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Need a job....5.8 million job openings

The only statement you made above that doesn't also apply to an accounting clerk is the title "accountant".

Wrong. The salary, according to the OP, is adequate for an ACCOUNTANT

35-40k starting for a basic staff accountant is lousy pay?

Why is the OP paying an accounting clerk a salary he believes is suitable for a more highly skilled accountant? Is he running a welfare office?
 
How much would you wager? Out of 5,757,000 job openings, 696,000 (12%) were Accommodation and Food Service.
The most openings were in Professional and Business Services: 1,225,000 openings (21%)
Health Care had 960,000 openings.
Table 1. Job openings levels and rates by industry and region, seasonally adjusted

Profession and business services = outside or b to b sales, which are increasingly becoming "McJobs", due to companies over staffing commissioned positions. Google it if you don't believe me.
 
Cry me a river, seriously. If all that you have to offer an employer is unskilled labor that's what you're going to get. Don't like it? Learn some marketable skills or get a degree. We are drowning in our own unskilled labor pool. If you don't want to go through the "hassle" of the employment process for a "s***y" job, step aside, there's lots of people behind you that'll happily endure the "hassle" for an opportunity to work.

Trying to apply micro solutions to macro problems is a mistake.
 
Profession and business services = outside or b to b sales,
No, it doesn't. Under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), Professional and Business Services is a super sector that includes three industry sectors Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, Management of companies, and Administration, Support, and Waste Management and Remediation services.

Note that the job openings are by Industry, not occupation. Some of the jobs are low level janitorial jobs, and others are lawyers, engineers, architects etc.

Not a lot of sales positions.
 
the $15/hr socialist movement is similarly ignorant because $15/hr won't begin to pay the rent in socal or manhattan, while it's pretty damn excessive in say rural michigan (300-400/mo rent). Then there's benefits...i bet a lot of companies would just dump those entirely to meet the 15/hr, so get ready for insane deductibles and PTO instead

I got a surprise job offer a few weeks ago out of nowhere. I started last Monday, grossed over $900 my first week with 1 day short because it snowed, snowing here right now as a matter of fact.. Comes with blue cross medical dental vision etc..

In rural northern Michigan, more than $15 an hour starting pay, great people, great equipment, home base is about 6 miles away from home, travel all over on the clock in the company truck.

I love it, it's the best job ever, I'm very thankful and feel appreciated there..

RENT: I charge my tenant less than that but he is responsible for all the maintenance and upkeep on the place so when stuff fails, like the hot water heater or plumbing, it's not my problem. It pays the property taxes on both of my places plus some. Works out pretty well..
 
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I got a surprise job offer a few weeks ago out of nowhere. I started last Monday, grossed over $900 my first week with 1 day short because it snowed, snowing here right now as a matter of fact.. Comes with blue cross medical dental vision etc..

In rural northern Michigan, more than $15 an hour starting pay, great people, great equipment, home base is about 6 miles away from home, travel all over on the clock in the company truck.

I love it, it's the best job ever, I'm very thankful and feel appreciated there..

RENT: I charge my tenant less than that but he is responsible for all the maintenance and upkeep on the place so when stuff fails, like the hot water heater or plumbing, it's not my problem. It pays the property taxes on both of my places plus some. Works out pretty well..

I would hope they are paying you well if you are living somewhere that it still snows in May.
 
No, it doesn't. Under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), Professional and Business Services is a super sector that includes three industry sectors Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, Management of companies, and Administration, Support, and Waste Management and Remediation services.

Note that the job openings are by Industry, not occupation. Some of the jobs are low level janitorial jobs, and others are lawyers, engineers, architects etc.

Not a lot of sales positions.
Are they basing this off of job title, or description? Because job titles today are very missleading, intentionally so.
 
Are they basing this off of job title, or description? Because job titles today are very missleading, intentionally so.
Industry. All companies are classified into an industry. The Job Openings Labor Turnover Survey samples companies and asks how many job openings they had on the last day of the month.

So it's not useful at knowing what specific jobs are needed, but only good as a macroeconomic look at industry activity.
 
The last time I tried to hire someone I got tons of resumes but 99.99% of them sucked.

If you want a job you should -
1. Be able to spell, punctuate and write in complete sentences.
2. Provide contact information that isn't "JoeyzaPimp@gmail.com" (yeah, that was one of them)
3. Answer your phone if I call.
4. Be on time for an interview.
5. Have had less than 20 jobs in the last year.
6. Have at least one or two verifiable references that aren't relatives or parole officers.
7. Show some kind of evidence that you understand and are capable of learning the job you're applying for.
8. Refrain from telling your potential employer that you already know his or her business better than they do.
9. Be able to explain at least one thing of value you can bring to the table.

