Somebody has to clean it...

The folks in Ludington, Michigan like to turn lemons into lemonade.  According to local ABC television affiliate WZZM, over a year ago the SS Badger, the Lake Michigan car ferry that shuttles between Ludington and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, wanted the Discovery Channel‘s “Dirty Jobs” program to spotlight this floating historic site.  But the producers said they would only come to Ludington if there was more than one dirty job.  Now Ludington is tap-dancing in front of the Dirty Jobs producers again, hoping to score some national exposure with local businesses involved in “removing skunks, packing meat, getting rid of sea lamprey, cleaning heat ducts or making pesticides .

Ludington may want to be careful what it wishes for, because it just might get a flood of immigrants desperate for any job that skunk removal might not be so bad.  According to NPR, the unemployment in the country has made dirty jobs (the ones that used to be described as ones only immigrants would do) are back en vogue.

That was NPR’s point, focusing on the Cascade Humane Society in Jackson, also in Michigan.  According to the non-profit’s executive director, Debra Carmody, they have been inundated with over-qualified people for a few recent jobs:

Jobs are scarce in Michigan and the state’s unemployment rate of 10.6 percent is the highest in the nation.

“They almost all had college degrees, many of them had master’s degrees,” Carmody says of those applying for jobs at her animal shelter. “There were two or three former executive directors of nonprofits.

“The one that really blew me away was we had one attorney.”

Go here to listen to the full story about the return of dirty work.

A sign of the times is the stories about people dumbing-down their resumes to get lower jobs.  Adweek warns that people who might be willing to a take a huge pay cut and a lower status “may not get the job because they’re overqualified“. As if picking up that bugle, McClatchy Newspapers sent out local reporters in its empire to write these stories.  The Cleveland Plain-Dealer ran McClatchy story that told us, “Adapting to lean times, résumés also get leaner”.  The Akron Beacon Journal ran a McClatchy story “Job seekers tone down resumes – Professionals leave out titles, degrees so they don’t seem overqualified”.   The Dallas Morning News re-ran McClatchy’s Charlotte Observer story, “Interview Seekers Omit Details on Resumes”.  The Seattle Times ran a McClatchy story that intoned “Overqualified applicants flooding the job market”.

What’s all this mean?  Probably that people are dumbing down resumes, but only one news company is the main source behind all the headlines.