.

The article is looking at the number of unfilled jobs and trying to explain why they are unfilled.    A couple years ago I looked at that topic myself and I wrote :


Why 3.2 Million Unfilled Jobs Isn't as Big as It Sounds

Open jobs are a natural part of the work place turnover.    People come and go and jobs aren't filled immediately so there is always going to be a certain number of open jobs.   It normally takes a month or two to fill a job so there's always some empty jobs as they are emptied and filed on an ongoing basis.   

This is a simplistic way to look at it :   Is McDonalds hiring people right now?    Yes McDonalds is probably hiring.   Why is that?  Because someone is always in the process of leaving McDonalds because they have high turnover.   So that 'help wanted' sign at McDonalds does not mean that American workers  lack the skills to work at McDonalds.   Now lets just extend that idea across the entire economy and there will be naturally 2-3% of jobs open at any given time.   Its not an indication that workers are lacking the right skills.  

And actually the number of job openings goes up when times are better.  We had about 4 Million job openings back in 2007 when unemployment was under 5%.   It wasn't a problem back then.   Nobody was trying to claim there was a giant skills gap.    Its not really necessarily a problem now either.   You can't just magically fill 100% of the job openings immediately.  

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How Many DIscouraged Workers are There?

The labor force participation rate has dropped in recent years.    One theory to explain that is that "everybody just gave up trying to find a job" and became what the government labels a 'discouraged worker'.  

The BLS defines a discouraged worker is someone who : 

Persons not in the labor force who want and are available for a job and who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but who are not currently looking because they believe there are no jobs available or there are none for which they would qualify.

So they are NOT in the labor force and they gave up hunting for work after being unemployed.

I looked up the discouraged workers in the BLS Table A-16 and I got general labor force size and civilian noninstitutional population size from the query tool.

FIrst the % of the population that is discouraged workers:

FIrst we can clearly see that the % of the population that was in the 'discouraged' category clearly peaked after the recession.    It more than doubled.    However the net increase was till only about 0.3% of the population and thats not any kind of  giant shift in the labor situation.   Even if you took all those discouraged people and added them to the unemployment ranks then it would have only added 0.5% to the unemployment figures.

Second I'll point out that the number of discouraged workers bottomed out around 0.15% even during relatively low unemployment periods.   Theres always some discouraged workers.   I suspect that is due to evolving labor market and some occupations becoming obsolete or irrelevant.   Certain industries or fields may see higher rates of discouraged workers even while the rest of the population enjoys a good employment picture.

Now lets compare the % of the population that is currently discouraged versus the percent that is part of the labor force. 

I put those two axis in the same scale so you can see how the numbers compare.    As you can see the amount of discouraged workers does not vary as much as the percent of the population thats in the labor force.   From 2009 to 2012 we saw a drop of about 2% in the labor force participation rate.   During that same time the % of the population that was discouraged rose around 0.2%.  

Finally I'll show the labor force versus the sum of the labor force and the discouraged workers.  

So that red line is how the labor force would be if we had no discouraged workers.



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What Percent of College Students Work?

When I wrote the article College Enrollment versus Labor Force Participation for Age 18 to 24 I found some overlap between the percent of the population that is enrolled in college and the percent that is in the labor force.   It seemed obvious that was due to some people doing both.   But how many college students actually do work?

A commenter, Middle Molly, pointed me to the answer at the BLS table : 
Employment Status of 16-24 year olds by school enrollment and educational attainment.

It shows the break down of students versus labor force status.   Its only a snapshot for April 2013 and I don't see historical info.  

Here is how the full time student population looks :

I'm actually a bit surprised that more students don't work.  But I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  If I think back to my college days there were quite a few students that did not work at all.  Part time jobs were pretty common but it was just as common to not work at all.    Very few people work full time will enrolled in college full time and I'm not surprised by that.

This is for April and I'd expect that if you took the snapshot in July that you'd see higher percent working.   Though I'm not sure if they count students on summer break as enrolled or not, I'd assume so. 

About 85% of students are full time and 15% are just part time.   I'd be surprised if the part timers didn't work more and I wasn't let down.   Here's how it looks for part time students :

Very few part time students aren't in the labor force.  



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