Job Market – Paul's Tech Talk

The Shocking Link Between Rising Unemployment and Fake Job Listings!

PaulJuly 5, 2024

Unemployment is on the Rise!

As you can see this is the current unemployment rate from the BLS reports. If you want to dig deeper, you can but the real concern is that it has jumped from 3.5%( Last June 2023) to 4.1 This year. That’s a .6% rise in a year and it’s not going down. Unemployment is going up and if we look at the unemployment rates from 2006 you can see once it started to rise, it went fast upward. This seems to be the something that will happen again. We might not get up to 10% but we will get past the 6% to 7% rate and it might even stay there for some time. I’d say maybe a 1 or two years. The Feds might have to do something soon to prevent this from going higher than that this year by introducing rate cuts in the coming months.

Fake Jobs and Scams are on the Rise!

Ghost Jobs, and Fake Jobs are being posted on every job board around just to bolster the companies moral and keep employees happy. I’m even seeing more job scams getting into my email box and I even documented some of the ones that I have seen in the past few weeks. Here’s a small list of them:

I’ve talked about some of these are more in the past and I’m really concerned with where the job market is right now and what companies are doing to the job seekers and potential new employees. Is it morally right to go through the process of interviewing candidates if they aren’t going to hire you and is it even right to put up those jobs if you aren’t really hiring. I’d says it is but I am sure others would disagree with me. I understand the concept.

Job Interviews

I’ve got a job interview with a company in the next two weeks and they have reposted the job on Linked-in. That seems more than smells of something rotten but I will patiently wait and see what they do when I go through the interview. I am dubious that they aren’t going to hire me but I have to make an effort to do that. Another company which is local is interviewing me and wants me to come back in for an “IT Support Analyst” position, which I don’t understand but I will go and do the interview with someone else for one reason or another. Is the job market so bad that companies are being ultra picky on who they will hire and who they want to join their team? I would say most likely yes and it’s really one of those things we will have to see in the coming months. The pendulum has swung to the employers side and we are just going to go through the motions of trying to find a job and go through more excessive interviews to get that one job we are looking for to being able to survive the impending recession, which we may already be in.

Have you had any fake job stories you want to talk about, why not leave a comment and tell us your story. I’d love to hear your experiences on the subject matter and maybe it will help others avoid the same mistakes.

Prevailing winds of Job Scams being on the Rise in 2024

PaulMay 14, 20241 Reply

Identifying Potential Job Scams

I recently got an email from a what looks to be from a Froelich-Engeerscarrer.com. I wanted to share with you how to identify that it is most likely just scam and not even replying to these types of emails.

Email that I received:

Hello Applicant,

I hope this email finds you in great health.Froelich Engineers, Inc,welcomes your application for the Remote IT Support Specialist position on LinkedIn. Your impressive qualifications and experience have attracted our curiosity, and we would like to invite you to an interview.

We believe you have the potential to be an essential member of our team, and we hope to learn more about you. As we discover more about you via the interview, you will have a better understanding of our organization.

If you choose to advance with the interview process, please respond to this email with a simple “YES”. We’ll contact you about the next stages.

We appreciate your interest in joining our team and look forward to hearing from you.

NB:If you receive this message before please ignore.However if didnt kindly respond

Best regards.

Thomas Trosten (thomastrosten@froelich-engineerscareer.com)

As you can see there are several red flags in the message because of not quite English. Here’s what I noticed of the bat with this email. ONLY asking you to reply with a YES instead of sending a calender invite to video chat. Also the spelling in the DIDNT and no spacing in the first paragraph between the period indicates this is a mail merge or some kind of email.

Investigating the company and Domain

When I get these types of emails and am curious to see if they may be real or not, the first place I go is looking up the domain they are supposedly sending from. Froelich-engineerscareer.com:

After checking with the domain tools website this was just created a few days ago. So that’s another good red flag but the real red flag is that on the main website. They say this on their careers page:

Scam or No Scam!

