Employment

Tim Duy reflects on the unemployment rate and ends up talking about how we have a society that produces too many people whom the economy cannot use, and too few people whom the economy can.

Invariably, one group of questioners will complain about the quality of jobs or inability to find jobs – arguing the statistics simply overstate economic strength.
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The people who are doing the hiring, however, tell the exact opposite story. They simply do not believe that there are any potential employees available. For instance, one employer described the difficulty finding entry level workers for jobs that pay $30-35k with benefits. The jobs required something equivalent to an associate’s degree, and they would pay for education if they could find suitable candidates. Higher level workers were equally difficult to find. Another employer described a maintenance technician opening that had been unfilled for 8 months.
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They are facing a shortage of what they view as qualified workers. Note that qualified workers could be of both the skilled and unskilled variety.
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work history is seen as evidence that the potential employee can get out of bed and show up to work on a regular basis

This is quite consistent with what I saw last year, doing some work for a client in the job recruiting business.