00:00:00.160Story comes out, job hunters are so desperate that they're paying people to get hired and recruited.
00:00:07.760And by the way, this is not a story from Inquirer.
00:00:11.940This is a story from Wall Street Journal.
00:00:14.340So, landing a white-collar job is getting so tough that candidates, not companies,
00:00:19.580are paying recruiters to match them with positions.
00:00:22.700Through good economic times and bad, recruiters have usually operated the other way around.
00:00:26.840Companies pay them to find talent for tough-to-fill positions.
00:00:31.140Now, though, job seekers are hiring a new crop of what are called reverse recruiters to help them crack a competitive market.
00:00:38.980Daniel Bejarano, 36 years old, signed up for reverse recruiting service, a referral last year after receiving an email pitch from the company.
00:00:47.220Refers AI agent, connected him with an executive at Golden, a volunteer management company,
00:00:51.860which was looking for platform engineer and data scientist.
00:00:54.240Bejarano got the offer after several interviews.
00:00:57.860He then paid, referred 20% of his first month's pay once it landed in his bank account.
00:02:29.240People are actually paying to get a company to help them filter in to find a job the same way that companies are willing to pay money for software to help them filter.
00:02:43.620Let me explain to you what this means.
00:02:44.620This is like saying the market has changed so much because of female-driven AI that men create that women are paying men to go on a date with them.
00:02:55.960That's the best comparison I can make.
00:03:36.660And, you know, you had the clip from Fox News with Bessett on there.
00:03:41.880Well, I was on Fox and Friends not too long ago on a Saturday.
00:03:45.720And unfortunately, I'll probably never be on again because I went on and I told the truth about consumer prices and inflation.
00:03:54.240And Trump went ballistic on Truth Social and just chastised Fox for having me on, said I was a jerk, said I was a loser, that I was just a Trump hater.
00:04:06.240And they said, find the booker who put this jerk on.
00:04:09.980And ever since then, nobody will return my emails at Fox News.
00:04:13.560I think they got me completely banned from the network for speaking honestly.
00:04:19.640You know, Trump actually said that I was wrong because I claimed that prices were going up when, according to Trump, they're going down.
00:06:08.080Yeah, I think ultimately, you know, Tom said something interesting about the H-1B, that these get flooded with the H-1B.
00:06:14.660And that was a huge political debate around, and it's interesting, any, if you look, something I've observed at least, any time you have an economic policy floated in this country that looks to boost American wages, whether that be H-1B limits, whether that be border restrictions and deportations, et cetera, they don't get framed in economic terms.
00:06:43.140They never, ever get framed in economic terms.
00:06:45.260They always get framed in the media in social terms, in social justice terms.
00:06:52.180And it's not I'm the social justice guy, but if you had a fair and balanced media, they would say, here's the social justice angle and America.
00:07:01.900If we remove this many workers at H-1B or whatever, your wages as a graduating engineer from Cal or Stanford or, you know, the University of Michigan would go up over time by this much.
00:07:15.700And if you were a laborer and there were this many deportations over time, your wages would rise this much.
00:07:22.960There's a reason why the media never frames the economic argument for these policies is people would vote for them, and that's not what they want.
00:07:32.320They, you know, the powers that be want to cap wages.
00:07:37.780These are methods they use to cap wages.
00:07:39.060So, first, I think it's really interesting, Tom, your point on H-1B is that, okay, there are this flood.
00:07:46.320End of the day, I add that H-1B to the graduating kids.
00:07:49.220It tells me what the flow of funds, what you were highlighting, which is there's too much supply.
00:07:54.540There's not enough demand for those kids, for those jobs, ultimately.
00:07:57.920You know, my point was – I'm sorry about it.
00:08:00.060My point was think about how hard it is for us to find good candidates in the crowd because we have to get through the spam of these machines that are being run by brokers that are trying to throw H-1Bs when they see certain position titles.
00:08:14.280Now think about the good person on the other end trying to find a job and break through that who is now in a tightening job market where it's harder to find the jobs and saying, damn it, I need help to break through, Pat.
00:08:26.380I'm going to pay somebody to see if they can get me to the front of the line.
00:08:29.040How do I get TSA PreCheck to get through the front of this line so these people can see me so I can get a job?
00:08:34.820I think that the job search in the digital world is a little bit broken right now.
00:08:40.800We just heard that half the traffic on the Internet was bots, right?
00:08:44.620And we're seeing the bots in our inbox where we're trying to find great candidates.
00:08:49.740So I think there's a couple things going on here between economy and the availability of jobs, tightening market, but then how hard it is for us to filter out.
00:09:01.180You got a bachelor's and a master's in national security.
00:09:03.680When you talk to your friends that are looking for jobs, what are they telling you?
00:09:07.040Yeah, so a lot of people have really similar skill sets, like kind of cookie-cutter products of college, and I think that's part of the problem, too.
00:09:13.120I mean, so, like, you know, the range for somebody with an average degree is probably, I don't know, $60,000 to $85,000 for, like, a job they're applying for.
