Pink Collar Job Growth is Outpacing Blue Collar Job Growth

[dfrecore]

The article is explaining why so many men are choosing to stay unemployed or stay with unstable employment. One of the reasons is that so many men either don't have families, or they don't feel obligated to take care of their children. 

If I'm unemployed, I'll take anything.

Sure, I think anyone would, but in a lot of these cases, they aren't jobs these men would just be offered straight up, they would be careers that would require training and/or education in order to enter. These cultural walls are so subconscious, that most men wouldn't even realize that they were on the table. Most people just think of what they would like to do or could see themselves doing when they think about switching careers, they don't systematically research all possibilities.

And saying you'll take ANY job if you're unemployed is not that practical.  I mean, do you just throw out your resume to EVERY job in your area?  I wouldn't even know what was available.  You kind of have to look up jobs by type, and then see if you're qualified.  I wouldn't even know where to start in looking for jobs I've not heard of, or know are available.

And, BTW, I would be a TERRIBLE preschool teacher - and even if they'd hire me, do you want to send your preschooler to be with ME every day - someone who doesn't really want to be there?  It's not really something just anyone can do.  I could be a receptionist, but no one would hire me because I'm WAY overqualified.  And I guarantee you they're not going to hire some blue-collar guy to be one!  How about working at a store in the mall?  Are they going to hire a 50yo unemployed construction worker at Abercrombie & Fitch?  Probably not.

Survival of the fittest. The Internet makes it easy to search for jobs. If you can't manage to do it, then you'll stay unemployed or broke. Hopefully, you won't procreate. 

I've worked a wide variety of jobs in male-dominated and female-dominated fields. I remember when I was being laid off as a newspaper carrier over a decade ago. The warehouse workers were also being laid off. One of them asked me which section of the newspaper I was looking at, and I told him all of them. He said, "You must know how to do a lot." I didn't; I previously did fast food and telemarketing. He said that he was only looking at the general labor section because that's all he had experience in. I took a job as a security officer, and I had never worked in security or any other criminal justice-related job before. I've also worked in healthcare and transportation with no experience. I now work in taxation with no tax experience. Some of the people hired with me don't have degrees; they qualified based on having customer service experience even though it had nothing to do with taxation or accounting. Most of the employees are women, but any guy who has dealt with people for several years would meet the minimum requirements.

A lot of employment problems are caused by people not having basic job searching skills.

Yes, but job searching skills are even more complex now.  How would I search for every single job available in my town?  There's no real way to do that.  Newspapers were easy back in the day; I could sit down and go through the entire help wanted section, and grab every single job that was remotely interesting, I thought I could do, etc.  Now, you have to know what you're looking for BEFORE you look for it.  You can't just tell a search engine "give me all of the jobs available in XYZ city," it doesn't work that way.  You need to look up job titles.