Being that they are using bad English and that I they aren’t using the right email address and even that domain they are sending from is just days old, I would have to assume this is a scam and that it isn’t real and that you shouldn’t trust anything they say if they contact you about a possible job. It’s more and more looking just like a big phishing or money scam that they are trying to do and you should avoid these types of email scams that might come your way.

Always check the company you are getting solicited from before you even consider taking the job. They are doing their own research on you and you should be able to do the same research back to see if they are real or just fake jobs trying to fool the many out their who might need a job. Don’t ever stop researching companies as you are applying for them.

More signs of Economic Trouble for the US!

PaulMarch 18, 2024

More Retail stores are closing!

Family Dollar and Dollar Tree are to close nearly a 1,000 stores and that will equal out to almost 5,000 people who will be laid off and without a job. I don’t say that lightly, you have at the minium about 3 to 5 people working either full time or part time at the store and that is just a guess but I also know this will not just affect the workers of the stores but transportation of goods to the stores and warehouse people. That’s why I suspect it will be 5,000 people will most likely be affected if not more people due to not having these stores be open. I don’t know the exact number but that is the economic troubles in the US right now and that isn’t the only thing.

Joan’s Fabric Files for Chapter 11

Well it’s official Joan’s Fabric just files for Chapter 11 protection, but that isn’t all. This is all do people not spending money on luxury items and other things that isn’t essential to living such as rent, food, gas, and power for the home. It however doesn’t mean that Joan’s will close up shop but I suspect they will do some people reduction and decide what they are going to change in the stores. They will become a private owned store again and that will likely drop the stocks of the Joan’s and make it even harder for them to continue their business. We will have to wait and see but this is something that will cause more economic turmoil in the US.

Key Indicators for a Recession

There are few indicators that I would like to point out that show we might be going into a recession even more.

Lay offs — The first one is of course people getting laid off more than the jobs are being created. If people aren’t working that just brings us down a spiral of people not being able to pay for the extra stuff in their lives. That will also affect other industries such as retail and gasoline/OIL.
Retail Stores — As you can see there are some major stores having issues being open and this is another key indicator that we are in a recession due to the amount of news around stores closing or that they are filing for bankruptcy.
Oil / Gasoline — Since people aren’t driving more or traveling more the Gas Prices and oil prices aren’t going up in fact mostly going down. If you really think about it, it was much higher last year compared to this year and it seems to be either leveling off or might just be going down even more.
Unemployment Rate — This is the last key factor that I’ve been watching but it suggest that unemployment will start to go up in the coming months. I suspect it will get above 6 or 7% at the minium and that isn’t going to look good for Biden Administration.

As you can see these are just a few indicators that we will not have a light landing or even a landing at all but a hard reset is probably coming in the coming months and that will cause a lot of turmoil in peoples lives. I really don’t want to think about what will come our way but this isn’t looking good either way. We will see other retailers have issues in the coming months I am almost sure of it, but who I don’t know we could keep watch on the stocks of certain retailers but that will only show us which stores are having problems or how confident the share holders are at keeping those businesses going. I suspect this will bring the stock prices of most retailers down some, don’t know how much but this is just a guess.

Want to say thank you — Why not buymeacoffee:

Job Essentials: Searching for real Jobs!

PaulMarch 15, 2024

from PxHere

Find real Jobs isn’t easy

How you find a real Job? It can be very frustrating that all these jobs available but are they real? As of today, I am thinking some of those jobs aren’t real. I’ve seen jobs come by and I applied for them and then they come back up in the next month or a few weeks. I thought it would be a good idea to talk about this even more. I know I’ve talked about Job Hunting 101: Mastering the Art of Applying for Positions. However, I thought we should deep dive into what most people are a calling Ghost jobs. It seems that these ghost jobs or companies are trying to suggest that they are looking for work but are just trying to farm applicants. Some of these companies are just trying to fool their workers that they are looking for people to help with their work. I have thought more and more that Jobs in 2024 will be harder to find and It seems that will continue through this recession that we are most likely going to have.

