The quadruple whammy against unemployed men in America

[MattHanson1990]

Today's US job market is just as cynical and frustrating as its dating scene because of the barriers I'm going to list here.

Employers don't hire strangers
These days it's virtually impossible to get a job in America, unless you have connections with friends, family, or (former) bosses/coworkers. It's not what you know but who you know that'll get you a job. Even if you fill out an application in person, it still does not guarantee an interview. Apply in person or online, you usually either get a notification that you were rejected or no response. So unless you have connections, you're completely shut out of the job market in America.

Many companies give job preference to women
In addition to the aforementioned, it is much easier for women to get hired these days. Just take a look and you'll see that a majority of those in the workforce are women and very few men. Ratios can vary between 3 women for every 1 man, 5 to 1, 3 to 2, and so forth. During the Great Recession, most of the jobs lost were those in male-dominated sectors, and those that did come back were in female dominated sectors such as jobs in the service industry, HR, healthcare, and education. Additionally, women have been taking on previously male-dominated jobs. There are more female bosses than male ones, and most female bosses don't want to hire men.

There are no more entry-level jobs
This leaves a large percentage of those unemployed and particularly those new to the labor force out in the cold. Even if you lower your standards to rock bottom, minimum wage part time hours, it's still a losing game. The HR lady would say "Aren't you overqualified?" Or even for the most simplistic jobs, employers will want a ridiculous amount of previous experience. And no wonder teenagers and 20-somethings are completely shut out of the job search. Baby boomers are simply taking all the jobs.

Most female bosses and co-workers are dysfunctional
If you're a male worker in a female dominated workplace, female bosses and female coworkers will make blatant remarks and complaints about you in order to get you fired. These days, drama and failure are praised in the workforce while getting work done and leadership are now frowned upon. American women causing drama in the workplace caused departments to shut down or cost the company thousands of dollars. And this was part of the cause of the recent economic downturn.

In summary, you can't get a job in the US unless you have connections. Many companies also give job preference to women; and in some parts of the country, women are getting paid more than men. Almost every job requires previous experience, so there are virtually no more entry level jobs; teenagers and recent college graduates are completely shut out of the job search. But even if you get a job, female coworkers ands female bosses will make as much effort as possible to get you fired.

The best solutions are self-employment doing what you love, entering the blue-collar industry, or looking for jobs abroad such as TESL.

[Ghost]

.

[MattHanson1990]

The I have been able to do in America is get wage slave types of jobs, and only a handful. Once I got a degree and some experience, I still couldn't get anything. So I've firmly committed to teaching English abroad for the foreseeable future. (Which is what I really want to do because I love language and travel, so it isn't taking a lesser option. The lesser option would be staying in America and trying to stay afloat in retail hell.) My lowest point in America was working at a low-paying place where the management overtly favored lesbians and made sure to hire mostly sociopaths into management. I regret not leaving the country sooner. I could be a DoS or at least a senior teacher at a decent school in a city I want to stay in more long-term.

I don't see any hope here. Being an entrepreneur is probably a better bet now just because finding jobs domestically has become all but impossible. But that's not likely to make a lot of money unless you have a lot of luck and help on your side.

In the US, it doesn't matter what skills or experience you have. The candidate is selected ONLY because the hiring manager knows the candidate through connections, and more often than not, the candidate who got selected didn't have the skills and/or experience required for the position.

It also doesn't matter if you have a "useless" degree or a "practical" degree. College degrees no longer guarantee ANY kind of job no matter how well it pays; in most cases if you lower your standards to rock bottom, you're overqualified.

To find any job in America, your best bet is to head for one of the red states, particularly Texas. The blue states are where the odds of even getting hired at McDonald's are stacked against you. In California and Illinois for instance, women are now getting paid more than men, while men are getting cuts in their pay checks or losing their jobs; many companies in California and Illinois give job preference to women. It's also hard to find jobs in New Mexico but for different reasons. New Mexico has always been an economic backwater part of the U.S., even when the nation's economy overall was healthy.

In Toronto, which is feminist capital of North America, millennial men are moving back in with their parents permanently after graduating from college; there are literally no available jobs for men in Toronto.

[Ghost]

.

[MattHanson1990]

For salaried jobs anyway, yes, it is all about who you know. In my field, teaching, it seems that there are no longer any jobs where teachers are hired without having connections first. And in these small towns, there's always someone's nephew's friend's cousin that somebody knows who wants the same jobs. The few times I did have connections to give me a leg up, I still got rejected. Within a couple years though I can make more money in teaching abroad than I would make teaching here. So I hope this story will have a happy ending where I can tell the system to f**k off completely because I have absolutely no need of it.


