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What If You Still Cannot Find Work?
“Economy, in Sweet Spot, Adds 313,000 Jobs. It May Get Sweeter.” — Washington Post
So, here I am, in month five of not working. Failed to land a client on my first pass at consulting. While my wife found a job after 15 years of not working, After 25 years of working, in the greatest recovery in that 25 years, I cannot get anyone even to interview me. I have taken advice. I have networked. I have submitted lord only knows how many resumes. I have changed my cover letter for jobs. I have met with a dozen people in “informational interviews.” Either I don’t hear back, I am told “someone else is better qualified” for jobs I could do in my sleep, or I get “You have a strong resume, and you are going to find something.”
Now, I am not using this thread to complain, for am I actually in better spirits than ever, all things considered. For one thing, I am almost walking normally. No, this thread is more about the general idea of those left behind. In a world gearing up for the millennial crowd, folks like me are left out. Oh, in theory, my age is a protected class, but age discrimination in the workplace is alive and well. Overqualified just means “you are going to cost too much.”
What I think conservatives need to acknowledge is that we have a culture where working is needed to survive. We value work, and rightly so. However, the fact I cannot find a job to hire me, even stuff I am very overqualified for, shows that “get a job” is not much of an answer. Sure, we can say that no employer owes anyone a job. But, what do we say to someone who plays by the rules, did nothing wrong to lose his job, and cannot find someplace to take his 25 years of experience? I have heard already all the advice on how to obtain a job. It has not worked. LinkedIn has a group full of people in my age range, and they all have similar tales to tell. So, I am not owed a job, and I have to earn it. Great. I did that and the outcome was losing a job I had earned, and thus far, no one will offer me another chance. Not even a chance at an interview.
What I expect to see in this thread, is lots of advice on that boils down to “well you must be doing it wrong.” Classic conservative response, which is to blame the person with no job. Believe me, I am doing everything I have been told to try, networking, and I am working hard, daily to launch by business, TalkForward. I do think that is my long term right path. I just have to try to support my family in the meantime (another conservative “should”).
I’d like to avoid the advice giving, and concentrate on what our message should be. Right now, we tell people they must work hard to get ahead, that they have no right to a job, and that if they work hard, they will get a job and succeed. OK, gang, I am a model of a hard worker, I am not lazy, I give my all to every task I am assigned. I worked from the bottom of an organization to the top. And it was taken away for nothing I did wrong. I am doing everything conservatives have told me to do, and I am not getting the American Dream. What do you tell someone like me, other than “Life is not fair?”
I feel if we cannot message better than this, then the Republican will always be the second party. I fear if we cannot find a message to address people like me, the left will always win in the long run, because it has a message to address it.
Published in General
This is all wrong per the Austrian school of economics. We need a far more libertarian financial system. There are some in the GOP Congress that get this. The problem is explaining it to people.
What I mean is, why is it even being proposed, not what’s bad about it.
Fair enough…Sorry for the misunderstanding. :-)
I think this is the real answer but it provides little comfort. Because the fundamental philosophical assumption of conservatism (in the US at least) is that the Government isn’t there to support you. In fact our dalliance in instituting a social safety net is probably working to retard social adaptation to the new working and living circumstances by keeping up the illusions of retirement at 65. On this brink I think the options are to either increase social support and make our government more dynamic in its pursuit of providing economic security for people (become more progressive and proactive), or actually scale things back and provide less implicit security to force people to adapt more quickly.
I’m 33. I don’t expect to retire, see social security, or any of that. Whatever, retirement was an aberration of post WWII economy. People always used to work themselves to death before why should we be different than our ancestors? We should be grateful that in our society we have much less physically demanding and debilitating jobs. That we can work until we are 80 so long as our minds are sharp.
If we did it exactly the way Charles Murray wants to do it, it might be a good idea. It really would slash a ton of wasteful government. Better incentives. I have no big opinion.
I know you said you weren’t looking for advice, but here comes some anyway.
I don’t know specifically what type of consulting you are doing/were looking to do, but if you’re having no luck finding placement on your own, see if you can find a pimp.
I don’t know how common it is, maybe I was just lucky, but during the time that I was self-employed doing IT consulting, I did most of my work through a small job-shop that had the salesguys and contacts to find work. They’d place me and take a piece of my hourly rate (I found out after I quit working
forwith them it was about $7/hour). I was not an employee of theirs, I was just sponging off of their resources. They kept me busy for a couple years. I had a few clients of my own besides, and eventually flipped into a salaried position with one of the companies I had done some work for.I really think you have misunderstood my point. I don’t want progressive policies, as, has been mentioned, they don’t work to create certainty or peace of mind.
Knowing that, we need a conservative message.
Except that the Austrian model depends on indirect action, and market forces. Brian knows all of this and he still seems to find it unsatisfying, as we can see in his post. How can he not? People like to say “Do you give a man a fish, or teach him to fish?” Well if you are starving someone promising to teach you to fish is not as immediately satisfying as them giving you a fish you can eat now. There is no way around that. We will create a market you can succeed in is no guarantee of success. Ergo it is not really a solution to the problem of I need a job now.
Glad to see Murray proposing solutions; he’s been phenomenally good at stating the problem, for sure.
Everything comes down to overhauling the financial system, the health insurance system, and education (the value proposition for education). None of the GOP Ruling Class gives a damn about figuring it out and communicating a solution.
