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...I have noticed that the pay for what's out there is low even in HCOLAs. I am talking jobs I did 20-25 years ago paying the same or less than what I made 20-25 years ago.
...
I said this exact thing in another forum. The type of job I had 23 years ago is paying LESS now than what I made when I was starting out in that type of job. Worse, even those 'with experience' are being paid less NOW than I was 23. years. ago. starting out!
How are people not seeing this as a big problem? How do you reduce the pay to make it less than it was over 2 decades ago?
My pay back then was a good $5 per hour over the minimum wage at the time. Not stellar, but starting out, no experience, and I made more back then than those who would be starting out, today? And some people don't see an issue with that?
Really!?
I also look for and apply for jobs that I would love to do, since I do have a job right now. Just like you do. These companies will have openings, it will be on their website what positions are open. Some of those jobs have been sitting there for months. I apply.
Not a word. No contact at all. Absolutely nothing.
Go back to the website a month later, the job is still sitting there, and I'm definitely qualified to do the job.
It's not just happening to you or me, it's happening to a LOT of people. So much so that people on social media are making videos mocking it. Fully qualified, job not filled for a long time, and still not being hired.
Oh, look, there's all of these jobs available! Yet no one wants to actually hire anyone for the jobs.
Makes you wonder...but this is not the appropriate forum for me to say what I want to say about that.
I said this exact thing in another forum. The type of job I had 23 years ago is paying LESS now than what I made when I was starting out in that type of job. Worse, even those 'with experience' are being paid less NOW than I was 23. years. ago. starting out!
How are people not seeing this as a big problem? How do you reduce the pay to make it less than it was over 2 decades ago?
My pay back then was a good $5 per hour over the minimum wage at the time. Not stellar, but starting out, no experience, and I made more back then than those who would be starting out, today? And some people don't see an issue with that?
Really!?
I also look for and apply for jobs that I would love to do, since I do have a job right now. Just like you do. These companies will have openings, it will be on their website what positions are open. Some of those jobs have been sitting there for months. I apply.
Not a word. No contact at all. Absolutely nothing.
Go back to the website a month later, the job is still sitting there, and I'm definitely qualified to do the job.
It's not just happening to you or me, it's happening to a LOT of people. So much so that people on social media are making videos mocking it. Fully qualified, job not filled for a long time, and still not being hired.
Oh, look, there's all of these jobs available! Yet no one wants to actually hire anyone for the jobs.
Makes you wonder...but this is not the appropriate forum for me to say what I want to say about that.
Thank you for sharing! A huge thank you. I was starting to wonder if it's me. If I was going crazy or something. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is gaslighting you. "There are plenty of jobs!" they say.
I don't think people who aren't actually applying and looking understand the new dynamic. The do a search and see thousands listed in their area, but those initial searches don't reflect the reality once you apply. That's why I posted this. It's like there is something going on, under the surface, that is akin to the unemployment of the 1970s... combined with inflation. It's like a new type of economic stagnation is forming... but it's slowly creeping in on us. First, though skrinkflation which hides inflation. And now this, which hides unemployment.
There is something rotten in Denmark. There "are" a lot of jobs out there, I see them when I search too, but at the same time, people are struggling to find work. It's a weird paradox. And again, this isn't about my own job search. I am not doing everything I can because I am being picky. But I am just happy that I am looking now, while I have a job vs being out of work and looking out of necessity.
"Aside from the depths of the pandemic lockdowns, US employers are extending job offers at the lowest level since 2014, Daniel Zhao, a lead economist at Glassdoor, told BI."
And that article, like the other one I posted, peppered with people who can't find work. And we aren't talking people with no skills or weird degrees or lazy teens who don't want to work at a McJob. The first one is a special ed teacher, there is a pharmacist, and a Navy vet with an MBA who's applied to 1200 jobs.
I said this exact thing in another forum. The type of job I had 23 years ago is paying LESS now than what I made when I was starting out in that type of job. Worse, even those 'with experience' are being paid less NOW than I was 23. years. ago. starting out!
How are people not seeing this as a big problem? How do you reduce the pay to make it less than it was over 2 decades ago?
My pay back then was a good $5 per hour over the minimum wage at the time. Not stellar, but starting out, no experience, and I made more back then than those who would be starting out, today? And some people don't see an issue with that?
Really!?
I also look for and apply for jobs that I would love to do, since I do have a job right now. Just like you do. These companies will have openings, it will be on their website what positions are open. Some of those jobs have been sitting there for months. I apply.
Not a word. No contact at all. Absolutely nothing.
Go back to the website a month later, the job is still sitting there, and I'm definitely qualified to do the job.
It's not just happening to you or me, it's happening to a LOT of people. So much so that people on social media are making videos mocking it. Fully qualified, job not filled for a long time, and still not being hired.
