I guess by writing a blog on this topic the mere posting of my thoughts makes me part of the media, albeit with currently a very small readership and no national magazine presence, but then even Fareed Zakaria started somewhere.
Still everywhere I read, I just get frustrated, although there are some bright spots. Andy Grove, a Hungarian who emigrated to the United States in 1956 and cofounded Intel, yes that Andy Grove, wrote an article in a recent issue of Business Week, now Bloomberg Business Week. Sadly, like Google News, the new incarnation got worse. Andy Grove talked about the same issues that I did, namely that employers do hire, but just not here in the United States. Outsourcing is the real issue. To that, I would add in H1-B Visas, illegal immigration, and the wrongful use of free trade agreements (NAFTA for one).
Business Week in their current issue wrote about Ford and Chrysler about to repay the loans that US taxpayers made to both companies. Both companies are expanding their hiring, but not here in the United States. Both are opening plants in Mexico, because they can pay daily salaries of less than $27, whereas here in the United States they would have to pay salaries of $56 per hour, a significant increase. There is a bright side in that jobs in Mexico keep illegal immigrants there.
Business Week also wrote about our trade imbalance with China. The power brokers were optimistic, when China said that they would increase the value of the Yuan recently. I could have told them that the increase would be a token amount. Most of the media said the same thing. I read the article, which talks of how the United States could punish China with tariffs and the like. People always like to deal with symptoms of the problem and not the actual problem. China is not the real problem. They are not innocent and squeaky clean, but they are not the problem. We are.
Why? American companies and investors pore money into the country taking jobs and money there. We do the same to other countries. I am a fool blooded capitalist. I believe in capitalism. I do like Star Trek and believe in the ideals expressed therein, but a society without money would not work. Anyone who studies economics in high school (I took a small form of it), will tell you that the economics of capitalism rely on the principle of a closed loop system. Someone gives money to someone else for goods or service. That someone will then take that money and spend on goods or service, thereby giving the money back to the first person.
Outsourcing of jobs takes away from that model. Money flows out, but does not flow back. A solution would be to tax companies, not China, for outsourcing. They can outsource, but only as at a cost to them. Hire someone from outside, but you will pay.
Oh, I am talking of China only because Business Week and other publications that I read this weekend talked about the country, but I could have picked on the Middle East and other countries, where our dollars go, but come back in limited ways. I do not see Saudi Arabia or Iran buying as much goods or services from American companies than we do them. I should clarify, non-outsourcing companies. I tend to consider Ford foreign. They are based here in the United States, but what counts is not.
The new labor statistics came out on Friday. Hiring is down, as the stimulus hiring winds down and the temporary census workers are laid off. Both parties blame the other for the continued recession. It was mostly temporary jobs and blue collar that got those temporary jobs. White collar, especially engineering did not.
Business Week also talked about lending to small business, one of the purposes of the stimulus package, did not happen. Small banks were not secure and as such did not lend. Conventional Wisdom dictates that small business, not big business, typically leads the country out of a recession. Washington listens to people who have never suffered. One economist gaining popularity within conservatives (in an article about Greece), points out that fiscal restraint and conservatism (read here hurting the poor and making them tighten their belts) helps a country get out of the recession, because investors gain confidence that the worst is at hand and that things will only get better. Seriously, this concept is delusional thinking callous at best.
The point remains. For every job opening there are many applicants. I wonder how many applicants do not even apply, because they gave up. What does giving up mean? Does that mean a suicide?
JobFish cannot give you a job. JobFish is not a job creator. JobFish can, however, alleviate much of the frustration of seeking gainful employment. I know. You may think that you do not need JobFish, but Excel just does not cut it. From resume package handling, to job board management, to everything else, you owe it to yourself to check out JobFish.
- Let JobFish present job search results for you in a manner that lets you examine that quickly and easily.
- Let JobFish help you apply to jobs and keep track of them.
- Let JobFish create multiple personal resume packages, whose cover letter you can tweak on boards supporting email applications.
- Let JobFish attach notes to a particular job posting.
- Quickly recall job postings, when a recruiter or employer calls using JobFish?
- The list goes on and on. Download JobFish today!
What have you got to lose?
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Sarah M. Weinberger
ButterflyVista, LLC
Obama: Economic Team verses Polling Team
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I was reading last a recent issue of Newsweek, staff writer Ezra Klein writes an article entitled "It’s Always the Economy, Stupid".” He talks about how elections are not decided based upon the candidate, but rather on the economical situation of the country as a whole. The author even cited major Presidential wins such as Reagan and Nixon over McGovern as holding up to the model. The author’s other main point is that in the Obama administration there are two competing thoughts. The first is the economics team, which wants to push the economy with a second stimulus. A second stimulus, as the author noted, is meaningless to help for the November elections coming up. The other is polling team, which wants to focus on deficits. The thesis was that Obama can do neither, and should therefore focus on governing.