The hubris of quasi-Marxists in Silicon Valley is causing people to imagine that many more people will be unemployed by technological advancement in the near future.
If you mean politicians, probably not any, but we’re still at least a decade out before people start drafting legislation. It will never take off though; part of the idea is to replace the entire welfare state with it, and the welfare state in America is all about giving money to subsets of the population who seem to be suffering virtuously in some way.
I’m saying there is no conservative message other than the ones you find unsatisfying. Do you really think you can have your cake and eat it too? The assumption is that progressives are fools, but I think they are making very legitimate choice in the trade offs they want to make. Their policies or things like them are direct solutions to your expressed concern, and the conservative philosophy is that your concerns as are not the governments problem or responsibility. Which is why I think you should consider reevaluating your political philosophy if you find that unsatisfying. If Trump and congressional republicans some how did all the free market policies any of us here could ever want do you really think that would help you get a job sooner? The essence of the conservative philosophy is that there can be no guarantee, and in return there is no cap on success, and that in the long run that works out better, and is more in line with the ideals of human freedom and liberty.
This is very good stuff. Technology is deflationary and puts tons of people out of work. Same with globalized labor. Gated Community Liberals and all kinds of Ruling Class Establishment don’t want to deal with this head-on by overhauling the Fed and shrinking government. They just want to hand crumbs out to keep the riffraff from bothering them.
Yes
I wouldn’t call that a “classic conservative response.” That’s just a classic jerk response.
I’ve been in this situation as the trainer to the young, idiot trainee, hired into a position I’d applied for. She was rather . . . untrainable. But then, I guess if I’d known that sleeping with the boss would be part of the job, I wouldn’t have applied for it.
I’m in the middle on this. I have known a number of entirely unqualified entry level types who complained they couldn’t find a job, and when I point out that nearly every restaurant, retail store or landscaper have help wanted signs out, they say they ‘would never work there!’. I’m not saying in any way that is Bryan’s issue, but in the long run, if you can’t find work doing what you want to do, you have to find work doing what someone is willing to pay you to do.
Being ‘too good’ for a job is a luxury that I have never been able to afford, and I think the classic conservative response ‘you must be doing it wrong’ is appropriate to some extent.
Have you considered doing side work while looking for a job? If you could do some Uber driving while job hunting you could bring in some money and maybe mitigate your overqualified resume by showing that you are willing to work in a lower quality job. It would also show that you are a hard worker rather than telling them.
This is the statist message in a nutshell: “The people are fleeing liberalism because it is so insensitive.”
“You advocates of human rights are just going on and on with these theoretical arguments about how the solution to the excruciating electric shocks everyone is dying of starts with this: stop going to the electric shock parlor. Can’t you see that we are suffering real pain right now? At least the owners of the electric shock parlors are doing something–they are proposing to raise their rates so they can afford to continue to increase the voltage!”
You need to change your race and gender.
Unless of course your there is a 0% chance of getting an new job because your skills are not in demand. What then?
And as we can see from the OP the statist point has real merit as an argument. Many people want a guaranteed out come and a prescribed set of actions that can lead them to it. If you perform the actions you get the outcome. Statists offer you that because they think it is the government’s job to create such a system.
Hardwork only improves your chances of success. It can’t guarantee them in a free market, because it is entirely possible to work hard at something that fails. This is what many people find frustrating about it, and unfair. Because at the same time not working hard at something successful can lead to success, or heck you might just inherit money from a successful parent, and not even have to work hard. But, as the OP implies “Life is not fair” isn’t an answer anyone is looking for especially if life is being unfair to them.
What I’m saying is, generic opportunity is way lower than it needs to be. The cost of adjusting. The amount of generalized prosperity. Statism causes a lot of grief.
Zerohedge has had just brutal charts on the implied taxation of welfare moms getting off of welfare. Not the same thing, but whole economy is messed up like that.
America offers the opportunity for great success, but the possibility of failure. ( Of course, in America despite the risk of failure, virtually nobody is starving…)
Statism promises a lower median level of existence, but no reasonable chance of rising above that. (Then delivers starvation and abject poverty, see Venezuela. )
We are no where close to a free market. That’s the problem.
Don’t laugh. Why not run for local office? My nearly full-time hobby when back home in CO is electing conservatives to local office. You’re smart, caring and conservative. County commissioner is a perfect gig for a late 50s empty nester. I’ve found jobs for 20 conservatives and in return we’ve averted millions (maybe a billion) in regional spending on reservoirs, recreation centers, megacampuses, bike paths up 9% grades, countywide mommy and daddy coordinators, yoga instructors in local jails …
Now laugh: I don’t know if your undergraduate degree allows you to act on this advice from Steve Martin:
This is the question he asked:
The GOP needs to deal with what he’s saying exactly, because it’s reality. I prefer David Stockman’s solutions and it wouldn’t be that hard to message. Instead we keep Obamacare and get a bunch of unfunded tax cuts (the corporate tax needed to be wiped out, though). At least they are deregulating in other ways.
If you want to get up to speed on this stuff, listen to the interviews of Charles Hugh Smith (in order) on a website called Financial Repression Authority. You can’t argue with what he’s saying.
Larry Kudlow is an inflationist just like Trump, except he is more creative and he knows more. People listen to him. Get on your hands and knees and pray that they think of something.
It may not be the answer anyone* is looking for, but it is reality.
*and there are times when I include myself