I'm hearing an overabundance of this phrase especially amongst the under 40 set. 25, 35, 39 yr olds saying "I just got a job at XYZ"

So being someone who has been working full time since the age of 17 I have to wonder "what were you doing before this?" My spidey senses tells me they were riding the extended UIB wuflu train.

For many of these young people, it is their FIRST job since they turned 18 or 21. I can't wrap my head around this mentality. How can you screen based on steady job history when the majority are saying they've just bothered to get a job recently?

I had one applicant who was obviously "following her dreams" by being a cosplay character for various stints including Disney world. She has had about 8 different jobs in as many MONTHS!

Are there a lot of new businesses in your area?

Yah, hard no. The problem with couch sitting for months on end is that it affects your brain just like drugs. I have seen dozens of these types flame out after a few days on the job because they get the DT shakes from not getting their couch sitting fix. It's really hard to keep a job when you don't routinely show up.

Hoosier, I definitely front face zero emotions, but I look upon this site as partially venting plus solutions. Learned this a loooonnnnnnng time ago not to ever put any emotion in writing or over the phone when working as a paralegal and with a good RE friend called "the poison pen."

6x6? New businesses? HA! this is NYS; land of most UN-business friendly.

The Gen Zs and younger Millennials have no issues with job-hopping. They generally feel that if you're not happy where you are, move on. One of my kids had 3 jobs in 4 years; they liked her work, she hated the first two jobs, and is looking to move on from the third. We older people were taught to wait and show that we could be settled.

Still, I won't take less than a year on the job for a B+ 3br sfh.

I only ask for their current employer and their previous employer. So when I hear "I just got a job at X---" it means "this is the most recent job I'm in" rather than "I've never worked a day previously." How far back into their employment history are you digging?

Generations ago, you'd get a job with Company X, stay with them forever, and you'd get a good pension. Eventually, they realized that it's not economically feasible in the long term, especially with lifespans as long as they are nowadays. 20 years ago, 60% of the Fortune 500 companies offered a traditional pension plan. Nowadays, only 16% of the Fortune 500s are offering that, let alone everyone else.

So you don't really have that loyalty from the company to you--- you're not sticking around to keep your pension--- retirement plans are getting whittled away--- so a lot of people have precious little loyalty towards their employers, because there's no significant long-term benefit or advantage for staying there. (Universities and government are two big exceptions.)

I'm currently reading Louis L'amour's autobiography. (1908-1988) One of the first things he does is make the distinction between bums, tramps, and hoboes. A bum is someone who doesn't want to work and stays home. A tramp is the same as a bum, except he travels. And a hobo is someone who travels extensively to follow work. They don't stay for very long in any one job--- but they work, they roam, they find new work, they roam. The first line of his book is pretty much, "The day my high school class back home was graduating, I was in Singapore..." But in addition to being a laborer on a ship, he was a laborer on land--- the only thing that changed was the details, whether it was skinning dead cattle to salvage the leather, or being a sparring partner for boxers, or digging holes for foundation posts, or working in a veneer factory, or assaying, or digging in Death Valley, or whatever.

So-- those sorts of people have been around us for a very long time. With that unskilled-labor job market being so industrialized/mechanized, though, and the social safety net being so much more developed than it was in the 20's and 30's--- we're not really of the economic strata that is comfortable with that roaming job-hopping. We like stability and predictability so that we can plan ahead, and we like doing business with like-minded people. :)