Worse Than I Thought
I always suspected government jobs programs and job training programs were a waste of time. I never imagined they were total vaporware:
"There are no jobs!" That is what people told me outside a government "jobs center" in New York City.
To check this out, I sent four researchers around the area. They quickly found 40job openings
. Twenty-four were entry-level positions. One restaurant owner told me he would hire 12 people if workers would just apply.
It made me wonder what my government does in buildings called "job centers." So I asked a college intern, Zoelle Mallenbaum, to find out. Here's what she found:
"First I went to the Manhattan Jobs Center and asked, "Can I get help finding a job?" They told me they don't do that. 'We sign people up for food stamps.' I tried another jobs center. They told me to enroll for unemployment benefits."
So the "jobs" centers help people get handouts. Neither center suggested people try the 40 job openings in the neighborhood.
From John Stossel, who has a lot more at the source link.
Matthew Slyfield:
Typical government program. Actively works to make the problem the program was created to fix worse.
October 3, 2012, 8:42 amMatt Landry:
'Round here, in order to collect unemployment benefits, one must also participate in the state's official job-search program. Which might technically be equipped to refer people to actual private-sector jobs, if any private-sector employers ever listed jobs through it, but needless to say that is not the case. (Onerous bureaucratic requirements as a prerequisite to employer participation? I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me. Employer disinterest in the sort of candidate who can't even be bothered to log into monster-dotcom periodically? Yeah, bet on that.)
I wonder how much the people who _run_ it get paid.
October 3, 2012, 9:23 ammorganovich:
i have long taken a very simple position on this: why on earth would you suppose that someone who works at a jobs center in some going nowhere job with no career trajectory would know thing one about finding a good job? that's like buying a house from a Realtor with an office in a bad location or hiring a mechanic whose car doesn't run.
October 3, 2012, 9:43 amTed Rado:
We are heading toward government by the deadbeats, of the deadbeats, and for the deadbeats. If you make it attractive enough to be a deadbeat, EVERYONE would become one.
October 3, 2012, 11:56 amHas nobody in DC ever heard of incentives? You are rewarded for diligence, and punished for indolence. Remove rewards and penalties and voila, we are all goofoffs.
Once over half of the citizens are receiving USG handouts, it will be impossible vote the give-away pols out of office. We seem to be near that point.
JIMC5499:
Government union mentality. If they actually found people jobs, then no one would come to the job center and then they might be out of a job.
October 3, 2012, 2:21 pmJoe_Da:
Everyone may recall 1996 Welfare Reform. The only ones screaming against reform were the government employees associated with the providing the benefits - they are the ones that had skin in the game to lose - the potential loss of jobs as the welfare rolls shrank.
October 3, 2012, 2:32 pmfredrick.:
Iowa has a system kind of like that. They require you to put your resume on, and sign up for a state employment site similar to Monster. It does seem that many of the larger and medium sized businesses in the state posted to the web site. I am not sure if or how they were compelled to do so, but it did seem to have a reasonable selection of jobs in Iowa.
October 3, 2012, 2:34 pm3rdMoment:
So I'm sure you were pretty excited to hear Mitt Romney promise in the debate to "get those [job training] dollars back to the states." We all know how efficient and effective state and local government is!
(Seriously, what's with this Republican meme that the federal government is all messed up and corrupt but the states are great. From everything I've seen and heard, including especially this blog, state and local government are much worse even than the feds.)
October 3, 2012, 10:06 pmSusanna:
This is exacly what Rome did - right before the empire collapsed. BUT no one in a public school or in the government is going to remind you of that!
October 4, 2012, 8:05 amCindi Hancock:
Why in the world would someone give a thumbs down to a post that Iowa doesn't just give aid away and actually has an employment agency with jobs listed? Do you not want people to find a job just to verify there are no jobs?
October 6, 2012, 6:02 pm