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There's a lot being said about what the detrimental effects of the government's proposed efforts to make young unemployed people "earn or learn" will be for the economy. I'd like to point out an effect it's having right now, before the legislation has even been passed (it was introduced to the House of Representatives this week).
In the last few weeks, I've been noticing an up-tick in the number of jobs which are effectively demanding applicants have between two and five years experience, minimum, in the position they're applying for. Or in other words, it's suddenly becoming a lot harder to break into the job market unless you have experience. It's also suddenly a lot harder to trade up within the job market.
Now, I'm theorising here, but I suspect this is due to an influx of CVs and applications from people who are under thirty, and who are desperate to get employed before the Budget legislation is passed through the Senate (because they have to work on the presumption it's going to be passed unaltered; pray for amendments, but plan for the full horror). Employers are getting flooded with applications for any job they offer, and as a result, they're tightening up their selection criteria. The first thing to go is the option to take on someone who might need a bit of training. The end result, of course, is experience criteria get tagged onto just about any job.
Problem is, a certain amount of labour market participation is a condition of getting Newstart allowance here in Australia. The general level is an expectation of putting in applications for ten jobs a fortnight (twenty a month). One of the lovely conditions being proposed for younger unemployed people (i.e. those thirty years old or younger) is a minimum of forty job applications a month, or ten a week, whether or not they're receiving a payment. Which means employers are going to be confronted by more people applying for jobs they definitely aren't qualified for, and will correspondingly tighten up the selection criteria even further, making it even harder for inexperienced job seekers to get into employment.
I would venture a guess Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey aren't expecting either of these results. I'd also venture a guess they don't particularly give a monkey's one way or t'other. They certainly don't seem to give a damn about all the job losses which are occurring (Mr Abbott said earlier this week he considered his government to be "the Australian worker's best friend", which argues either a thoroughly warped definition of friendship, or a possibly psychotic level of detachment from the consensus reality).
[Before anyone says anything about this: yes, I'm aware job ads tend to have criteria which are listing the ideal, and employers tend not to find their ideal employee anyway. Yes, I'm aware I should be applying for anything which seems to even vaguely fit my abilities and skills, and not worry about the experience criteria. But really, can anyone please explain to me how doing so is any different, at my end of the equation, to buying a lotto ticket every week?]
In the last few weeks, I've been noticing an up-tick in the number of jobs which are effectively demanding applicants have between two and five years experience, minimum, in the position they're applying for. Or in other words, it's suddenly becoming a lot harder to break into the job market unless you have experience. It's also suddenly a lot harder to trade up within the job market.
Now, I'm theorising here, but I suspect this is due to an influx of CVs and applications from people who are under thirty, and who are desperate to get employed before the Budget legislation is passed through the Senate (because they have to work on the presumption it's going to be passed unaltered; pray for amendments, but plan for the full horror). Employers are getting flooded with applications for any job they offer, and as a result, they're tightening up their selection criteria. The first thing to go is the option to take on someone who might need a bit of training. The end result, of course, is experience criteria get tagged onto just about any job.
Problem is, a certain amount of labour market participation is a condition of getting Newstart allowance here in Australia. The general level is an expectation of putting in applications for ten jobs a fortnight (twenty a month). One of the lovely conditions being proposed for younger unemployed people (i.e. those thirty years old or younger) is a minimum of forty job applications a month, or ten a week, whether or not they're receiving a payment. Which means employers are going to be confronted by more people applying for jobs they definitely aren't qualified for, and will correspondingly tighten up the selection criteria even further, making it even harder for inexperienced job seekers to get into employment.
I would venture a guess Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey aren't expecting either of these results. I'd also venture a guess they don't particularly give a monkey's one way or t'other. They certainly don't seem to give a damn about all the job losses which are occurring (Mr Abbott said earlier this week he considered his government to be "the Australian worker's best friend", which argues either a thoroughly warped definition of friendship, or a possibly psychotic level of detachment from the consensus reality).
[Before anyone says anything about this: yes, I'm aware job ads tend to have criteria which are listing the ideal, and employers tend not to find their ideal employee anyway. Yes, I'm aware I should be applying for anything which seems to even vaguely fit my abilities and skills, and not worry about the experience criteria. But really, can anyone please explain to me how doing so is any different, at my end of the equation, to buying a lotto ticket every week?]
no subject
That might be ok for a low-skill entry-level job where they literally just want your personal details and qualifications, but nowhere near enough if you want to research the company and write a good cover letter and tailor your CV to highlight how you what have matches what they are looking for.
Never mind of course how every company and agency wants the same basic data in a subtly different format, and prefer you to cut and paste your CV information into their special-snowflake form.
2-3 applications a week is just about reasonable, including time for actually finding vacancies, time for screening them for suitability, time for in-depth research on the best few, time to actually make them, etc etc.
Not to mention making time to go for the pointless fortnightly sign-in at the useless job centre where people less qualified than you alternately patronise you or seem confused by your CV. (or is that just here?)
no subject
Not only are people under the age of thirty supposed to be looking for ten jobs a week, they're also supposed to be doing this on no income. One of the more frightening provisions of the Abbott government's first budget is removing the option of receiving Newstart allowance (i.e. the dole) from people thirty or less for their first six months of unemployment, and then only allowing it for six out of twelve months after that. The aim as they state it is to get young people to "earn or learn"... meanwhile the number of jobs in our economy hasn't increased, and they've basically given the universities the option to go as high as they like charging fees, and removed more government funding from the technical colleges (TAFE) forcing them to raise their fees.
As for our equivalent of the job centres (Job Network), effectively, if you're young, fresh out of school or university, and without obvious literacy, language, or health (physical or mental) issues, you qualify for Tier 1 assistance. This means your Job Network provider is paid the princely sum of $9 per annum to assist you, it being presumed you're capable of finding work on your own. For this $9 per year, you'll get one induction, during which they may or may not explain to you the rules you'll be expected to follow, and access to the three or four crappy computers each Job Network provider supplies for their clients to use for job search. You get a monthly call up from them for an interview, at which you're expected to provide evidence of job search activity, and you're provided with an updated Employment Pathway Plan, and if you're lucky, there may be time in the interview for you to ask the harried office junior who's performing the role whether they're able to help you in any way (answer: no, not really; not until you've been unemployed for twelve months, at which point they're authorised to move you onto a more intensive job search plan. This generally translates to "you have to do your job search in our office so we can see you're not slacking off").
Of course, the base policy assumption behind Australian unemployment policy is this: if you're unemployed, you're also clearly uneducated, unskilled, unmotivated, and unintelligent, because if you weren't, someone would have employed you by now. From this assumption, flows the presumption the majority of unemployed people aren't looking for specialised work, but rather that they're looking for jobs in fields where workers are fungible - things like fast food, retail, factory work (oh, hang on, they're trying to get rid of that), commercial cleaning and so on. So why would they need multiple hours to write a CV and such?
(Not to mention the base assumption which appears to be at the core of all of this government's policy making: if you aren't a Liberal party politician, you're a mug who deserves to be fleeced.)