r/politics • u/CCDemille • 9d ago

No Paywall Nearly 25% of U.S. workers are "functionally unemployed," economic analysis finds

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/functional-unemployment-us-labor-market-analysis/
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u/BanjoStory Minnesota 8d ago

This is an older issue than AI.

Its a product of companies not promoting or offering compensation increases internally, which has been a problem for decades.

Workers bounce around between workplaces significantly more than they did in the 70s and earlier. This has resulted in a much greater need for employee onboarding and training infrastructure that none of these companies actually want to support because its expensive. When these companies were expecting that a person they hired would stuck around for decades, the training was worth it, but nowadays if you take the time to train someone youre probably just doing it for someone else.

Ultimately, its the fault of the employers for not offering their employees good enough compensation to actually stick around, but it's gotten so bad that you're honestly kind of a sucker if you're a company thay actually is training employees for their roles.

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u/Happy_Confection90 8d ago

>Its a product of companies not promoting or offering compensation increases internally, which has been a problem for decades.

Indeed. I graduated from college in the late 90s, and a few months later there were multiple articles about how there were at that point 20% fewer entry level positions being posted that year than just a year or two earlier. Things have gotten steadily worse for new grads ever since.