Feel Like A Stranger

Job hunting in the submerging world

Most Companies Would Rather Hire Older Workers Than Younger Generation Latest Results from The Harris Poll

U.S. hiring managers are on the hunt for full-time talent, and many (79%) report a rising tide of older workers vying for entry-level roles compared to three years ago.

This is according to a recent survey from The Harris Poll commissioned by Express Employment Professionals.

In a 15 mile public transit radius from downtown San Francisco this simply is false saying a senior is viewed as full time talent. First, business closures are tremendous. Second, job openings are slender for all but below age 50 and honestly age 30 is ideal or recent college graduates. The highly skilled are not taking a low end job. Or if so, these are situated differently in the market. I need the money, this senior writer is skilled in sales, perfectly willing, happy accepting bottom dollar full time, because my cheap rent and a miniscule pension combined to a wage, is more months of money before the bottom falls out. One month full time is two months rent in bank and a little left over for current month bills. In my own case I apply for entry-level jobs that seem more fun than slamming phones and pitching software. Turned down usually. Turned down to sell olive oil to retail customers, turned down to sell software to educators, turned down by IKEA, and I am refused for various reasons to include my absence of retail experience or direct experience or age. Age is a major consideration though unspoken. If I was a person of color the impossible might be overcome, but unlikely as I see few outside of fast food. Even on the streets of the ghost town not many emerge from abandoned towers. Nor do I see them out on the Avenues.

The poll continues-

Furthermore, 60% of these hiring managers express a preference for hiring older candidates over younger ones for entry-level positions, highlighting a shift in perceptions about experience and maturity.

For the overall U.S. labor market, hiring managers say their sights are set on full-time talent acquisition, encompassing both hourly (55%) and salaried (51%) employees. Most commonly, companies are looking to hire for entry-level (53%, down from 63% in late 2022) and mid-level (52%, down from 58% in late 2022).

Sure sure Detroit say, or that small town on the banks of the Styx shipping to the world for Amazon.

One reason came to me yesterday sitting in a once very busy upscale health club waiting for my interview - astonishingly better than one could expect though all things considered improbable I would be hired over a capable younger person who is less weathered and withered and more able to toil -I realized the great shift had come. Everything can be virtual, even lived life, the 15 minute city will become a habit as online really is not a crime, and parking the car in the City is an invitation to crime. The economy sucks. Credit cards are maxxed. Luxury shopping withering. Dining out starving itself by costs passed on to consumers and costs passed on to owners. So funny to think of New Year’s eve 1999 driving out to the Ocean for a Y2K party and my friend now in New York leaning out the window with no one stirring shouting HUMANITY WO BIST DU?! The FiDi at 1:30 PM desolate. When I left after at 3:00PM still very quiet —not even a rat. Offices have fewer full time people with working from home and full time people mainly do not live in town. The neighborhoods of this City have more life but even so, small retail or candy or food or used clothes. Seniors in this City grub. And even at the Wharf I espy in fast food some seniors near my age but tourism is off and doubtlessly hours are cut.

36 years wandering these streets and never until now has the deepness of the emotion come to me of being a stranger in this very strange post-Covid pre-Pandemic II land. Heidegger says only a God can save us. As a former Catholic cum Nazi philosopher he embraced Hitlerian idolatry like many educated Germans who feared Communism. By the early 50’s no longer a Nazi but remaining a German who lived through two world wars Heidegger was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Technology was an important element in his work: for Heidegger, technology was the key to understanding our current time. Especially his text ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ (1954, English Translation 1977), which has been very influential in philosophy of technology. 69 years ago.

Heidegger’s analysis of technology in The Question Concerning Technology consists of three main ‘claims’: (1) technology is “not an instrument”, it is a way of understanding the world; (2) technology is “not a human activity”, but develops beyond human control; and (3) technology is “the highest danger”, risking us to only see the world through technological thinking.

And this brings me around to McGilchrist who argues the predominance of the Left Hemisphere in the West is destroying the human world. And I am corporeal man adrift on asphalt walking a long way to face the end of Western civilization at Land’s End. Lost in thought.

Ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity

The Journal of Lingering Sanity. A reader-supported publication. Surrealist truth not Ubu Roi Phynance duo-party line.  !ABAS “The time has come," the Journal said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings."