The Computer Wore Menace Shoes

Nowadays, instead of being seen as cheap, the blank, rolled-up paper that stands in for a diploma in graduation ceremonies is seen as a powerful metaphor of the days to come afterward.

Perhaps that’s not the message CareerBuilder was trying to convey with its press release – and accompanying “look at us, we’re hip and use social media to promote ourselves,” shabbily written blog post – about the class of 2010′s job market outlook, but it’s supported more by the facts than claims that it’s improving.

First, the bad news. Career Builder’s Annual Job Forecast found that at 44 percent, the overall percentage of employers planning to hire recent college graduates this year has gone up only 1 percent from last year. Just three years ago, that number stood at 79 percent.

But, of those employers hiring recent graduates, 21 percent plan on hiring more of them than last year. So, of the less than half of employers planning on hiring members of the class of 2010, one-fifth of them will hire more of them than they did last year, even if that means last year they hired none and this year will hire one. (Are you feeling optimistic yet?)

That’s fine, but employees like to be paid, too. Not to worry; 16 percent of employers are upping the salary for new hires, something only 11 percent did last year. Five percent increase! Minimum statistical significance-five!

OK, but what does that translate to in annual dollars? Better hope you didn’t pile on too much student loan debt, because chances are you’ll be pulling down less than $40,000. Thirty-three percent of employers surveyed plan to offer less than $30,000, 30 percent plan to offer $30,000 to $40,000, 19 percent will offer $40,000 to $50,000 and another 19 percent will offer more than $50,000.

How are you supposed to get these jobs with the thousands of other 2010 (and 2009, and 2008) grads with the same degree? According to the employers surveyed, there are some areas of experience you should list on your résumé as related work experience.

• Internships, said 62 percent
• Part-time jobs in another area or field, said 50 percent
• Volunteer work, said 40 percent
• Class work, said 31 percent
• Involvement in school organizations, said 23 percent
• Experience managing sorority or fraternity events, said 21 percent
• Sports participation, said 13 percent

Surprise, employers are looking for practical experience and really don’t care what you did in school.

What else can you do to land a job if you’re a little light on experience? CareerBuilder North America President Brent Rasmussen has some tips.

Have you tried showing you have relevant experience? “Even if you don’t have years of professional work experience, be sure to include other related experiences – like community involvement or campus activities – on your resume,” reads the article. You know, those campus activities 30 percent or less of employers give a damn about!

Are you leveraging social media? Are you on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and authoring multiple blogs, and doing it all in a professional manner that markets your skills?

Keep in mind it helps to be flexible, which may mean looking outside your major, considering internships or temporary jobs and thinking about relocation. As someone who has applied for hundreds of various communications-related positions across the United States, I could not agree more.

And finally, use the job posting to tailor your résumé and cover letter to each employer. Sure, it’s time-consuming and will drive you a little nuts when your painstakingly crafted documents are met with a form letter rejection or never responded to, but you can bet it will be worth it when you land that first job that has nothing to do with what you learned during the last four to six years of your life and are making $26,000 a year.

Thanks, CareerBuilder!

"We were going to buy new appliances in a year or so, but we'll just do it now since the government is paying for part of them."

An Associated Press review of the recently ended Car Allowance Rebate System – irreverently known as “Cash for Clunkers” – found gas guzzlers were often swapped for vehicles that got “only marginally better gas mileage.” Not exactly the desired results of $3 billion in government spending.

On the heels of that finding, prepare yourself for Cash for Clunkers Part Deux. The federal government is expected to finalize the details of a $300 million program funded by February’s $787 billion economic stimulus that will create incentives for Americans to buy energy-efficient appliances.

The money may have been earmarked months ago, but the value of the program is still questionable. According to the Washington Post, appliance sales, which are closely linked to new home construction, are down 12 percent from last year and have been declining for the last three years. Hasn’t economic activity in general been declining over the last three years? How is $100 of government funds toward a new refrigerator going to correct that fiscal trend?

