Getting Fired Takes Hard Work

This is a funny/insightful Wall Street Journal article that speaks to how tight the labor market is: In This Economy, Getting Fired Takes Hard Work. Excerpt:

To hold down a job these days, a worker seemingly needs one essential trait: a pulse.

Some jobs have always required little more than the ability to stay awake. In the tightest labor market in a half-century, people in higher functions may get by just going through the motions, too.

"You'd have to be incredibly lousy" to get fired as a software engineer at the moment, says David Cancel, who employs roughly 700 people as chief executive of Drift, a Boston-based marketing firm that uses artificial intelligence. "Most companies – and us, in some cases – are keeping people who wouldn't be on the team in a looser market. The standards would be higher."

Though some economists warn of a coming downturn, layoffs and discharges in recent months have registered at or near all-time lows, according to the Labor Department. Less than 1% of workers are getting pink slips, roughly half the norm, with job security especially sweet in finance, education, healthcare, and the public sector.

To those giving less than full effort or just not up to the job: Your boss probably knows it. But there's little guarantee of finding someone better anytime soon, so you'll likely keep cashing that paycheck.

Much as businesses love to tout their ambitious corporate cultures – and have many ways of tracking employees' productivity – some would gladly settle for mediocrity right now.

When the human-resources software company UKG recently surveyed about 2,000 managers, roughly two-thirds said they'd be willing to rehire middling former employees, and 16% said they'd take back anyone, regardless of skill.

"I call it bird-in-the-hand management," says UKG Vice President David Gilbertson, who leads the firm's workforce research. "The companies I talk to are all worried about recruiting."