I do not disagree with what he says. It is too late for an economic stimulus package to do much. Pushing through the unemployment package tomorrow is necessary, but that goes into good governess. What Mr. Klein misses is that there is a third way. Providing a stimulus package does not help white collar workers. Heck, the government cannot even get NASA properly funded and focused. The Venture Star, the true successor to the space shuttle was killed by George W. Bush as too costly. NASA has become risk adverse. Sorry, NASA, but space is a risky proposition. That being said, it can be done safer. President Obama killed the Constellation program, a scaled back effort and more risk adverse project, of going back to the moon and providing launch capability to the International Space Station. The government has no interest in funding white collar. When the government talks of stimulus, what they really talk about is blue collar projects. That is not a bad thing. We desperately need roads. I would love to see a second deck on I-405 and I-101. I would like to see I-10 widened to accommodate more lanes. That would help white collar workers, as traffic would not be so bad, thereby enabling longer commutes, which give greater job opportunities.
What the Obama Administration does not understand is a basic economic principle taught in high school, namely the closed cycle of capitalism. Person A spends money somewhere giving it to company A. Company B in turn spends money on products and services, which eventually gives Person A back the money spent on the initial transaction. The system falls apart, when money flows out of the closed circle, such as occurs when people work here and send money abroad without that country sending money back here. The circular system fails, when companies are allowed to outsource or hire people on an HI-B visa without that company having to pay society back. Maybe two million dollars is not unreasonable a fee, as a friend of mine suggested, if that amount goes to fund programs that give workers jobs, such as a revitalized NASA (or other programs that help and further society). Obama can pass laws today that make global economics fairer. I am not suggesting going back to an isolationist society, such as after World War I, when Woodrow Wilson and his League of Nations (United Nations predecessor). Global economics has done wonders for everyone including the United States. That does not mean that laws cannot be passed to make things fairer.
After all, what is fair about applying for a job, when you are competing with Indians in India? I worked at an aerospace company in Burbank (although I could have mentioned a major telecommunications company here in the Westside), where the majority of engineers (think 80%) are either H1-B or a division / outsourced company in India. Do not think of one or two people that have special skills. In each case, think of hundreds to thousands of workers. Between these two companies we are talking conservatively about two thousand people at a minimum, but more likely than not is a lot more. If we multiply that number by some factor taking into account the number of companies here in the United States and we are now talking tens of millions of jobs. For every so many engineers, there are project managers, graphic artists, managers, secretaries, cleaning crews, and other employees that are necessary to support them.
How many people are now unemployed (rhetorical question)? If you now subtract out these tens of millions from the laid off tens of millions and you would have a work shortage. Let us take 20 million people. If 20 million people were suddenly employed here in the United States and making a decent wage ($50,00 and up but more like $100,000). If we deduct the usual city, state, government, Medicare, and Social Security taxes, we would no longer be talking of deficits and increased taxes but rather surpluses.
Regardless of how the economy does, employees need a tool that can help them. I was told recently that I created JobFish, because of the difficulty in finding a job during The Great Recession. That is totally inaccurate. I started JobFish back in 2002 right at the beginning of the Dot Com bust. At the time, I lost my job and then got another. True the Dot Com bust was the impetus, but I was thinking about the product even before during the best of times. Why?
There are tools a-plenty for employers and recruiters. Companies are bending over backwards for them. There are no tools for the job seeker. Do not tell me job boards (i.e. Career Builder, Dice, Monster, Craig’s List, and one of my favorites Indeed). Each one of them is annoying to use. I can only look at them so much before getting frustrated. Talking with recruiters is also annoying. Keeping things straight is also annoying.
I often thought that I would like my own personal matchmaker, but for jobs. I have talked to a couple Executive Recruiters, which want $5,000 for their services, but who has that kind of money to spend. Most of the ones that I have dealt with seem like sharks trying to extort money from the desperate. I could go on and on about what I think about Executive Recruiters, but even if one hires someone for this task, that person will still need tools, because then they become the job seeker. You are just employing to do the dirty work for you.
No matter what the economic climate, job seekers need a tool that can help them, good economy or not. I understand what it means to be unemployed. I understand the tools that one would need. I understand the frustrations. I understand all too well the misery and desperate feelings that one helps when one is unemployed.
Before wrapping up, I want to address a comment that I hear again and again, namely that I cannot afford JobFish. That is such horseshit. That really is. That is the wrong attitude too. Can you afford to be unemployed month after month? Can you afford to be tied down to a computer all day, when you could go get another job? Most people still go out to eat or see a movie, unless one is really desperate. People should be happy that a tool like JobFish exists and want to support it. The alternative is that there is no JobFish.
People are so focused on the status quo that they forget that there can be an easier way. I heard from a the leader of a job club on the East Coast recently. This person was skeptical and gave the usual song and dance. Seriously, I keep hearing the same story. Thankfully, this person agreed to give JobFish a try. From getting no callbacks in a year, within a week this person started to receive phone calls (plural). This person could also apply for many multiples of the number of jobs that this person previously could at a fraction of the time. I also heard about the frustration level being greatly reduced. That was why I created JobFish, because these issues are timeless and there should be a tool that helps job seekers and contractors looking for new clients.
Give JobFish a try. Go to www.jobfish.com today. Let me know what you think of JobFish. As James T. Kirk said in the original Star Trek series, The City on the Edge of Forever, let us help you.
Sarah M. Weinberger
ButterflyVista, LLC