askchapo

I've been trying everything and I don't understand why it's extremely difficult to land a no-skill minimum-wage job.

unemployment is built into capitalism. if all able-bodied adults were employed, it would be hard to fire people and instantly replace them. Capitalists need there to be a permanent body of unemployed people who are so desperate that they will accept below-subsistence wages. That way, when a work force tries to unionize or strike, the capitalist can simply contrive a reason to fire everyone one by one, and replace them gradually with desperate unemployed people. This is called the "reserve army of labor." The capitalist class frequently deny that they want there to be unemployment, since that would contradict their claim that they are "job creators" (rather than job gatekeepers) but sometimes they'll admit it if they think wages are getting too high.

For example, real estate CEO Tim Gurner openly advocated for a reserve army of labour during an onstage appearance at the Australian Financial Review’s Property Summit:

I think the problem that we’ve had is that people have decided they really didn’t want to work so much anymore through COVID, and that has had a massive issue on productivity. . . . They have been paid a lot to do not too much, and we need to see that change. We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment needs to jump 40-50 percent, in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurt in the economy.

The Economist published a thinkpiece on November 24th, 2022, titled "Why American unemployment needs to rise," openly advocating for an increase in the size of the reserve army of labour:

As the tightest corner of the ultra-taut American labour market, Minnesota bears watching. Its unemployment rate has started to tick up, rising from 1.8% in June to 2.1% last month. It might seem perverse to call that good news, but one lesson from the past year is that excessively low unemployment really does hurt: it constrains and corrodes the services offered by hospitals, schools, restaurants and more. In Northfield there is at least one tiny hint that relief might be at hand. After a difficult dry spell, the HideAway, a downtown café, received four job applications over the past two weeks. From those it hired two sorely needed baristas. “We just got lucky,” reckons Joan Spaulding, its owner.

The Wall Street Journal published a thinkpiece on July 31, 2022, titled "Lower Inflation Likely Requires Higher Unemployment; How High Is the Question," also openly advocating for an increase in the size of the reserve army of labour.

In order to lower inflation] we need two years of 7.5% unemployment, or five years of 6% unemployment, or…one year of 10% unemployment

CNN published a thinkpiece on September 2, 2022, titled "Yes, the unemployment rate rose. Here’s why that’s good news." In that piece, United States Secretary of labour Marty Walsh was quoted as saying:

increasing the supply of available workers is positive for the economy, even if it does increase the official jobless rate

CBS published an article on September 30, 2022, titled "Buckle up, America: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment." In that piece, it is suggested that wage increases cause inflation, because wage increases cause the bourgeoisie to hike prices. In short, it is suggested that the prices of commodities are determined or regulated by wages.

Here's the idea behind why boosting the nation's unemployment could cool inflation. With an additional million or two people out of work, the newly unemployed and their families would sharply cut back on spending, while for most people who are still working, wage growth would flatline. When companies assume their labour costs are unlikely to rise, the theory goes, they will stop hiking prices. That, in turn, slows inflation.

The bourgeoisie justify all this with the idea that wages determine prices. This was firmly argued against by Marx in Chapter 5 of Value, Price and Profit (1865):

The dogma that “wages determine the price of commodities,” expressed in its most abstract terms, comes to this, that “value is determined by value,” and this tautology means that, in fact, we know nothing at all about value. Accepting this premise, all reasoning about the general laws of political economy turns into mere twaddle. It was, therefore, the great merit of Ricardo that in his work on the principles of political economy, published in 1817, he fundamentally destroyed the old popular, and worn-out fallacy that “wages determine prices,” a fallacy which Adam Smith and his French predecessors had spurned in the really scientific parts of their researches, but which they reproduced in their more exoterical and vulgarizing chapters.

Source: https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour particularly the section titled "bourgeois apologetics"

This was me from 18-22 in the US. I second what a lot others say: Lie on job applications, lie on resumes, lie in interviews. What’s the worst that could happen? They don’t hire you? You get a paycheck for a few months and then they fire you? Lying is absolutely paramount to breaking into the job market.

I take it you are both from and still in Asia so I have no idea what the job market in your country is like. But the universal answer to not being able to land a job is "Lie".

Also nice username.

how do I make money as a broke, skillness loser such as myself?

In addition to lying, I think hiring types are going to sniff this or at least not smell the value that you bring. There are a lot of jobs where the skills aren't as complicated as you might think. You're perfectly capable of word processing, navigating the Internet, and concisely transferring information to interested parties. For me, there was a gap between my perception of the difficulty of skills and the banality of it all.

If you want to maximize your positive perception, you're going to need to think of the manager you'd work under. They don't really want a broke, skill-less loser. Counterintuitively, they might not even care that you're a hard worker! Think about the lazy asshole that we all are. If you had a little automaton, a little golem that did your chores, what would you want from it? You'd want to set and forget it. You'd never want to have to troubleshoot it. You'd want it to work when it's supposed to. You wouldn't want to have to tell it what needs to get done. Doing a good job is all well and good, but if it did your chores such that your parents aren't upset with you for the chores not being done, you're living on easy street!

So, do you have the requisite skills? Sure, that's what the lying is for. But a bunch of other people have those skills. What don't they have? They will continue to ask questions over and over. You? You're a quick learner who grasps the bigger picture by the end of the interview. You're someone who likes to network and always find the most relevant party and only goes to the manager when the problem requires flexing hierarchical power. You're always punctual and have a keen eye for minimizing the number of complains customers give the department. You are there to make the manager's life easier, so they can take a risk with one of those other newbies who want to bloat the workload with questions, meetings, oversight, etc. or they can go with you who knows how to put their head down and shut the fuck up.

And then adjust that frame of mind accordingly. You might do some research on the manager to try and get an advantage or think about the kind of position you're applying for. A sales position is probably different than customer service is different than an office.

I am just as clueless as you on this, but do you think you could fit a multivitamin into your budget or shoplift them?

It's pretty easy to develop health complications from nutrient deficiencies on diets like that, I was B1 and zinc deficient while food secure.

Lie. If you haven't looked into washing dishes, that's generally easy entry cause the only way to tell is to see if you can do it. I dunno, I've been a kitchen guy forever so that'd the narrow scope of my advice.

imo it's all stochastic - get a pretty looking resume with good fluff and acceptable content (lying permissible but if you're like me it can get stressful to remember and keep tabs on so this depends on your personality), and then go on LinkedIn and search your city and click through as many easy apply listings as you can, it's very easy to apply for a hundred jobs in a half an hour sitting this way. just do this a few times a week and after you have a couple thousand applications in, the odds start stacking up

Are you still in Asia? ESL teaching jobs? They kind of suck generally speaking, but there's a lot of turnover

I can't give advice without specifics of where you are but please feel free to post in !mutual_aid@hexbear.net if you are struggling to pay for essentials.