What Color Is Your Parachute? (6 page)

By the end of that month, the overall size of the employed U.S. Workforce had grown by 64,000 people, since the previous month. During the month, jobs were lost, jobs were found, but the
net
change at the end of the month was the figure above.

But as JOLT reported, during that month
4,176,000 people found jobs
.

And at the end of that month, 2,415,000 vacancies remained unfilled.

By the end of that month, the overall size of the employed U.S. Workforce had shrunk by 109,000 people, since the previous month. During the month, jobs were lost, jobs were found, but the
net
change at the end of the month was the figure above.

But as JOLT reported, during that month
4,073,000 people found jobs
.

And at the end of that month, 2,497,000 vacancies remained unfilled.

By the end of that month, the overall size of the employed U.S. Workforce had grown by 14,000 people, since the previous month. During the month, jobs were lost, jobs were found, but the
net
change at the end of the month was the figure above.

But as JOLT reported, during that month
4,080,000 people found jobs
.

And at the end of that month, 2,724,000 vacancies remained unfilled.

Yeah, I know. All of that made your head hurt. And I know you’re bright, and you certainly got the point by the third month, above; but I droned on, because I wanted to convince you that this can’t be explained away as only happening for a month or two.
This never changes
, month in, month out: even in the worst of economic times
there are always vacancies out there, jobs waiting to be filled
; our problem lies in where they are, what they are, and
how
we go about looking for them.

During and following a Recession, the methods we use successfully to find a job when times are good—sending out resumes, plying the Internet looking for job postings from employers—don’t work very well at all when times are tough. We need new strategies, new thinking. That’s what this book is about. A lot of people
are
finding jobs; why shouldn’t you be among them?

The media have made much, this past year or two, of the fact that someone calculated there are six or so people out of work for every vacancy that opens up.
That is a huge societal problem
; it raises the spectre of the possibility that as a nation, the U.S. (and other countries) may have an underclass of permanently unemployed people—for all the foreseeable future. What that may mean in terms of social unrest, general discontent, political divisiveness, and just plain unfairness in the way the workplace discriminates, will inevitably play itself out in the years to come. And somehow it simply cannot be ignored.

But there will never be enough jobs in this country for those who want them, and there never have been. Even at the height of the prosperous time prior to this Recession, there were eight million people in the U.S. who couldn’t find jobs. Currently, that figure is around seventeen million.
That’s awful; after all, there were “
only
” thirteen million people out of work during the Great Depression.

As I said, this is a
huge
problem for our whole society, and for any government in power. But as far as its implications for your destiny as an individual job-hunter are concerned, the situation is quite different. The implication that has been falsely drawn from this, has run something like this:
Hey, you never had to compete for a job before, but now you’re going to have to.

This is just plain nuts. As I said, even before this Recession, when times were prosperous, there were still eight million people who couldn’t find jobs. As a country, we have
never
produced enough jobs for all the people who want to work, except for a brief period during World War II. In all other years we always have an unemployment rate, and even if it stands at only 4.7 percent, that’s 4.7 percent of a labor force that is now 154,000,000 in size. So, in actual numbers that works out to be seven million people who can’t find work in the best of times.
(Maybe more, since the government tends to play around with these potentially explosive numbers politically speaking.)

In other words, you have always had to compete with other people for a job, and you always will. You need to know how to do this well. It begins by first studying Yourself, before you study the job-market and the job-hunt.

For now, I hope this is your major takeaway from this chapter:

Why be surprised at this good news? I’m here to tell you lots of good news. After all, this is really a Book of Hope—only masquerading as a job-hunting manual.