Oh, look, there's all of these jobs available! Yet no one wants to actually hire anyone for the jobs.
Makes you wonder...but this is not the appropriate forum for me to say what I want to say about that.
In my exp the job hunt is insanity. I have a very specific set of skills in a very narrow field. When you read about my feild, it’s in a massive demographic crisis of retirees and increasing complexity. Yet, here I sit with more than a decade of the most in demand subset of the feild and I’ve been looking for a job for over a year.
You will go through resume uploads, iq tests/other tests that take hours, multiple rounds of interviews, then it goes cold and you hear nothing. I’ve literally had jobs where you interview for 6 hour sessions and meet the vp and then you get ghosted. I’m in 3 such scenarios now. Ones on a 4th round of interview, waiting to hear back. One is potentially in a third round. Another is on about round 10 as they’ve been creating a role for me for over a year with the incoming retirement crisis and we need mid career folks like you. I had a 6 hour office interview, lunch, and probably 5 other conversations with the departments senior leadership. I have another follow up next week to see if anything can happen. At least this conversation has continued instead of being ghosted. I don’t really understand the ghosting that happens for higher level positions that you’re investing like 12-20 hours in and then it just goes cold after you hear positive feedback.
It’s wild.
I used to arrogantly think I could find a new job as easily as management thinks they can replace me. And I was wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
I think the job postings that aren't hiring is a combination of
Sometimes companies put a job posting to feel out how big a pool of candidates they can access in order to determine pay raises for current employees.
Sometimes companies fill the job and just don't remove the listing.
Sometimes they set auto filters so tight that only candidates that meet very specific criteria are looked at. Sometimes that can even include specific key words they are looking for.
On a bigger picture, for sure all the jobs created in the last 3 years have gone entirely to illegal and legal immigrants. This has a down up effect where employees are filling jobs for less pay.
AI is going to create a huge disruption in the coming years. Any job that requires ingesting large amounts of data is going to be filled by AI. They already have AI doing better than most people at many jobs. They are really close to AGI (if they haven't already reached it) and once that happens the ability of AI especially when mated with a robot and the latest Nvidia chipsets....I can't think of job hardly that AI can't replace. With the collaboration between Google, Amazon, OpenAi and Nvidia recently announced to create that very product, I think our entire lifes are going to change closer to 5 years than 10.
Job hunting is in some ways like house hunting. In real estate, the three key words are location, location, location. In jobs, the three key words are skills, skills, skills. There are certain job fields in high demand, others not so much.
I worked nearly 40 years in telecommunications, most of the time as a telecom network engineer. My last decade or so was mainly focused on installation and activation of dense wavelength division multiplexing systems, which are essential in carrying the bulk of the global high speed data and telecom network traffic using fiber optic cables as the transport medium. I've been retired over 6 years, and still get occasional offers to come back to work on contract for a certain big project. The pay now is at least 50 percent more than what I was making 6+ years ago (which was about $130K per year). A person with strong skills and background in telecom network engineering can find a job almost instantly in almost any place in the world. The beauty is the technology is very similar world-wide, and although the capacity has increased, the methods of network equipment installation and activation have not changed that much.
Mine was a "hands-on" engineering job, which required physical presence to lay out the job details and requirements. Sorry, can't "outsource" that to some far away land for a fraction of the cost. These days, technology companies will outsource anything and everything that doesn't need physical presence, which is why many with a "work from home" job have set themselves up to be outsourced.
The job market evolves and most people do not. Those with evolving and growing skill sets get hired for lots of money through job moves. Those who don't evolve and don't grow their skill sets often are the ones who get left in the unemployed, often during these efficiency layoffs. While I can't overgeneralize too much, this underlies almost all the issues in the job market. The people who claim there are no jobs or can't get hired are often chasing a job similar to what they had before and at the same or better pay. To worsen the problem, they see what they believe are peers getting more money and more responsibility. The peers though are that subset of those growing and evolving. This problem upsets many even more when they realize the reason behind the mantra its easier to get a job when you have one. If you aren't getting yourselves into that coveted group and moving around the job market on occasion you really are hoping to get lucky in many cases.
Same thing for the bottom of the market. Too many workers see those as a job, a duty to perform to get the money I need. They don't see the need to build skill sets and to make themselves employable in higher level jobs. Retail and other companies who dominate this level of work will gladly pay you double or more what you make at entry level if you actually give them something more than your presence and your labor. Do something with skill that adds value and almost every employer will pay you more and try to keep you around. Those immigrants some complain take all the jobs often have little chance or desire to evolve or grow with the job, they are just happy to take the entry level work and keep it. So why not find a job you have enough interest in that you want to get better and move up in? For many at the bottom levels, they will take a job because it pays a dollar more or is 5 minutes closer to home instead of thinking what can I do with this opportunity.
I said this exact thing in another forum. The type of job I had 23 years ago is paying LESS now than what I made when I was starting out in that type of job. Worse, even those 'with experience' are being paid less NOW than I was 23. years. ago. starting out!
How are people not seeing this as a big problem? How do you reduce the pay to make it less than it was over 2 decades ago?
My pay back then was a good $5 per hour over the minimum wage at the time. Not stellar, but starting out, no experience, and I made more back then than those who would be starting out, today? And some people don't see an issue with that?
Really!?
I also look for and apply for jobs that I would love to do, since I do have a job right now. Just like you do. These companies will have openings, it will be on their website what positions are open. Some of those jobs have been sitting there for months. I apply.
Not a word. No contact at all. Absolutely nothing.
Go back to the website a month later, the job is still sitting there, and I'm definitely qualified to do the job.
It's not just happening to you or me, it's happening to a LOT of people. So much so that people on social media are making videos mocking it. Fully qualified, job not filled for a long time, and still not being hired.
Oh, look, there's all of these jobs available! Yet no one wants to actually hire anyone for the jobs.
Makes you wonder...but this is not the appropriate forum for me to say what I want to say about that.
I worked as an IT contractor at a Fortune 500 a decade ago. Pay was $12.80/hr. back then. Pay is $13/hr. now. You could make more in a grocery store.
Just to reiterate, I am not looking for job hunting advice. I've only applied to a handful of places (maybe one a month at best) myself and am not worried because I have a job. I am hyper focused on just places that offer at least what I am making now, have growth potential (AI/offshoring won't replace easily), and seem like they are places I would love working. I could do a lot more/be a lot more aggressive in my searching but I am being picky because I can afford to be picky. I brought up my searching only because it's why I am noticing things.
This topic is just something I started thinking about mainly because I have friends who are struggling to find work. And because, as I've been looking, I've noticed the pay for most jobs is absurdly low for the times (same salaries as 20-25 years ago). There are lots of jobs out there, if you want to work in the 2024 economy at 1999 wages. I see jobs out there that were my out of college starter jobs offering exactly what I used to make way back when. It just seems like something is off.
For what it's worth, those friends looking for work include two that live in the DC metro area and one who lives in New Jersey, near Philly. They've been applying to hundreds of jobs each and those are highly populated areas. And because it was brought up, technically, one of them is an immigrant. He's a US citizen now, but he is from Bandladesh originally. I think it's actually hurting him. He's an IT guy and really smart, but his English isn't the best.
The people in the article I shared have also been looking and applying to hundreds of jobs. Some have moved to different cities and, at the end, one woman who was laid off, after applying to hundreds of jobs took one that was a big paycut for her because she needed work.
I can speak on the Philly/South Jersey area because I am from that area but moved to North Jersey to work in NYC. The market, generally speaking, hasn't opened up in terms of high paying jobs since the late 90's. When I say high paying jobs, I mean 100k plus. At the time I moved away, I was looking for positions in the MD/DC area but couldn't find a comparable position that wanted to pay me the commensurate salary at the time. I found it in NYC. Even in NYC, everyone is chasing that brass ring and ageism is real. So far, I am making out but there is always someone nipping at your heels. Oh, btw, I am in the design field. So back to the OP, it's competition, ageism, immigrants, etc. that is helping employers depress wages. One anecdote I will share. This guy just got hired in my organization this week. He was a contractor but they finally hired him fulltime after more than 6 months "consulting". Come to find out he took a 10k pay cut for him to come in as FTE. He shouldn't have accepted it but they sold him a bag of goods of how great the benefits are, yada, yada and that is part of his compensation.
I'm looking at the external jobs site for a large Silicon Valley tech company, and it lists over 2000 job openings open to external hires including experienced hires, interns, trainees, and new college hires, including
GPU Architect
CPU Physical Design Engineer
IC Diagnostics Engineer
Design for Test (DFT) Engineer
Pre-Silicon Verification Engineer
Analog Engineer
System Modeling Engineer for HSIO IPs
GPU Software Design Engineer
Director, IT Infrastructure
Logic Design Methodology Engineer
Pre-Silicon Design Verification Manager
IP Logic Design Engineer
Product Development Engineer
System Validation Engineer
Senior DFT Engineer
Development Tools Software Engineer
Ethernet Hardware Product Applications Engineer
EDA Tools Hardware Engineer
Component Debug Solutions Thermal Engineer
IT Auditor
Account Executive
SoC DFx Pre-Silicon Verification Engineer
Layout Engineer
Product Marketing Engineer
Technical Marketing Engineer
Senior NM DMO Rapid Thermal Anneal Engineer
Product Support Engineer
Product Packaging Engineer
The list goes on and on and on and on...
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