Just a couple questions for you. Why do you need references? I have always wondered about that requirement. I find it pretty much pointless. Also do accept resumes or do you have people fill out an application regardless if they have a resume. Note I am self employed and employ contractors so I have no employees so am used to dealing with business owners and try and have succeeded in avoiding employees so far. I ask these questions out of curiosity from my previous stent as an employee and all of the various hoops I have had to jump through before obtaining a job. Note last time I was an employee was about 2005.

Honestly, references are pointless, nobody is going to write down someone that they know will say bad things about them. I look at it as a holdover from an earlier time. Today, if you provide work references, they are restricted by law to what they can say and most of them can't say anything, they can just give the number to HR for an official comment.

If you work in a referral-based business or in sales, references can provide a point of contact to determine how effective someone is in their current position. I'm interviewing with a major company in the financial services industry. I understand that they need to know that I can effectively sell myself and I make successful companies a profit.

However, references are completely useless in nearly any other industry. It's a waste of time. If you're not willing to spend the time training and developing a new hire, don't bother reading the resume, interviewing them and hiring them. The hiring process can be significantly streamlined at any point.

Quite frankly, I see HR as a nightmare. Does anyone expect hiring decisions to be adequately based on an interview or references to which you don't personally refer? Impersonal internal gossip is fluff when it comes to choosing talent. Really high quality HR is probably indispensable, but how many administrators does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Much of what HR used to do can be boiled down to an application from a potential hire. Parsed their data from the resume submitted via an online form? Not only do you have information on the person, but unless it is a spam resume, you have automated collecting data for your prototypical hire to set the bar. Regardless of whether you hire someone, the data on their resume is worth way more than a reference.
 
If you work in a referral-based business or in sales, references can provide a point of contact to determine how effective someone is in their current position. I'm interviewing with a major company in the financial services industry. I understand that they need to know that I can effectively sell myself and I make successful companies a profit.

The point being that if you're going to put down former employers or friends, you're not going to list them unless you already know they're going to say good things about you. And for employers, they are usually restricted in what they're allowed to say about you. Most of the time all they can tell anyone is that you worked there, that you made a certain amount of money and whether or not you're rehireable. That's it. The people who worked with you directly can't even say that, all they can do is refer you to HR to parrot the company line. It opens the company up to too many lawsuits to say anything more than the limited amount the law specifically allows.

When I'm hiring, I don't even look at references. I don't call them. They mean nothing and can't tell you anything worthwhile.
 
The point being that if you're going to put down former employers or friends, you're not going to list them unless you already know they're going to say good things about you. And for employers, they are usually restricted in what they're allowed to say about you. Most of the time all they can tell anyone is that you worked there, that you made a certain amount of money and whether or not you're rehireable. That's it. The people who worked with you directly can't even say that, all they can do is refer you to HR to parrot the company line. It opens the company up to too many lawsuits to say anything more than the limited amount the law specifically allows.

When I'm hiring, I don't even look at references. I don't call them. They mean nothing and can't tell you anything worthwhile.

It just doesn't make sense that a bad reference would bar someone from employment. Look at how much flak candidates seeking public office are getting this year alone. Even felony conviction doesn't necessarily bar you from working in certain industries. Because we would rather have felons not commit felonies, we provide them with resources to do other things like install swimming pools in their backyard. You might call it a gang of thieves.
 
The growing debate is how much of this is a skills gap issue from education and experience vs. unrealistic expectations issue of those posting these "openings" they cannot fill.

I am sure it is some combination of the two greatly skewed by the profession in question, but I am unsure what to give the most weight to in a general sense. Because of that concern it is a real unknown if federal grant based intern programs or similar incentives will accomplish all that much.

I don't know about all the postings listed, but Walmart, Lowes, etc all have openings, no experience or education required. They just cannot find enough people who can pass a drug test.
 
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf

Job openings were little changed at 5.8 million in March. The job openings rate was 3.9 percent. The
number of job openings was little changed in March for total private and edged up for government. Job
openings increased in professional and business services (+124,000), transportation, warehousing, and
utilities (+35,000), and nondurable goods manufacturing (+29,000). Job openings decreased in retail
trade (-80,000), educational services (-36,000), and wholesale trade (-35,000). The number of job
openings was little changed in all four regions. (See table 1.)

table 2 shows where the job openings are

most are in the private sector....and no sector is largely in fron

government makes up only a small part of the jobs out there
 
I don't know about all the postings listed, but Walmart, Lowes, etc all have openings, no experience or education required. They just cannot find enough people who can pass a drug test.

