McDonald's held a "National Hiring Day" this year, and accepted 62,000 applications out of a million. Even near-minimum-wage drudge work is scarce compared to the number who will take it.
Following Joel Spolsky's logic, there could easily be 938000 people who are unqualified for any job. On the other hand, every single one of the 62,000 qualified people who applied was hired. Thus, all employers will have low hiring rates, and yet finding a job is easy for qualified applicants.
If you want to talk about scarcity of jobs, look at JOLTS data or even traditional BLS timeseries.
Talking about how one particular employer rejected a lot of applicants tells you virtually nothing.
This is McDonalds. I'm having trouble thinking of employment for which more people are qualified if at least (1) able-bodied and (2) have at least a middle-school education. There is virtually nothing beyond those requirements that needs to be taken into consideration. If 938000 applicants were rejected, I can only assume that the majority of the rejections were for reasons other than lack of qualification.
You are missing one important qualification to work at McD's: (3) conscientiousness.
When the boss says "someone pooped in the urinal", a McDonald's employee needs to say "yes sir" and go put on gloves. They also need to show up to work on time, take the 6AM shift when asked to, etc. Not all people are willing to do this.
According to many sociologists, a large number of lower class Americans lack conscientiousness. Go read this dead-tree book, for example (sorry, online sources are hard to find):
The focus of the book is on why poor single women choose to become single mothers, but it gives a great look into the work habits of the lower classes as well.
Not even remotely. I worked at an EB Games (hardly a prestigious retail outlet, but pretty decent). I had stoned-looking, unshaven, greasy-haired teenagers in ripped clothes and baggy jeans stagger into my store as if they were stoned out of their minds, throw down a folded-in-quarters resume on the counter, and say 'I'd like a job'. When I said 'Thanks, we'll let you know' they wandered off to play on the demo Xbox for ten minutes and then left.
Another guy came in, an overweight, sweaty, hillbilly-looking man in ratty jeans and a flannel shirt so worn out that there were obvious holes in the armpits, and I got the sense that hygiene was as important to him as fashion.
Then there's the women who come in with their son's resume (and occasionally even their sons) and try to get them a job.
I'd like to say 'For every talented, worthwhile individual we saw ten of these', but in three years of working there, I don't recall having spoken to a single person that made me think 'Hey, we should hire this guy', but I saw one person after another like this, people so unqualified for the job that I couldn't help but wonder if they really wanted to be employed at all, or if their parents or girlfriends were just tired of them lazing around the house and smoking pot and were forcing them to pretend to make an attempt.
My manager at EB used to manage a McDonald's, and he became one of those people who refuses to leave the drive-thru until he's gone through everything he ordered to make sure it's what he asked for. The reason? He's had to do hiring. The kids that are too blasted out of their minds to accomplish anything? The ones that stand there like idiots until you give them specific, detailed, step-by-step instructions which they immediately forget? The ones that don't actually understand what's happening, never really know how to do their jobs, and never take action on their own? Those, he said, were the best applicants he got. He hired these people because everyone else who applied was incapable of doing simple tasks even when instructed. These people were the cream of the crop.
So when McDonald's says they hired 6.2% of the people who applied to them, I also have a hard time believing them. I can't help but think, 'Really? That many? They must be desperate.'
It doesn't tell us how many are qualified, but it does tell us how many are not content to opt out of the economy and space out on Tube of FarmBook, at the very least because keeping the lights on long term is not as easy as the earlier comment speculated.
http://thecashflowisking.com/2011/04/30/1000000-applicants-f...