About that 9% Unemployment Rate

My wife has been working part-time on-call at a local children's shelter.  She had worked there full-time, but it's pretty emotionally wringing, so she went part time instead.  However, they've been cutting hours a lot, so she's only been working one or two days a week, tops.  So she's decided to re-enter the workforce.

Now, granted, she left the full-time workforce about ten years ago to provide day-care for our grandkids, this after having worked at call centers for literally over a decade, first as an international long-distance operator, then as a dispatcher for a national automotive emergency service company when the company providing long-distance operator services lost their contract.  Since then she's worked at a couple of public schools, at the children's shelter, and one short stint as a deli worker at a local grocery store.

So now she finds that to apply for a job, you pretty much HAVE to have a computer with internet access - something she really doesn't like.  She's pretty much an internet widow as it is.  Having to, figuratively, ask my mistress for a job grates on her more than a little bit.  But what bothered her more than anything are the qualifications employers are asking for, and the stupid damned psychological tests they make you take now.  For example:  one local position open was for a part-time parking lot attendant.  They wanted someone with accounting experience.  Excuse me?  To sit in a booth and collect parking fees for minimum wage?  Part time?  That position, unsurprisingly, is still open.  I looked at some of the job openings out there.  I realize there are a lot of unemployed people out there, but since when do you need a college degree to work at a call center?  For $8 an hour?  (Maybe that Master's in Comparative Theology will pay off for someone!  Kinda tough to pay off the $120k in student loans on that salary, though.)

More to the point, though, pretty much every online application included a psych test - a timed psych test.  I was prompted, however, to do this post because of today's Dilbert cartoon:




No wonder it's tough to get a job.