Nailed a Job Interview? Prepare to Wait for an Offer
The improving job market may have more people looking for jobs, but the experience of doing so has gotten rougher.
Job seekers last year had to wait an average of 23 days after an initial interview to find out whether they gotten the job or not. That’s nearly twice the 13 days the interview process took in 2010, according to a new report from Glassdoor.com.
It’s also far longer than the global average of just under four days. Part of the reason for the extended process in the United States is an increase in the use of background checks, skills tests, and drug tests.
Related: The Top 10 Hiring Myths
Police officers faced the longest hiring process (128 days), followed by patent examiners (88 days), and assistant professors (58.7) days.
“Right now hiring delays can represent money left on the table both for workers and employers,” Glassdoor Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain said in a statement.
When employers can’t find the right worker, vacancies stay open for an average of two months, according to a separate report last spring by CareerBuilder. A fifth of employers said those vacancies stay open for more than six months, on average.
Those employers said the extended vacancies led to lower morale, a reduction in productivity, and declines in customer service.
Lower-skilled jobs tended to get filled most quickly. Entry-level marketing jobs were filled most quickly (four days), followed by entry-level sales (five days), and servers and bartenders (six days), according to the GlassDoor report.
Chart of the Day: SALT in the GOP’s Wounds
The stark and growing divide between urban/suburban and rural districts was one big story in this year’s election results, with Democrats gaining seats in the House as a result of their success in suburban areas. The GOP tax law may have helped drive that trend, Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung notes.
The new tax law capped the amount of state and local tax deductions Americans can claim in their federal filings at $10,000. Congressional seats for nine of the top 25 districts where residents claim those SALT deductions were held by Republicans heading into Election Day. Six of the nine flipped to the Democrats in last week’s midterms.
Chart of the Day: Big Pharma's Big Profits
Ten companies, including nine pharmaceutical giants, accounted for half of the health care industry's $50 billion in worldwide profits in the third quarter of 2018, according to an analysis by Axios’s Bob Herman. Drug companies generated 23 percent of the industry’s $636 billion in revenue — and 63 percent of the total profits. “Americans spend a lot more money on hospital and physician care than prescription drugs, but pharmaceutical companies pocket a lot more than other parts of the industry,” Herman writes.
Chart of the Day: Infrastructure Spending Over 60 Years
Federal, state and local governments spent about $441 billion on infrastructure in 2017, with the money going toward highways, mass transit and rail, aviation, water transportation, water resources and water utilities. Measured as a percentage of GDP, total spending is a bit lower than it was 50 years ago. For more details, see this new report from the Congressional Budget Office.
Number of the Day: $3.3 Billion
The GOP tax cuts have provided a significant earnings boost for the big U.S. banks so far this year. Changes in the tax code “saved the nation’s six biggest banks $3.3 billion in the third quarter alone,” according to a Bloomberg report Thursday. The data is drawn from earnings reports from Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.
Clarifying the Drop in Obamacare Premiums
We told you Thursday about the Trump administration’s announcement that average premiums for benchmark Obamacare plans will fall 1.5 percent next year, but analyst Charles Gaba says the story is a bit more complicated. According to Gaba’s calculations, average premiums for all individual health plans will rise next year by 3.1 percent.
The difference between the two figures is produced by two very different datasets. The Trump administration included only the second-lowest-cost Silver plans in 39 states in its analysis, while Gaba examined all individual plans sold in all 50 states.