I expect we'll see more violence as more men lash out from desperation. We've seen incel killers, and I think jobless killers aren't too far off. There's no way to hide how shitty things are for men anymore, therefore more men will be coming out of the matrix - whether they want to or not.

As far as having connections, it's a no-win situation for men, from what Andy told me. And I thought that it's all about who you know that'll get you any job no matter if it's a job at McDonald's or a decent-paying job. Also, most jobs in America don't pay that well with respect to the cost of living, and no wonder so many Americans are working multiple jobs to make ends meet.

And as far as men lashing out from desperation, I've read news articles about unemployed men stealing from banks.

[Cornfed]

Hopefully there will soon be a tipping point where men stop trying to curry favor with the system when it becomes obvious that their efforts are futile and instead start fighting back. We really need to concede that you are pushing shit uphill trying to get ahead in the West these days.

[Moretorque]

That is the point I am trying to make but the youth still are not there, I think the chemicals may be working on us. Somebody from 50 years ago would look at this and say what the hell but the thing that gets me is how in the hell can the work force who is retired now who worked in the 60's still not see what has happened to this generation getting out of school.

It's like as long as the social security checks and the con is still putting purchasing tickets in their pocket they do not care, socialism is such a con and people do not mind the fact it is based on lies as long as they get theirs.

[MrMan]

Teaching English overseas is a good opportunity for young men who find themselves without job opportunities. I spent the early years of my young adulthood doing that and returned to the US with a pregnant wife in the early part of this millennium, expecting to be able to get a job. It was just so easy to get an ESL/EFL teaching job, it left me with a false sense of how easy it is to get a job. The economy wasn't all that hot at the time. I did take one job at a non-profit, but the organization ran out of money and shut down, and I went back overseas to find a teaching job and found one in a month or two of looking.

When I had kids and raised my standards to closer to $2000 a month and rejected jobs that didn't pay that much (in Indonesia) I was unemployed for over six months. Korea or Japan have higher paying opportunities.

I worked in Korea teaching English as my first overseas job. Pay was $1600 a month plus airfare and a place to stay and a few benefits. I may have had health insurance but didn't go the doctor while in Korea. I don't even remember having a cold. I didn't go for diarrhea, a frequent occurrence if you live there. I don't know if some places wash the vegetables for the kimchi in tap water or if you eat the local cuisine that it can just keep you in a borderline diarrhetic state.

The downside of teaching ESL is if you actually want to have a family, $1800 a month to $2000 with some benefits and a one bedroom apartment or shared apartment may be fine for an English teacher in Korea right now, but if you marry and have kids, can you support your family on that salary well as it grows? After some graduate studies, I'm looking for a teaching job overseas in a different field. I've sent out a lot of resumes, but the only interview I've gotten is at a school overseas where I know one of the professors and he sent my CV to the dean and told him about me.

In the US, you have to know someone, I agree. You may be able to get a job turning in a CV to a stranger without a connection. But I've probably submitted 500 CVs and resumes over the years through websites like Indeed or directly with employers through brass ring and never gotten a call from anything that was a seriously decent paying job. Some ads I've responded to for undesirable jobs that spun the job well on Craigslist called me back. Come to think of it, I had one interview series of interviews for a sales job in the travel industry that I applied to through a website that was given to another employer, they said, because they thought grad studies would distract me.

There used to be a directemployers site, but you can get the same feature from usa.jobs with an account using search features. You can go directly to the employers website instead of following adds for expired jobs, and adds that take you to a website here you come up with a password, only to be taken to another website with a password.

If you do work abroad in some countries, there may be a legal framework for you to start your own business. If you are studying, getting a business degree just to know a little about how to figure out how to turn a profit may be a good idea, if you want to teach English overseas. You could get a certificate to know how to do the job. Another alternative is to study to be a teacher, student teach, and then get a decent-paying gig at an international school overseas. It may pay less than a US school, but in a cheap economy with us of an apartment or house included. One 'national plus' school in Indonesia put me up in a nice community that had a pool and some broken gym equipment. The house was really nice with three bedrooms, a solar water heater, and marble floors. Pay was lower than the US, but I wasn't able to teach in the US without an education degree. I'd have been able to get a better job in Indonesia if I had.