:peace
 
True, we have one of the most backward health care systems in the world. This is one of the reasons are costs are so much higher than the rest of the world. There is almost no sharing of electronic information between health care practitioners. One of the most impressive things about the Kaiser system is their level of automation....

Yes, I recently had some minor health issue that the physician managed to turn into a big health issue that's chronic and may eventually get me. I'm considering malpractice unfortunately. Outright dangerously dumb physician, in his specialty, and it wasn't one error, it was as most big issues are, multiple compounded errors, all of which are fairly trivial in complexity. He's still in denial, it was really sad and really sad to realize he wasn't going to admit he was wrong.

I swear to ****ing god it makes me crazy angry. I get better data on stock picks than I get from my physician on my LIFE. It's dumb as dumb can get.
 
Yes, I recently had some minor health issue that the physician managed to turn into a big health issue that's chronic and may eventually get me. I'm considering malpractice unfortunately. Outright dangerously dumb physician, in his specialty, and it wasn't one error, it was as most big issues are, multiple compounded errors, all of which are fairly trivial in complexity. He's still in denial, it was really sad and really sad to realize he wasn't going to admit he was wrong.

I swear to ****ing god it makes me crazy angry. I get better data on stock picks than I get from my physician on my LIFE. It's dumb as dumb can get.

That sounds like a personal issue... Do you think teachers should be held accountable for making problem students advance in school?
 
That sounds like a personal issue... Do you think teachers should be held accountable for making problem students advance in school?
Referring to issues as "personal" or more accurately I assume as "isolated issues", is scapegoating by another name. Teachers Unions are pros at that no doubt. Not uncommon in politics, government, corrupt public systems, etc. (in any nation, in any time in history mind you). Hell, my daughter at age 5, 20 yards away from me falls off her bike, turns around and blames me. Finger pointing is an animal behavior.

In reality, most complex systems like these two (health care and education), have few really "isolated" issues, its relative. Even if it were an actual personal issue, in the aggregate many people make the same errors, for the same reasons, all of which like ANY OTHER ERROR can be detected, evaluated, reduced or avoided, etc. largely through changes to systems (procedures, methodology, etc.)

Think about good managers/leaders, when someone under them screws up, is it best practice to put 100% of the issue on the person that made the error? Or do the leaders/managers responsible for the overall outcome...the leaders who also managed the interviews, recruiting, selection process, the training, the checking, etc., share some of that responsibility? In a corrupt system, I agree, we do tend to let them get away with scapegoating, shame on those who let that slide.

It is trivial to design a system where one persons "isolated error" can be avoiding by designing a better system. Bringing some of our ancient systems into the modern era will happen, its just that for those that recognize it today, it can be frustrating, even deadly, that it doesn't move faster.

Even your appeal to teachers shares that same issue. Teachers are not the only ones accountable for poor education outcomes. But sharing in that accountability is of course the case, denying it continues to be absurd. In my case, I shopped until I found what I consider to be an excellent teacher. Sure my child has some responsibility for the outcome, sure the teacher, but the parent does too. Yet it goes without saying that if the entire education system were far more advanced (constant reform/improvement like the rest of our economy), all else equal education outcomes can improve.

Similarly, with a dramatically improved healthcare system, the same physicians who may make stupid errors that cost people their health and/or life, may enjoy reduced errors with minor tweaks to the way they work (perhaps even working less...)
 
Think about good managers/leaders, when someone under them screws up, is it best practice to put 100% of the issue on the person that made the error? Or do the leaders/managers responsible for the overall outcome...the leaders who also managed the interviews, recruiting, selection process, the training, the checking, etc., share some of that responsibility? In a corrupt system, I agree, we do tend to let them get away with scapegoating, shame on those who let that slide.

It's best practice for people to be held accountable for their actions in business. Unfortunately some managers use business itself as justification for ruining people's lives or scapegoating. It works both ways, too. The thing about business is that it tends to have a well defined hierarchy, and chain of command, so people within the organization typically know if there is wrongdoing. Sadly, there are businessmen and businesswomen who will turn you out on the street if they think their "bottom line" is threatened.

In political terms, fascism is a very efficient system. So what if we make sacrifices for speed if it means making sure our population is diverse? Just because the best kind of pavement is uniformly steamrolled doesn't mean our society should be running educational or healthcare processes like vehicles on a highway.
 
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