Tacoma, WA: Officials were totally unprepared when they advertised 1 job opening for meter reader. Job requirements are a high school diploma and able to walk 5-7 miles daily.Normally they get 50-70 application but in the two weeks the job was listed they received 1400 applications.
Same thing happened here when the advertised 200 jobs for a new Wal-Mart store. The online system crashed under the onslaught of 1500 applications in one hour.
Interesting. I teach a course in Social Ethics, and the last couple of weeks we have been talking about economics. On Tuesday I mentioned that when the economy tanked in the past there had been incidents where thousands of people would apply for single openings for menial jobs, and that we could expect the same in the near future. Two days later, T19 reports . . .
BTW, about six months to a year ago I remember some posters on T19 insisting vehemently that we were NOT in a recession!
Have no fear!!! “We will spend our way out of this. . .” President Obama says so!! All is well!!
William,
THEN we were NOT in a recession. But the media pushing for one, and the banking crisis and the bursting housing bubble both combined to form a perfect storm to push us into one.
A year ago, the DOW was rising, the housing prices were stabilizing, the Republicans were calling for new regulation on Fannie and Freddie, and quarterly earnings were falling but strong.
Then the bailouts were proposed …..
I believe that unemployment and underemployment are perhaps the major problems in our economy. I am perhaps an example of this. When I recently retired I was asked if I would be willing to work part time on call. The result is that I am working anywhere from twelve to forty hours per week. In normal circumstances my employer would have taken on a new employee instead of opting for this arrangement, but because I’m a temp they don’t have the expenses of workers comp, etc. When the employment problem is resolved the other problems in the economy will then fall into place.