Energy efficiency is a great goal, but it’s not worth throwing billions in federal dollars at when it’s not the only aspect of kick starting the nation’s economic engine (especially when it fails). Unemployment is around 10 percent. Credit is hard to get. Those two factors are behind most of our economic woes. When people can’t get money to spend, they don’t spend money, even if the government is essentially marking down new appliances.

We’re starting to move down the path to economic stimulant addiction, and that’s not going to bode well for future performance. CARS didn’t create jobs or thaw credit as much as it encouraged people who could already afford or obtain credit for new cars to buy them a little bit earlier than they intended, and there’s little indication the appliance version is going to do anything more.

Barack Obama has a lot on his agenda, and there isn’t anything on it he can ignore. As February’s stimulus dollars pop up more frequently, however, his economic policy seems increasingly misguided. If the stimulus money can be used for its original goal of creating jobs, there is a better chance the recession will ease without government subsidies on big-ticket purchases

"Danke for making sure I was born in die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, Mutter und Vater!"

Perhaps noticing how much better life is for trust-fund babies, the federal government is considering setting up a $500 one for every newborn.

“Holy increasing per capita share of the national debt!” you say? Well, does an estimated cost of only $3.25 billion per year put you at ease? It doesn’t? Oh. Uh …

Maybe you would be interested to know that, aside from having a nifty acronym like all recent bills of note, the America Saving for Personal Investment, Retirement, and Education Act would give “every US citizen, national or qualified alien born after December 31, 2009″ an account with $500 to be used toward one of those purposes at age 18. Actually, from age 18-25, distributions from the account can only be to “an institution of higher education” as defined by the Higher Education Act of 1965. But that’s not the point.

The point is, the government has stumbled upon a foolproof way to avoid future economic problems: throw all the money you can down the toilet before citizens can do it for themselves. In the future, there will be no debate over bailouts, defense spending or healthcare reform. The 100th president will address the nation and simply say, “The United States economy must not fail, because due to the ASPIRE Act of 2009, the government is short $430 billion – approximately, from the writer’s scratch-pad math – from funding those retarded trust funds and, therefore, cannot afford any bailouts.” (The president will then be chastised for using “retarded” as an adjective to mean “bad.” Thankfully, some things won’t change.)

At least we can all feel better knowing this sort of program has been instituted elsewhere and proved successful. Great Britain has been doing the same thing since 2002, and it has given each eligible child a comparable amount without fail, “investing” in the neighborhood of $2.3 billion without a return. In 11 years, the first recipients will be eligible to withdraw from their trusts. (And they don’t have any restrictions.)

America simply can’t wait that long to know if this sort of program is a good idea, not when we already have the firm foundation of warm, fuzzy feelings about where it could lead. “Having an asset has the potential to change the way people think and plan for their future, and sometimes those effects can be generated just from small asset holdings,” said Reid Cramer, director of the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation.

If that doesn’t convince you, check out this part of the US News article about the bill:

Indeed, pioneering research by University of Michigan professor Michael Sherraden suggests starting individual savings accounts for lower-income people can lead them to feel more confident about the future. Recipients of such accounts also report feeling that they have greater control over their lives, including the ability to plan for education and retirement costs. Further studies have shown that owning assets is associated with greater empowerment and civic participation, increased income, and positive educational outcomes.

Maybe legislators could consider a slightly cheaper option.

The ASPIRE Act even includes a provision to create financial literacy programs in schools to make sure account holders manage them wisely. Hopefully someone can figure out how to impart the finance lessons in ways that don’t involve reading or math, because the United States didn’t rank among the top countries in the most recent Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development survey. Math scores were below average, and reading scores weren’t recorded because of a printing error.