What you look at is how much money you have left over at the end of the month after expenses and salary and compare that to the US. If your job alternative is McDonalds, Walmart, or full-time bottom-rung-of-the-ladder retail, Asia may be a much better alternative

[MattHanson1990]

Teaching English overseas is a good opportunity for young men who find themselves without job opportunities. I spent the early years of my young adulthood doing that and returned to the US with a pregnant wife in the early part of this millennium, expecting to be able to get a job. It was just so easy to get an ESL/EFL teaching job, it left me with a false sense of how easy it is to get a job. The economy wasn't all that hot at the time. I did take one job at a non-profit, but the organization ran out of money and shut down, and I went back overseas to find a teaching job and found one in a month or two of looking.

When I had kids and raised my standards to closer to $2000 a month and rejected jobs that didn't pay that much (in Indonesia) I was unemployed for over six months. Korea or Japan have higher paying opportunities.

I worked in Korea teaching English as my first overseas job. Pay was $1600 a month plus airfare and a place to stay and a few benefits. I may have had health insurance but didn't go the doctor while in Korea. I don't even remember having a cold. I didn't go for diarrhea, a frequent occurrence if you live there. I don't know if some places wash the vegetables for the kimchi in tap water or if you eat the local cuisine that it can just keep you in a borderline diarrhetic state.

The downside of teaching ESL is if you actually want to have a family, $1800 a month to $2000 with some benefits and a one bedroom apartment or shared apartment may be fine for an English teacher in Korea right now, but if you marry and have kids, can you support your family on that salary well as it grows? After some graduate studies, I'm looking for a teaching job overseas in a different field. I've sent out a lot of resumes, but the only interview I've gotten is at a school overseas where I know one of the professors and he sent my CV to the dean and told him about me.

In the US, you have to know someone, I agree. You may be able to get a job turning in a CV to a stranger without a connection. But I've probably submitted 500 CVs and resumes over the years through websites like Indeed or directly with employers through brass ring and never gotten a call from anything that was a seriously decent paying job. Some ads I've responded to for undesirable jobs that spun the job well on Craigslist called me back. Come to think of it, I had one interview series of interviews for a sales job in the travel industry that I applied to through a website that was given to another employer, they said, because they thought grad studies would distract me.

There used to be a directemployers site, but you can get the same feature from usa.jobs with an account using search features. You can go directly to the employers website instead of following adds for expired jobs, and adds that take you to a website here you come up with a password, only to be taken to another website with a password.

If you do work abroad in some countries, there may be a legal framework for you to start your own business. If you are studying, getting a business degree just to know a little about how to figure out how to turn a profit may be a good idea, if you want to teach English overseas. You could get a certificate to know how to do the job. Another alternative is to study to be a teacher, student teach, and then get a decent-paying gig at an international school overseas. It may pay less than a US school, but in a cheap economy with us of an apartment or house included. One 'national plus' school in Indonesia put me up in a nice community that had a pool and some broken gym equipment. The house was really nice with three bedrooms, a solar water heater, and marble floors. Pay was lower than the US, but I wasn't able to teach in the US without an education degree. I'd have been able to get a better job in Indonesia if I had.

What you look at is how much money you have left over at the end of the month after expenses and salary and compare that to the US. If your job alternative is McDonalds, Walmart, or full-time bottom-rung-of-the-ladder retail, Asia may be a much better alternative

These days, pretty much the only jobs we hear back from are scam jobs, in America that is. Scammers really screwed things up.

[Ghost]

.

[MattHanson1990]

I particularly hate it when a job ad has you apply online and says "No phone calls". The "no phone calls" is absolutely discouraging.

Then, a female boss who manages a supermarket in my area asked to see my social security card to see her in the office again. And I think most female bosses are just creating obstacles for men to get hired.

[MrMan]

MattHanson1990, if she wanted to hire you, she'd ask for either your license and social security card, or else a passport, or other similar documentation.

[Wolfeye]

the first & third parts are both pretty damn true.

[Anatol]

Hopefully there will soon be a tipping point where men stop trying to curry favor with the system when it becomes obvious that their efforts are futile and instead start fighting back. We really need to concede that you are <> <> uphill trying to get ahead in the West these days.

THE PROBLEM IS THAT AMERICAN MEN ARE TOO DEMENTED AND TOO ARROGANT TO ADMIT THAT THEY MADE A MISTAKE. THIS IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH YOU AMERICAN IDIOTS.

[fightforlove]

Thinking about it, I probably landed the two jobs that have constituted the majority of my engineering career by talking music with my interviewer/future boss. They both related, especially my current boss, who also plays guitar and is building his own amp. All those late nights studying for thermodynamics, calculus, and physics exams and it was my spare time spent playing guitar and listening to cool music that landed me paid engineering gigs.