Really? What world do you live in?
Dear Casey B. Mulligan:
Kiss my ass.
Look, I am very happily employed, at a stable employer. I'm white, college-educated, over age 35, and female, which puts me in the most stable employment group. I'm not one of the folks who've been looking for work for months and months.
But I keep my eye on the job boards, because I would rather have unnecessary information than not have information I suddenly find necessary. I've been unemployed and underemployed during a recession, many years ago; it's not an experience I care to repeat.
And the question is this: there may be more job openings now, but what kind of jobs are they?
From what I can see, the bulk fall into certain categories that make them undesirable. Sales jobs are common. Jobs offering a fraction of what they would have paid in 2007. Jobs offering hourly wages and no benefits and no guarantee that the work will keep coming.
I can't speak for the blue-collar workers of this country. I don't know a damn thing about having one's factory or mill shut down, or being in a trade (e.g., construction) that's simply not hiring right now. But I'm sure that even in those jobs people have standards, psychological levels of expectation that they're not eager to compromise unless it's necessary.
That's doubly true of office workers. Someone who previously earned, say, $75,000 might prefer to hold out a little longer rather than take a $45,000 job. Or one who had health insurance and 401(k) matching would prefer to find a new job that has those things, too. Didn't the government--with all those excellent benefit programs--lay off 100K+ people this month?
You seem, Mr. Mulligan, to believe that people should take any job for which they will receive a wage. That's a very simplistic view of things.
Looking for a job is a lot easier to do when you don't have one. No one wants to take any old job; they would just have to keep looking, but now with less flexibility to go on interviews or time to spend crafting cover letters.
On the one hand, yes, people ought to work rather than take handouts; I quite agree that having everyone sucking at the public teat is a very bad collective strategy.
On the other hand, lowering one's standards is a very, very, very bad long-term individual strategy.
This is a different sort of recession, one which hammered the educated and well-to-do as well as those with a high school diploma and a factory job. People with more education and more options don't consider their jobs fungible. They're trying to position themselves for the recovery.
Taking a crap job now is a declaration that you're willing to be paid less later. Taking a crap job now is a strategy that diminishes one's effectiveness at searching for a better job next week. What a person does now will make a difference for the rest of their lives. Your "permanent record" in high school may have been bullshit, but your employment record is not.
No one wants to slide backward. No one wants to lower their standards until they have no other choice.
When the jobs on offer are more congruent in terms of salaries, benefits, and actual work tasks as the jobs that were lost, you'll see those people head back to work. As long as the available jobs are little more than white-collar slavery, people who have experienced better conditions will be reluctant to accept them.