Apparently, the US Department of Labor came out with a very interesting and controversial data point recently -
The average job seeker spends 18 minutes a day looking for a job.
And that datapoint has created an uproar online about the ignorant people who are dumb enough to think that 18 minutes a day is a sufficient and/or appropriate amount of time to find a job.
So, with visions of my hard-earned tax dollars helping some lazy bums take paid vacations at my expense, I decided to look into it.
1. ) My first thought was to see how DOL defined “job hunting” in this study.
The people at the Department of Labor tend to be very open and very specific, in an economist/statistician kind of way, and they provide mountains of data on unemployment.
I was sure that they had studied the process, in great detail, and had defined specific tasks (or a task) that they were able to measure accurately in some statistically-meaningful group of appropriate people.
I pictured the 18 minutes maybe being a measurement of time spent writing cover letters or a similar, clearly job-hunt related task.
But after 15 minutes of research on the DOL site, and on the greater Web using Google, Google Scholar, Google Blog Search, and Bing, I couldn’t find ANY specific DOL study about the 18 minutes.
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I found many references to the 18 minutes, but not a single link to a DOL Web page that actually showed the data. Interesting! Perhaps if I’d spent more time researching or had more coffee, I’d have found it, but I’m surprised it didn’t show up in the first 15 minutes.
So, right now, I’m skeptical that a DOL report about 18 minutes a day actually exists. It certainly could. Harper’s Index seems to think that it does, but I can’t find it.
2.) My second thought is that 18 minutes just might be correct.
Averaged out and including all the very discouraged people, many of whom seem to have given up and also many of whom seem not to know how to job hunt, 18 minutes may not be far off the mark.
3.) My third thought is that, as usual, we don’t know what we don’t know.
In the mid- to late-1990’s, I taught online job hunting classes in adult education classes, outplacement organizations, even the Massachusetts Division of Employment and Training.
Starting around 2000, the adult ed classes didn’t fill. People thought that they knew enough about it to do it without any help. SO NOT TRUE! It’s only gotten more complicated since the late 1990’s. But, there is also an exponentially greater amount of information about online job search available online, much of it very good, if people read it.
Referencing my earlier blog post this month about the woman who had wasted this whole year doing her job hunting all wrong.
So many people apparently watched all those Super Bowl ads in the 1990’s, and they still believe that all they need to do to find a job is post their resume on a big job board. They just don’t know any differently.
Earlier this year, a guy was sending me weekly Tweets: I’ve sent out 1,100 resumes, with no response. Then, 1,200 resumes with no response. Then, 1,300 resumes with no response. How to you define insanity – doing the same thing over and over with no success. Eventually he stopped sending them, but I don’t know why.
4.) Finally, spend that 18 minutes a day the most efficiently way you can (and, of course, increase it to several hours a day).
Read my Job-Search Short Cuts post for some ideas to get started. Read other Job-Hunt articles. Read the blogs in the blog lists. Use the Job-Hunt Directories of resources.
Bottom Line
If people are, on average, spending only 18 minutes a day on their job search, that’s a tragedy of monumental proprotions, because, unless they are extremely lucky, that just won’t cut it. I believe that there are an enormous number (millions!) of extremely discouraged people who need to go to a job search support group where they can get help with their job search.
About the author …
Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. In 1998, her company, NETability, Inc. purchased Job-Hunt.org, and Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt since then. Follow Susan on Twitter @JobHuntOrg.
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Susan,
I did the same things as you when I saw this statistic, I went searching. I couldn’t find a report that listed the 18 minutes either and honestly it seems a bit odd. That is more time than it takes to even conduct a search on a job board, register for an account and apply to the positions your search found. My best guess is that someone started using a stat like this for illustrative purposes and it has been picked up and regurgitated as fact.
But the point still has to be made that job search should be your full-time job if you are unemployed. 18 minutes will never cut it.
Jenn
18 minutes per day LOOKING for a job. Not 18 minutes per day spent on activities related to answering a job ad, or rewriting / tailoring a resume, or writing a cover letter, or the time spent searching for someone’s email or telephone number or networking. I can probably find all the ads related to my field and my desired position level inside of 18 minutes per day. I am then off the job / company web sites and appear to be doing something else, when in reality I am ensuring that anyone I reach out to has perfect insight as to how I can best meet the criteria of the position. 18 minutes of total effort related to a job search would be ludicrous, but unless you understand exactly what is being measured, a simple tally of the number of minutes logged on to a job website may be the only discreet activity capable of being measured.
Definitely agree with you, Jenn. 18 minutes will NOT cut it.
Well… Maybe they are measuring the number of minutes logged on to a job site, and maybe they aren’t. We really don’t know how this DOL report defines “looking.” That’s what is relevant, and I haven’t seen it yet.
I think that we’re all agreed that 18 minutes total time spent daily on a job search is not going to be productive.