By Anthony Biondi (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: June 6, 2012
“There is no bad job,” Jim Flaherty said in a statement at a news conference, “the only bad job is no job.” Ominous words for students hoping that an education will give them a better job and a better life. Flaherty’s statement was essentially a warning, that the definition of “suitable employment” may be soon changed for unemployed Canadians. A BA grad working at a gas station? Suitable.
But that seems so far away, it’s summer, and Shell gas stations are suitable employment right now. It’s job hunting time. There is one point of advice I would like to begin with: if you have a job already that you are unhappy with, do not quit until you have a new job that you are reasonably settled in with. Or just don’t quit. We can take some of Flaherty’s words to heart. Cling to anything.
Let me highlight a few facts for you. We are living through some form of a recession or another, and employers are getting stingy. They are giving fewer hours and paying less. They want to make the most out of their employees while paying as little as possible.
On top of this, the minimum wage was increased to $10.25 this year. This makes it so that employers want to make sure they are hiring the right people for the job. If you are unskilled or need training, this will make it much harder for you to start fresh. The job market these days is about what you can already do, not what they can train you to do. Even lower end jobs have some level of skill requirement.
I had recently gone through a difficult time with my previous employer. They had cut back hours to nearly nil. Because of this I went on a job hunt that lasted several months. I sent out resumes everywhere, and did not receive a single call back. It became discouraging and frustrating.
On my journey, I found that most places were not hiring at all. Half of Abbotsford, it seems, had no openings and the other half were above and beyond what I could do. There is a flood of people in the Fraser Valley, and all of them want work. Unfortunately, unskilled work is the first to fill, since there are so many of us that need to start from the bottom.
The minimum wage has gone up, and the amount a company can pay its employees has gone down. Throw in a dense population and you have a recipe for unemployment or minimal hours. This can make living in the Fraser Valley a veritable job hell. It is an unfortunate situation. Job hunting can now take months or longer, and the likelihood of finding something worthwhile is even harder.
So thanks, Flaherty. A lot of us have the “bad job,” i.e no job. Most of us have figured out that in any customer service, retail, hard labour minimum wage situation is like the inner circles of hell. But at least you have money – the purgatory of unemployment is worse yet. Flaherty’s message to the world: drop your dignity. And as students, we’ll do it, for now.
For those of us who are in college and trying to move forward with our lives—and out of the parent’s house—it can be a terrible experience. However, there is no choice. Unless you know someone or have a killer resume, you will just be added to the heaping pile of other resumes with skills just like yours. Have a good summer.
