Intelligent.com is a college prep company that, among other things, promises to "equip students with the tools they need to smoothly transition from academic life to professional success."
Guess what? In a recent report, they say that recent college grads are unprepared for work and and getting fired in vast numbers. They need help from Intelligent.com! Employers need their help too! Isn't that a coincidence?
This got randomly picked up last week by the Daily Mail. A couple of days later the Washington Examiner got in the act, citing the Mail for some reason instead of the original report and going on to lay the blame for this sorry state of affairs on American colleges with their "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" and other woke folderol.
As it turns out, though, the Intelligent.com survey tells us nothing. It says that (a) some indistinct number of recent grads haven't been successful; (b) 60% of employers have fired "some" of their recent grads; and (c) there are various reasons for this. There is no comparison with the past. Nor is there anything about these numbers that strikes me as unusual in any way.
I encourage you to click the link if you think I'm slanting this in any way. I'm not.
So in the end this is just another entry in the genre of poll slop that's become so common these days. Companies have found they can get some good free PR by running a cheapie online poll and banging out a press release about it. In this case, it was a self-selecting survey done by Pollfish, a "DIY market research provider."
Who cares, right? In a world of skyrocketing slop, this is probably the least of our worries. But it reminds me of a genuine curiosity: why is it that we have no idea how many people get fired? We have things that circle around it: How afraid are you of being fired? How many layoffs have there been? How many total job separations? What's your current employment status? But no plain household survey that asks if you've been fired in the past year.
That seems odd to me. Even if the feds aren't interested in this, you'd think maybe Gallup or some other private outfit would be. But not that I can find. Why not?
BY THE WAY: After all this, are you curious about how many Gen Z workers are getting fired? I can't tell you, of course, but there are a few related statistics:
- Job tenure figures haven't budged. Young workers are staying with their jobs about the same as always.
- Among all Gen Z workers, unemployment has spiked slightly compared to previous years and older generations, but that's probably just the usual consequence of a slowing economy:
.
- Among Gen Z college grads, the unemployment rate in 2022 was 2.7% compared to 4.8% in 2012.
- Among all ages, the fear of being let go hasn't changed recently:
.
Take this for what it's worth: not much, but not nothing. There's no particular evidence that Gen Z is having any more trouble in the workplace than previous generations.
Isn't it true that many times a company will call a firing a "layoff" in order to avoid possible legal action, and employees hate to say they were fired because that doesn't look good as they apply for a new job? Plus, it can impact the employee's ability to get unemployment, and most employers like to avoid pissing off fired employees as much as possible.
You seem to be off your game.
The BLS JOLTS data has total separations here:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t03.htm
It has quits (voluntary separations) here:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm
What would you guess Table 5 (jolts.t05.htm) is? Well, you can see, right here:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t05.htm
ISTM that the answer to your question about the total number of firings is buried, not too deep at all, in the numbers that these tables contain!
Doesn't go back very far, so not much use in assessing longer-term changes.
Jobs are like girlfriends.
Some people have one their entire life, some people change every week, and most people are somewhere in-between, measured in logarithmic units.
In order to get a new one, you usually have to leave the old one. Quit, fired, whatever.
Where are the statistics for this?
"Where are the statistics for this?"
Jobs or girlfriends? 🙂
It is hard enough stopping students from citing content marketing. Reporters really need to be better at their jobs.
My impression is that very few people ever actually get "fired," as in they fuck up really bad or piss off a manager and are told to pack their things and get out. Most involuntary separations are "layoffs" that are made across a company in order to "rightsize" labor costs "in the face of economic headwinds" (which are never-ceasing, it seems) or whatever. Lot fewer legal headaches.
You are fortunate if you haven't been fired, but most people have been during a decades-long career. You find that out if you are fired and then others haul out their own stories to comfort you. Others may not share them otherwise because of feeling shame about being fired. But we all have a story. That suggests that your belief that no one gets fired any more may be incorrect.
Getting a handle on people being fired is tricky. Often they're "encouraged" to find other employment. Other times lower-performing employees are the first to go when there are layoffs. During Welch's tenure at GE they had a policy of terminating most of the bottom 5% in employee rating. My personal experience, over more than 40 years, is that few get "fired" in the colloquial sense of the word.
How about on "The Apprentice"? I can't quite see TFG saying
"I'm encouraging you to find other employment!"