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Working It Out Live: The Job Market
By Jon Greenberg on Friday, April 23, 2010.
In March, the number of people with jobs in New Hampshire went up. Not much. Just a couple of thousand. A drop in the bucket compared to the number of people without jobs. Officially, that’s over 50 thousand and that doesn’t begin to count those who are working less than they want or have given up looking altogether. Still, more people have jobs and there are other signs -- here in late April 2010-- that ice-out has finally come to the job market.
Today on Working It Out Live we try to get a clearer picture of where the job market stands and where it might be headed.
Guests:
Tammy Hildreth – One of the co-founders of Network for Work and a former Senior Project Manager at Fidelity.
Matt Nagler – A principal and managing partner at the Nagler Group, a job placement company with offices in Bedford and Woburn, Massachusetts.
Joe Guilfoyl – A laid-off Customer Service Manager and currently a career coach who lives in Merrimack.
Our questions:
- Have you recently found work?
- If you’re a recent college graduate, what’s been your experience?
- If you’re in the market for a job, what have you learned about what employers are looking for?
- Do you think the dynamics of the job market have changed?
- We’d like to hear from employers. What’s your situation and do you need more workers right now?
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There are many jobs being filed today not by US citizens but by holders of H1 and L1 visas. In fact these visas are helping move the work to other countries. The people doing the work are smart hard working, they are paid very little while the firms they work for are profiting. It works a little like the people who bring illegals from mexico. The consulting companies take out the visas the bring people into the country pay them 1/3 what a US citizens earn.
Why is this happening? How can it be stopped?
I listened to the WIO call-in broadcast this noon, and one of the people on the panel answering questions, (not sure of her name) was saying that we have to be multifaceted and have many different skills. I got the meaning of what she was trying to say, but it was discouraging. It plays right into the hands of employers who lay people off and then want to hire one person to do 5 jobs, and pay them half of what one person's salary would be. For example, a company who wants to hire a person to do technical writing, corporate communications, graphic design & computer programming. I have actually seen that advertised for less than 20.00 an hour! Do they think they are going to be able to get one person who is an expert at each of these jobs? I get it that skills sometimes overlap, but I think the 'cheapness' is getting ridiculous.
Regardless of bust or boom economic cycles, the SBA statistics say it all. We, as a nation, have not been able to rise above the 10% survival rate of small businesses.
There are many reasons why and there are answers that can generate long-term sustained growth if we can only get municipalities to stop applying 19th century approaches to 21st century problems.
I invite you to read a paper that was produced here in NH, by a NH resident and 25 year business veteran. This paper has been circulated around the country and well received. It discussed the core issues and provides actionable solutions.
The paper can be found here: http://www.cambridgerad.com/reinventingamerica.htm
Note: This is not spam or a scam. The paper is free.
Some more SBA statistic to digest:
# Of 670,000 businesses started in 2006,only 10% survived. Ninety-five (95.3%) of these businesses had fewer than 20 employees.
# The best-recorded year for start-ups was 1995 when 16% of new businesses survived.
# Since 1995, the start-up success rate has been declining - punctuated by the loss of 106% of new businesses in 2001.
# The average small business survival rate over the last decade was less than 1 in 10. (> 9%)
The real unemployment numbers are considerably higher than the ones we get from the Dept. of Labor. People who weren't eligible for unemployment benefits, or those whose benefits have expired aren't counted. In this way, the numbers are kept artificially, and reassuringly low.
In the northern part of the state, there are few jobs available, no matter how many skills one might have. Anyone over the age of 50 has a better chance of getting hit by lightening than finding a job.