Dear Person Seeking a Job: Why I Can't Hire You

[EagleKeeper]

Read the whole thing here

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-dear-person-seeking-job-why-i-cant-hire-you?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+zerohedge/feed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline,+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

Potential employers have to respond to the incentives and disincentives that exist in today's world, and those do not favor conventional permanent employees.

I know you're hard-working, motivated, tech-savvy and willing to learn. The reason I can't hire you has nothing to do with your work ethic or skills; it's the high-cost Status Quo, and the many perverse consequences of maintaining a failing Status Quo.

The sad truth is that it's costly and risky to hire anyone to do anything, and "bankable projects" that might generate profit/require more labor are few and far between. The overhead costs for employees have skyrocketed. So even though the wages employees see on their paychecks have stagnated, the total compensation costs the employer pays have risen substantially.

Thirty years ago the overhead costs were considerably less, adjusted for inflation, and there weren't billboards advertising a free trip to Cabo if you sued your employer. (I just saw an advert placed by a legal firm while riding a BART train that solicited employees to sue their employers, with the incentive being "free money" for a vacation to Cabo.)

The other primary reason is that there are few (to borrow a phrase used by John Michael Greer) "bankable projects," that is, projects where hiring another worker would pay for the costs of the additional overhead, labor and capital and generate a reason for making the investment, i.e. a meaningful profit.

There is very little real "new business" in a recessionary, deflationary economy: any new business is poaching from an established business. The new restaurant isn't drawing people from their home kitchens, it's drawing customers from established restaurants.

The only competitive advantage in a deflationary economy is to be faster, better and cheaper or have a marketing and/or technology edge. But marketing and technological advantages offer increasingly thin edges. The aspirational demand (driven by the desire to be hip or cool) for a new good or service has a short half-life. As for technology: miss a product cycle and you're history.

Put these together--higher costs and risks for hiring people, and diminishing opportunities for expansions that lead to profit--and you have a scarcity of projects where hiring people makes financial sense.

Faster, better and cheaper usually means reducing the labor input, not increasing it. In a deflationary economy, it's extremely difficult to grow revenues (sales), and as costs continue climbing inexorably, the only way to survive is to cut expenses so there is still some net for the owner/proprietor to live on.
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[Bad Dog]

I would alter the title slightly.  "Dear Non-DUmmy Seeking a Job"

[JohnnyReb]

If you walk in holding your dick and pants with one hand and a cell phone in the other...how many jobs can there be for no-armed people.