00:09:20.660And, you know, the skill sets are usually, like, liberal arts to something with math or STEM.
00:09:26.560But this is a, like, cross-current of, like, so many weird things.
00:09:29.480Like, it's such a weird situation, but I think the things that are causing it is things like distorting the economy with, you know, artificially low or high interest rates.
00:09:37.980You know, somebody else being involved with that.
00:09:40.820So, like, companies that shouldn't exist do exist.
00:09:42.980Companies that would exist if we weren't interfering at it don't exist yet.
00:09:46.140But the H-1BV is us trying to hire cheap labor, right, so all the illegal immigrants.
00:09:50.660So a lot of – it's not one thing in particular, but it's all these things that are creating this, like, bizarre, backwards, dystopian situation.
00:09:57.740So, I mean, it's just a product of government being involved where it shouldn't be and not being involved where it should be.
00:10:04.400Yeah, and certainly because of the massive subsidy that government provides to education.
00:10:09.280I mean, we graduate a lot more people with liberal arts degrees than would graduate in a free market.
00:10:14.520So we're putting these students into a job market that doesn't have jobs for what they just wasted taxpayer money studying for four or five years.
00:10:23.020You know, if we had a free market in college, we wouldn't have all the student debt, and we'd have much lower tuition.
00:10:28.940And the only people that would go to college would be people who would actually benefit from the degree.
00:10:33.320A lot of people would just get jobs right out of high school and maybe even not even go to high school.
00:10:38.140And we might actually have quality jobs for those people to move into if the federal government or if the Fed didn't artificially suppress interest rates,
00:10:46.460if we didn't have savings that could finance capital investment.
00:10:49.620So our whole economy has been screwed up by government intervention.
00:10:54.620But I wanted to point out, you know, Donald Trump makes a big deal about cheap gas.
00:10:58.880Well, oil prices are now up about 20 percent since they hit the lows.
00:11:03.280All the oil stocks are hitting 52-week highs.
00:11:06.300They're indicating that oil prices are going to rise.
00:11:10.140And I think the one thing the president's been hanging his hat on, cheap gas, is going to go away.
00:11:14.680I think by the time the midterm elections roll around, we're going to be looking at $80 to $100 barrel oil,
00:11:21.300and everything else is going to be a lot more expensive.
00:11:23.480So the story that, you know, inflation is dead and buried is going to be completely gone.
00:11:29.580And, you know, the box that the Republicans are going to be in, unfortunately, in the midterms,
00:11:35.040is they're going to be in the position of trying to lie to the public to convince them that a bad economy is good,
00:11:43.660whereas the Democrats are going to be able to be honest about how bad the economy is,
00:11:47.880and they're just going to lie that they're going to fix it.
00:11:49.780So you say that, but, Peter, this is the question.
00:11:52.360Then why is it that Trump's approval rating with the people that voted for him went up from 74 percent to 79 percent?
00:12:01.680Well, I think, well, his overall approval ratings are pretty weak, but...
00:12:05.640No, with his face, with the people that voted for him, not overall,
00:12:08.840because overall it could be mainstream media bashing him, negativity,
00:12:12.940anything and everything they can are going to say negative things about him.
00:12:15.400But why are the people that voted for him happier than when they voted for him?
00:12:20.000I think, look, I think Trump voters really like Trump.
00:12:23.680I think Trump is almost like a modern-day folk hero at this point.
00:12:27.800And I think, you know, the fact that, you know, he almost died, right?
00:12:31.340You know, he survived that assassination attempt, I think, really, you know,
00:12:37.100raised his level in the eyes of the public to that kind of folk hero.
00:12:41.860So I think that people who like the president just really like him.
00:12:46.900You know, they, you know, and they listen to him and there are things about Trump that I like.
00:14:00.240I mean, China's trade with the U.S. is down substantially.
00:14:03.920But their trade with the rest of the world is up substantially to the point where they're exporting more now than they were before our tariffs.
00:14:10.640So I think the world has less respect for the United States now than it did in the past.
00:14:17.020But American voters, yeah, it may resonate with them.
00:14:22.000I think they like the fact that Trump is pushing back against the political correctness movement that was kind of spearheaded by the Democrats with the woke agenda.
00:14:36.520And I think there has been a cultural backlash against that.
00:14:39.780And I think, you know, that has been a positive of Trump in pushing back against that.
00:14:46.300But, yes, I think the U.S. is less respected.
00:14:50.100In fact, look what Trump just did with Greenland.
00:14:55.060I mean, basically threatening an ally that, hey, you know, if we can't make a deal on our terms to buy Greenland, we're going to invade.
00:15:05.060We're going to send the U.S. military in there because nobody can stop us because we have this powerful military and we can do whatever we want.
00:15:12.500I think that sent a very, very bad message to the rest of the world.
00:15:16.480Even though Trump ultimately backed down from that, he contemplated it in public.
00:15:21.540He actually talked about using our military to annex Greenland.
00:15:25.680When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast.