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The best part of this one is enough free time for 20k posts on this forum, but always an excuse why no time to develop a more marketable skill.
It took me a moment to understand what you are trying to say. If your post is directed at J T, then I agree, but at least some of the helpful people on here are retired and that's why they have so much time. You have to weed through the people who pretend or are wannabe experts. But there are a lot of people on here who obviously know what they are talking about.
Yeah, there are a few people that are how you're talking about, but I doubt they are even a significant percentage of the unemployed.
The drug use is a problem, but how many serious drug users are even seeking employment? IMO, if you're doing anything other than smoking pot, you're probably not going to be reliable enough for most jobs anyway. If you enjoy smoking pot, stop and in a few weeks it'll be gone from most urine tests.
Background check - same story. People with significant legal issues are not likely to even be looking for legitimate employment. I have several old friends who have been in and out of the legal system - none have ever gainfully employed to my knowledge.
Credit check? People can have credit problems for any number of reasons, some which they're not at fault for. It makes for an easy cull, but excluding those with poor credit makes it harder for their credit to get healthy again.
Most of the people with the problems you're talking about are a part of the underclass, those not really seeking employment.
Not really.
The DUI arrest rate in the United States is 1 in 144 drivers. That's per year. If you look back 7 years, about 5% of drivers have a DUI arrest. That includes doctors, lawyers, engineers, .... It's not just poor, unemployable people with DUI arrests. If you're really poor and are unemployable, you don't have a car. Alcoholics litter the corporate workplace. No former employer is going to disclose an alcohol problem in a reference check even if the employee was terminated for showing up drunk all the time. The lawsuit risk is simply too great.
Opiate addiction also crosses socioeconomic boundaries. There is a pretty lengthy list of celebrities with Oxycontin problems. The difference is the affluent people haven't needed to resort to less expensive heroin.
Most people have bad credit because they lack self discipline. If you have good self discipline and don't have maxed credit cards while you're working, it's not catastrophic if you become unemployed. You live off an unemployment check and supplement with savings. Why would I want to hire someone who lacks self discipline? I have 10 other applicants with good credit ratings. Next.
exactly , today an employer does not want to play detective and have to decide who's credit issues are beyond their control . most of the time it is a history of poor choices and bad decisions along the way leading up to the event that does you in . rarely is it one even since most of us experience illness-divorce or job loss at some point of our lives .
The DUI arrest rate in the United States is 1 in 144 drivers. That's per year. If you look back 7 years, about 5% of drivers have a DUI arrest. That includes doctors, lawyers, engineers, .... It's not just poor, unemployable people with DUI arrests. If you're really poor and are unemployable, you don't have a car. Alcoholics litter the corporate workplace. No former employer is going to disclose an alcohol problem in a reference check even if the employee was terminated for showing up drunk all the time. The lawsuit risk is simply too great.
Opiate addiction also crosses socioeconomic boundaries. There is a pretty lengthy list of celebrities with Oxycontin problems. The difference is the affluent people haven't needed to resort to less expensive heroin.
Most people have bad credit because they lack self discipline. If you have good self discipline and don't have maxed credit cards while you're working, it's not catastrophic if you become unemployed. You live off an unemployment check and supplement with savings. Why would I want to hire someone who lacks self discipline? I have 10 other applicants with good credit ratings. Next.
There are some positions where a misdemeanor, first time DUI or other nonviolent misdemeanor would bar you from employment. Many, however, would disregard one offense, especially if it's a long way back, or it would not be significantly important if the candidate was otherwise strong and the DUI wasn't a "tiebreaker." If it was a violent offense, something financial, or a sexual crime, that's going to carry more weight than DUI or simple possession.
The guy showing up drunk would be terminated for misconduct, and possibly arrested for public drunkenness. The former employer would likely say the person wasn't eligible for rehire. Even if they didn't go into details, that would be enough to dissuade a future employer.
You can find basic transportation for $2,000. That shouldn't be a high bar to get over.