Finding Real Jobs

Are there real jobs in the job Market? Most of the people are looking for jobs right now than ever before in the past. I’m seeing more people being laid off, and that can be a real problem in looking for a real job online. Here are some of my tips to know if the job is real or not, and you can possibly save yourself some time and effort:

Use Indeed’s company reviews – If the company in question is really below 3 or 2.5 you can probably guess they aren’t going to be Here is some points to make though. If you see people making comments that the work life balance isn’t good that is probably an employer or is trying to fool their employees and keep them there.
Vague job postings – This seems to be another tactic that is being talked about by everyone around that companies are just posting jobs to crowd source when they do begin to hire. You might just get a bite a few months down the line if you applied to jobs like that.
Listings are closed – Here’s another tactic for employers they will intentionally keep the listing active just in case the job applicant quits while being trained or something like that. They also may be overwork and just forgets to remove the listing. Either way this one can be quite frustrating.

Job hunting fatigue is real thing and most people don’t understand it. The truth of the matter is that you can find a job even right now if you really go a different route. Connect with recruiters on LinkedIn and create content to highlight what you’re good at is one way to find those jobs that companies are wanting to fill. Create Google Alerts for keywords for jobs that you are looking for new jobs. However this will occasionally bring in those Ghost Jobs because companies will re-post the same job and Google will see these as new jobs and not old jobs. So you should be cautious about which ones to apply to. Networking is the best way I can tell you to finding a job, because it is something that has been proven in the past to land a job even in my case. If you know someone who works at Microsoft, they can probably put in a good word for you to get that job you are wanting.

Remember, you’re not alone in this more and more are finding my job asking the same questions. Don’t forget to check out Strategic Job Applications: How AI Can Be Your Secret Weapon to help you craft that cover letter and make sure your getting past the filters that is setup to be seen by a recruiter or hiring manager.

Confirmed : A large amount of Lay offs in April and May!

PaulMarch 12, 2024

It’s looking like a big problem coming our way!

Gulf Stevedoring Services, LLC – 11 to 50 People – 4/30/2024
Safran Cabin, Inc. – 251 -500 People – 4/30/2024
Denbury Inc – 101 – 250 People – 4/30/204
Expedia – 101 – 250 People – 4/30/2024
BuzzFeed – 51 to 100 People – 4/30/2024
Levi Strauss & Co. – 101 to 250 People – 4/27/2024
Del Monte Foods, Inc. – 101 to 250 People – 4/26/2024
UPS – 251 to 500 People – 4/27/2024
Rio Grand Valley Sugar Growers – 251 to 500 People – 4/29/2024 (*)
AVMAC LLC – 101 to 250 People – 4/30/2024
RaterLabs – 2501 to 5,000 People – 4/6/2024
Walmart – 101 – 250 People – 5/31/2024
Cisco – 451 to 1000 People – 4/15/2024

I perused the Warntracker and got some of the data to show you just how much this might a be problem coming to all of us. As of writing this today 3/12/2024, this could become even more people who will be told they are laid off. The real question is, are you keeping track of your own company that you are working for to help you prevent yourself from getting laid off. If you are in a big company and you are worried you might be next the best thing I can tell you to do is create alerts for you using Google and have them be sent to you as soon as Google finds out about it. Google will send that to your email when and how often you tell it to. As of right now Q1 is almost to the 50,000 employees who have been laid off.

My thoughts

Other than Rio Grand Valley Sugar Growers, All the other ones are probably not normal. I don’t know about Rio Grand and if they are laying people off due to growing seasons but I do not think this is going to end well for the industry as a whole. Each one of these are not just tech but are in the Retail, Technology, food, and other areas. So you can see this will impact a lot of people around the US and the world to be able to find a job. I’ve talked about finding a job is hard right now, this will make even harder for everyone to do so many people will be looking for work if they don’t get severance pay or some kind of pay. They will not be able to get unemployment for a while if they are claiming severance and that could cause problems down the road for other workers. What we will see in the coming months are people working harder for less pay, I am almost sure of that, if something isn’t done and the Fed will probably not cut interest rates right now due to down turn of the economy. This will be a short blog post but it should show you to at least be watchful of what to come.