It's too expensive to make these kinds of risks. Unexperienced workers have been priced out of the market. It can take months of training to bring an unexperienced worker up to scratch - which lowers both their productivity and the productivity of their team members (who take time out from their actual job to train the newbie).

Not to mention the risk, because unexperienced workers are risky. They're use to short days, long lunches, and long holidays. They're use to the stimulation changing every hour or so. They're used to essentially unfettered, constant, socialising. My father (an employer) comments on how when he hires school-leavers, they tend to take more sick days, make more concentration-related mistakes, are less punctual, spend more time on the toilet, etc. They're also far more likely to drop out of a job they don't like.

This is why unexperienced workers can't get work. When you fix prices, you distort the market. The ironic thing is, it's the very policies you advocate, that have kept you out of work.

If we only paid and supported the occupations that are essential to  productivity, education, health and wellness, then we wouldn't buy video games and developers and publishers would be out of jobs. Let's not mock the easiest targets for the disproportionate slice of income and ignore others who aren't doing anything essential to life either.

Same thing here for my fiance. She is staying at her job currently because she was promoted to nursing supervisor, so she wants to get at least a year or two under her belt in that position before thinking about hopping somewhere else.

The problem is that people expect that they get out of school and this great paying job is just sitting there waiting for them. It isn't like that. My fiance got her job because unlike the rest of her class she made sure she put in her applications before she even graduated, went in and did some volunteer stuff to get the hang of things and then by the time she graduated she was ready to jump right in. She got her experience for working in pediatrics and it cost the practice nothing.

Another thing is for some reason these RNs avoid nursing homes. Around here they are ALWAYS hiring, but these RN expect to just hop right into a hospital job. Those jobs aren't there for a nurse fresh out of school.

Go into something else, gain experience, then try for the higher up jobs.

I also know that my sister in law works at Stony Brook University Hospital as an RN and shortly after she was hired they no longer hired RN directly out of school and for good reason too. They have a labor union there for the nurses and I can't even begin to explain how much she takes advantage of it and if wasn't for the union she would have been let go already.

She was supposed to work on Christmas Eve because she got someone to cover her Christmas day shift. Of course she didn't feel like going, so she didn't. I asked "Won't you get in trouble?", to which she responded "I'm in a union, i'll be fine." So she gets paid $40/hour and works how she wants. I sure wouldn't want some straight out of school brats doing that.

Price fixing only takes place at the very bottom. The jobs i want aren't hiring me and people like me because of their own ineptitude.

It's as FamousRingo described: the private sector has somehow managed to create a labor shortage in a down market because they refuse to invest in labor, because they are way too picky and demanding.

Contracts of some sort would help, something to the tune of "it costs us $**** to train a new hire. If you leave before one year, you'll be obligated to pay us 25% of that." So that they're still free to leave as they wish, but have to reimburse the company for time spent training them.

The really smart companies would simply make their benefits generous enough and their work environment hospitable enough that people aren't going to *want* to leave.

The problem in everything is this ( 2 years experience )

This is the problem in every job search. No one want to give the chance. But then again, a nurse can be sued everyone moron in the US ...

Companies were willing to invest in training employees prior to the financial collapse, what has changed? Nothing. Still have people graduating college at the same rates with the same degrees. It's the companies themselves that have changed the hiring process.

It isn't just is this person capable. It's is this person worth investing in? Are they able to learn new things rapidly.? Would they fit in with the team? Are they willing to go above and beyond? Will they work for peanuts?

Companies aren't about extending opportunities to anyone they do not feel perfectly matches what they are searching for. Often times the hiring process yields no viable candidates because of the stringent qualifications and outlandish expectations set forth.

I understand the frustration with interviewing these days, it's quite absurd from my experience. I feel rather fortunate to have a position at all.

Well, I think two scenarioes have to occur:

1) They fill the slot, because there are enough out-of-work people that can be hired with said experience.

2) They are forced to lower standards, because the worker shortage is preventing the company from operating.

In some cases, #1 is feasible due to the recession. But eventually, #2 has to happen.

I don't know about elsewhere, but a licensed nurse around here pretty much has an immediate job at a nursing home if they're willing.  Less than a week ago, I heard a high-level nurse in a management position give that advice to someone else, that they would probably need to go to a nursing home after graduation.

Not that there won't be too much in the work force eventually.  All the local nursing programs have long waiting lists.  At least two of them have programs in association with hospitals, though, and it's not uncommon for them to hire nurses who have just graduated.

This is a problem which predates the financial collapse. It gets more acute as more and more high-skill baby boomers retire. I don't think the broader economy has made the situation particularly worse, except in that it's made businesses even more risk-averse than normal and labour generally more available (read: lots of unemployed people out there, surely somebody has the skills we need).