One of the scarier tendencies that have surfaced in the job market as a result of the current economic crisis is that many companies are refusing to hire people who are unemployed, irrespective of the reason for the unemployment:
In a current job posting on The People Place, a job recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries, an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, advertises for a "Quality Engineer." Qualifications for the job are the usual: computer skills, oral and written communication skills, light to moderate lifting. But red print at the bottom of the ad says, "Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason." In a nearly identical job posting for the same position on the Benchmark Electronics website, the red print is missing. But a human resources representative for the company confirmed to HuffPost that the The People Place ad accurately reflects the company's recruitment policies.
Read more about this completely insane and self-destructive tendency here.
I have to leave right now but I will blog soon about my analysis of what this tendency means for us and where it is likely to take us. In the meanwhile, feel free to leave your own interpretation of this troubling phenomenon in the comment section.
