Paul Craig Roberts: The real unemployment rates – a study in information credibility
Official Unemployment: U.3 8.1%
Mid-Term Real Unemployment: U-6 14.7%
Actual Unemployment (All): 22.4% and rising
Includes analysis of the new jobs (not enough to provide for those new to the employment market such as immigrants and graduates). Bottom line: bar tenders and home health service–the bottom of the barrel.
Phi Beta Iota: For those of you applying for government jobs, be warned. Apart from needing an active TS/SCI to be considered (but it helps to have an OPM SSBI completed in past six months), you have to get through what is now an out of control automated system that dumps you if you do not have enough keywords. Beyond that you have a line of low-level clerks without a clue about substance [in fairness to USAJobs, the problems appear to be at the receiving agency level, not with USAJobs). So here are two guidlines:
1. Read the position description carefully, and tailor your USAJobs resuem for that specific job. You are dealing with a really really stupid system.
2. If you have the connections, or care to send in a copy directly to the hiring official as an alert, do so. Our contacts are telling us that they are getting crummy selections from the system, and when they go back and ask to see ALL applications, they get another 15-20 among whom are 5 world-class stars the system was too stupid to recognize. This is particularly true of DIA. Our advice to hiring managers: insist on ALL applications without exception being delivered to you.
Good luck.