And although it hasn’t been mentioned anywhere, I’m sure somebody along the way thought of the potential for abuse and fraud connected to such a program. FTC estimates put the number of identity theft victims in 2005 around 8.3 million (PDF), and you can bet if Social Security numbers are involved – When are they not? – a good number of 18-year-olds will go to spend their government trust funds and run into problems. Dangling $500 in front of anyone who can take advantage of it isn’t a recipe for economic success, no matter what the warm fuzzies say, something another recent, acronymed government spending program proved.

The recession is hurting everyone.

When adjusted for comparison to the last big recession, national unemployment is around 9.5 percent, 18 metropolitan areas have unemployment rates higher than 10 percent and Detroit, poster city for economic ruin, posted a 22.2 percent rate to start the year. American families lost 9 percent – $5.1 trillion – of their net worth in the fourth quarter of 2008.

In addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars already spent on bailouts, the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it would spend an additional $1.2 trillion (free registration may be required) to buy up assets in an attempt to jump start the flagging economy.

And the pinch is being felt worldwide – Morgan Stanley economists in London revised their 2009 global GDP growth estimate from -0.3 percent in February to -1.2 percent this month.

But the real sign that the recession has taken hold is scammers and con artists are changing their tactics. I received this e-mail today from Rev. David Johnson:

JOHNSON ENGINEERING COMPANY,
26, V-Island Road,
Ikeja Avenue,
Lagos-Nigeria.

Dear Friend,

I am Rev.David Johnson from Canada, I have been an international contractor that collects contract from Big Companies and countries, I got involved in one contract in Nigeria which my payment was refused, I was down and almost lose hope.

After 2 years of this contract, I later talked to God to assist me in getting
this money. I made a vow to benefit someone with the sum of Nine hundred thousand United State Dollars (USD $900,000) draft payment if my payment could be approved and to my surprise I was called upon by the Nigeria Government sometimes last month that my contract file have been looked into and it is ready for payment.I never believed it until I was advised by my Pastor and later moved down to Nigeria and to my unbelievable surprise I was paid this money.
Due to my pledge to God I have agreed to show the person that i will be sending the Nine hundred thousand United State Dollars (USD $900,000) through ballot system on the internet which happened to be your email so you are lucky. What you have to do now is to get in touch with my secretary Mr Robert Dennis and instruct him on how to send your USD $900,000 Bank draft to you.

BELOW IS THE CONTACT OF MY SECRETARY

Mr Robert Dennis
Office Phone : +234-708-404-4359
E-mail address: robertdennis002@chatdd.com

Send to my secretary your contact address and telephone number,let him make arrangement for the shipment of your draft to your doorstep and also you can give him a call to confirm your address.What I want you to believe now is that this is the opportunity which God have promised you this year so it is better you have it in time before it goes again from you so contact my secretary in time.And for your information presently i am in the United Kingdom for another contract so i want you to go into prayer with me for the success of this
contract.

With Best Regards,
Rev..David Johnson.

OK, so really the only things that changed were invoking God and saying he’s from Canada, Canadians being infinitely more trustworthy than any other nationality. I hear they don’t lock their doors up there.

If you can get past that, you’ll see it’s just the same old, tired Nigerian scam that’s been online since 2000. Look, it talks about Nigeria before Rev. Johnson even introduces himself. Why does a Canadian reverend have an engineering business in Nigeria, anyway? (Probably because he’s some sort of international super spy, but he can’t tell you that. Not this early in the game, and not through a transmission as insecure as e-mail.)

Of course, there’s the same request to contact somebody else entirely and the same atrocious grammar. Then again, he is a Canadian, so he probably knows English and French, and he does business in Nigeria and the U.K. Imagine how you’d sound if you started out saying things like “aboot” with that ridiculous cadence and then got all screwed up from those accents they have in Nigeria and the U.K. Poor man, it’s a miracle he can still form a coherent sentence.

In any case, keep an eye out as scammers stoop lower to stay afloat during the recession. You never know – one day they may break away from tradition and send you an offer that’s original and feasible if you’ve suffered a recent head injury.