Knuckle,

Your logic is flawed too. Even if the 5 job applicants (or fishermen) are the 5 best in the world, the most prepared, highly skilled, etc., at the end of the day, one of them gets the job (or fish), and the other 4 remain unemployed. No one is questioning or saying that there aren't a bunch of whiny sleaze bags who only get hired when the work force is tapped out, and any idiot with a pulse can get a job. This is not then. There are highly skilled, ambitious people who can present themselves better than you can present yourself, but when the number of highly qualified and ambitious applicants outnumbers the available jobs by a significant margin, as is presently the case, then very good workers are going to remain unemployed.

I do wonder however, how it is that so many apples went unpicked in WA this year. The pay is not great, but it is not bad (can't be too bad if McDougal Orchards paid WA state $22/hr to provide prison inmates to pick), and the work is hard. Even at my age, I'd pick apples before taking an unemployment check. Sorry for the tangent.

The upshot is those who think there are jobs for anyone willing enough to work hard enough at it are basing their perspective on the worst of the work force out there, using the term loosely. Those folks are generally known as the last hired, first fired. Society always has some of those, the type that often can't get a job when the economy is humming along. Those are not the only kind of people unable to find work these days.

Sg