According to an article I recently perused on Yahoo's home page, people aren't being considered for new jobs if they are currently unemployed. My first thought is how ridiculous that sounds--aren't the unemployed the main body of applicants? On the other hand, I do understand some of the reasoning why hiring companies might make the choice to exclude the unemployed. It still makes the job hunt more difficult.
The main reason companies won't hire a victim of layoffs is the assumption that they must not have been all that valuable to their former employer if they were let go. It's an easy way to throw out a lot of applications; since companies everywhere have taken hits, they might not have the manpower to go through every single resume in detail. There are plenty of perfectly valuable employees out there, though. Who is to say the former employers didn't make huge mistakes in letting go of the people they did?
And if the economy is suffering so much, why don't we have better service yet? Some employers laud the economic downturn and have supposedly taken it as an opportunity to weed out the unmotivated and strike some worker gold. Yet I am often unimpressed with customer service today. Sure, a company might have the cream of the crop, but if they're spread so thin from trying to do three people's jobs, they aren't able to provide the quality service that they should.
Most adults have had at least one menial labor job in life, whether as a janitor in college or a burger flipper in high school. It's jobs like these that our parents say we go to school for in order to avoid having to do it for the rest of our lives. But even the proud have to eat; one day that movie ticket taker could be you. I wonder if some of the unemployed out there are out of work because they are too proud to serve lunch to hungry high school kids.
Aldous Huxley had a very interesting view of a possible working world in his novel, "Brave New World." In this book the entire human population is manufactured in tubes, with each fetus destined for one of several castes. With chemical additives and early brainwashing, people are created to fulfill every type of job necessary to perpetuate human life, including avid consumers. This means the broom pushers and garbage collectors have no other ambition in life but to fulfill their roles doing menial labor. They are happy to do so because they have no other expectations in life and no brain capacity to think otherwise. As horrific as depriving embryos of oxygen sounds, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be matched up to our ideal, perfect job?
Huxley's view also completely disregards a person's agency. In his world, only those at the top, running the operation, had any brainpower to use their agency. Even the most intelligent of Huxley's characters were restricted, limited by their position and standing. It is a very dark, depressing and lonely book to read, but it does make you think.
So until we can manufacture the perfect bag boy, we must be content to use our agency while we are out job hunting. It's a difficult balancing act, though, between caring for our families and not squandering our talents and potential. Despite all that, I still miss being a part of that action--the stress of filling out applications, the nerves at the interview, the nerves the first few days of work as you wonder how on earth you're going to learn this job and be a valuable asset to the company.
To those still looking, happy hunting. It may look bleak, but Heavenly Father wants us to succeed; He endorses the family unit, and He knows that caring for a family means having a source of income!
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