Of course you're going to have some subset of all socioeconomic categories impacted by substance issues. Still, I'd wager the more serious the substance abuse problem is, the less you're interested in/able to work, thus decreasing odds of employment. That's not even counting the costs of the substances themselves, or the increased likelihood of an addict doing something illegal to keep the habit rolling.
You're not wrong on the whole but I don't feel the unemployed have personal problems to the degree you think they do. That doesn't mean they're making good decisions, or even thinking things through well, but that doesn't mean the majority are addicts, criminals, etc.
by the same token there are those that are un-employable not because of jobs but because 84% of employers do pre-screening and they can't pass a drug test , a background check , a credit check etc, and are counted as unemployed .
we had applicants tell us they want 20 bucks an hour for menial jobs because that is what their unemployment check and working off the books at the deli gives them .
the numbers are skewed both ways , calling folks who are just unemployable unemployed and eluding to the fact there are no jobs which isn't true , as well as the points you raised
i have seen first hand how many get shut out by the pre-screening today . especially drug use . .
many unemployed are the rejects company's got rid of in the great cleansing and no one wants them at this stage .
so don't think for one second that if someone is unemployed it means there are no jobs or decent jobs available . many times there are , but not for them .
the company i retired from has lots of jobs and few suitable applicants
We can't have an economy where only the top 5%-10% (at most) are employable. It's a quick track toward civil unrest. Trying to push everyone, even only that top 5% or so, into innovative tech companies is quickly going to oversaturate their candidate pool.
That's partially true. We do have an economy where the generally brightest 10% are employable at the highest levels, and they are currently so employed. Additionally, 25% of the population is employed in government jobs at all levels. Then there is a successfully self-employed class, covering an additional 10% of US households. Plus there is a big group of high-achieving people, say 15% of households, who were not A students, but they work twice as hard and are truly valued by employers.
You can see the math to 60% fairly quickly. The remainder of households are struggling -- minimum wagers, hourly grunts, day laborers and the criminal underclass. But some of those strugglers expect (either because of aspirational propaganda or _because they once were part of the succeeding classes_ perhaps as children or in a golden past) that times will change and that the future will improve. Real hopelessness is less than 20% of households in the US, admittedly a horrific number. Even at the nadir of the second Great Depression downturn, 1937, which took the wind out of many sails, hopelessness in the US did not exceed 30%.
Civil unrest is unlikely when a majority of households are succeeding rather than struggling. I would suggest hopelessness would need to get to 70%+ (Russia, 1917) before US society would break down. Too many people are deeply invested in _children_ (read: hopes and dreams), homes, careers, schools, friends, sports, etc.
by the same token there are those that are un-employable not because of jobs but because 84% of employers do pre-screening and they can't pass a drug test , a background check , a credit check etc, and are counted as unemployed .
we had applicants tell us they want 20 bucks an hour for menial jobs because that is what their unemployment check and working off the books at the deli gives them .
the numbers are skewed both ways , calling folks who are just unemployable unemployed and eluding to the fact there are no jobs which isn't true , as well as the points you raised
i have seen first hand how many get shut out by the pre-screening today . especially drug use . .
many unemployed are the rejects company's got rid of in the great cleansing and no one wants them at this stage .
so don't think for one second that if someone is unemployed it means there are no jobs or decent jobs available . many times there are , but not for them .
the company i retired from has lots of jobs and few suitable applicants
Someone that can't pass a credit check is not unemployable. That's flat out nonsense.
they sure are unemployable when that is the reason the places they apply to won't hire them . i know we won't hire below a certain score for the reasons i listed above as well as the auto industry has demonstrated to congress there is a link between honesty and low credit scores .
not everyone is dishonest who has a low credit score but you are in a questionable group . so the end result is many employers have cut offs on the scores where you are rejected below that point .
it isn't an employers responsibility to play detective to find out why all these blemishes effect someones pre-screening .
84% of major employers today employ pre-screening processes , if you are rejected and unemployed because of it and not because of the lack of a job being available guess what ??????????
you made yourself unemployable so far .
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