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.
Small Business Owners Say They’re Raising Worker Pay
A record percentage of small business owners say they are raising pay for their workers, according to the latest monthly jobs report from the National Federation of Independent Business, based on a survey of 10,000 of the group’s members. A seasonally adjusted net 35 percent of small businesses say they are increasing compensation. “They are increasing compensation at record levels and are continuing to hire,” NFIB President and CEO Juanita Duggan said in a statement accompanying the report. “Post tax reform, concerns about taxes and regulations are taking a backseat to their worries over filling open positions and finding qualified candidates.”
The US Is Running Short on More Than 200 Drugs
The U.S. is officially running short on 202 drugs, including some medical staples like epinephrine, morphine and saline solution. “The medications most vulnerable to running short have a few things in common: They are generic, high-volume, and low-margin for their makers—not the cutting-edge specialty drugs that pad pharmaceutical companies’ bottom lines,” Fortune’s Erika Fry reports. “Companies have little incentive to make the workhorse drugs we use most.” And much of the problem — “The situation is an emergency waiting to be a disaster,” one pharmacist says — can be tied to one company: Pfizer. Read the full story here.
Chart of the Day: Could You Handle a Sudden $400 Expense?
More Americans say they are living comfortably or at least “doing okay” financially, according to the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2017. At the same time, four in 10 adults say that, if faced with an unexpected expense of $400, they would not be able to cover it or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money. That represents an improvement from 2013, when half of all adults said they would have trouble handling such an expense, but suggests that many Americans are still close to the edge when it comes to their personal finances.
Kevin Brady Introduces Welfare Reform Bill
The Tax Policy Center’s Daily Deduction reports that Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday introduced The Jobs and Opportunity with Benefits and Services (JOBS) for Success Act (H.R. 5861). “The bill would rename the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and target benefits to the lowest-income households. Although the House GOP leadership promised to include an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit as part of an upcoming welfare reform bill, this measure does not appear to include any EITC provisions.” The committee will mark up the bill on Wednesday.