All across America, job seekers are becoming increasingly desperate. Today, unemployed Americans often find themselves competing against hundreds or even thousands of other job applicants for the same position. An absolutely stunning example of this happened recently when more than 100,000 people applied for just 1,000 open flight attendant positions with Delta Air Lines. The starting salary for these positions is only “in the upper $20,000s”, and serving peanuts and sodas to cranky passengers can get really old really fast. But this just shows how desperate people are becoming. For many unemployed Americans, any job is a good job at this point. Right now there are approximately 5 unemployed Americans for every single job opening, and 6 million Americans have been out of work for 6 months or longer. When you get that many unemployed people fighting over so few positions the desperation in the air becomes almost palpable.
For most Americans, all they have to offer in the marketplace is their labor. But today there is a tremendous shortage of jobs. Even job openings that were once considered to be “undesirable” are now being flooded with applicants.
The following are some more examples of the desperation that is starting to set in around the nation….
*More than a thousand desperate job seekers recently lined up to apply for temporary positions paying between $8.25 to $9.75 per hour picking, packing and shipping orders for Zappos.com.
*One 54-year-old woman in California recently went to apply for one of four county clerk positions and discovered that she was competing against over 2000 other applicants for those four spots.
*Recently more than 500 desperate applicants submitted applications for just 120 positions at a new IHOP restaurant in the Washington, D.C. area. The new positions pay just $3.32 an hour plus tips.
*Several months ago, thousands upon thousands of people lined up at the crack of dawn for a chance to get an application for one of the 400 openings at Ford’s plant in Chicago’s Hegewisch neighborhood.
The positions only pay 15 dollars an hour plus benefits, but that was enough to draw massive crowds of job applicants. In fact, the crowds were so immense that many applicants were turned away without receiving an application even after waiting for many hours.
For example, 32-year-old Larry Smizer was sent home at 11 AM without an application even though he had been waiting in line since 7 AM. It turns out that there were so many thousands of people that had gotten there before him that there were no applications remaining when his turn finally came….
“I’ve been out of work since April, but there were a lot of people in line with me who were out longer than that.”
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans want to work. There are millions of hard working men and women across the United States sitting home tonight desperately hoping that someone will give them a chance.
But unfortunately, our economy is actually bleeding good jobs. Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were approximately 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
So what is going to happen if the U.S. keeps losing large numbers of good jobs?
Many hard working Americans are now completely broke and have been pushed to the edge of desperation because of the lack of jobs. Just consider the following testimony from unemployedworkers.org….
I am a 42 year old unemployed IT Technician. I became unemployed in late May this year when my employer decided they couldn’t afford to pay me. My wife does work but she earns very little, I was the breadwinner in the family. I have sent my resume to over 250 companies since June 2010 and have had 6 interviews all of which told me I was either overqualified or underqualified. At this point I have started applying at fast food chains and janitorial companies but still cannot get hired. I broke down crying during an interview yesterday because I cannot stop thinking about what will happen if I can’t find a job that at least pays me 250 weekly.
I have lost my car because I had a choice to either lose the car or my apartment because I couldn’t afford both nor did I have the security deposit money to move into another less expensive apartment. I have 3 daughters, 2 of which I have to support directly and financially and if I cannot find a job we will be homeless by February of 2011.
What does it say about our economy when so many highly educated, hard working Americans are being forced out of their homes and into the street?
Why can’t “the greatest economy in the world” provide enough jobs for everyone?
If “the recession has ended”, then why does the federal government have to feed 42 million Americans every single month?
This wasn’t supposed to happen in America.
We were once the wealthiest and most prosperous nation on the face of the earth.
But now decades of really, really bad decisions by our business leaders and politicians are starting to catch up with us.
If you think the desperation out there is bad now, just wait. As the economy continues to crumble millions more Americans will give in to depression and despair.
We are headed for some really, really hard times. Do what you need to do to prepare yourself and your family both physically and mentally. For the vast majority of Americans, the economic disaster that is coming is going to absolutely blindside them. Despite how hard so many of us have tried to warn them, they will never see it coming.