The Crappy Job Conundrum: With the number of American workers who are unemployed for more than 6 months at a 62-year high, it may seem odd that some companies are complaining of problems filling vacancies and just not for high skilled positions.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal ran a front page story reporting that in Bloomington, Illinois, machine shop Mechanical Devices can't find the workers it needs to handle a sharp jump in business. Job fairs run by airline Emirates attract fewer applicants in the US than in other countries. Truck-stop operator Pilot Flying J says job postings don't elicit many more applicants than they did when the unemployment rate was below 5%.

"This is as bad now as at the height of business back in the 1990s," says Dan Cunningham, chief executive of the Long-Stanton Manufacturing Co., a maker of stamped-metal parts in West Chester, Ohio, that has been struggling to hire a few toolmakers. "It's bizarre. We are just not getting applicants."

The Journal reports that at Mechanical Devices, which supplies parts for earthmovers and other heavy equipment to manufacturers such as Caterpillar Inc., part owner Mark Sperry says he has been looking for $13-an-hour machinists since early this year.

Some economists argue that 99 paid weeks of jobless benefits and reduced mobility because of the housing crash, is impacting the labour market.

Daniel Gross, columnist at Newsweek magazine, which was sold last week by the Washington Post for $1 (the price for the whole business; not the newsstand price!), says the median US income - - where half the workforce are under that income level and the other half above that income - - in 2008 was below what it was in 1998.

Gross says $13 an hour, 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year - - that comes to an annual salary of $26,000. (In the adjacent Peoria, Ill., metropolitan area to Bloomington, per capita income was $39,965 in 2008.) Or take Emirates Airlines. When it held jobs fairs in cities like Miami and Houston, only about 50 people showed up, "compared to a global average of about 150 and as many as 1,000 at some events in Europe and Asia." The jobs don't require much in the way of education, and they come with benefits, free accommodations, and a starting salary of $30,000. But you'd have to move halfway around the world, to Dubai - - an alien and expensive place. Would you uproot yourself and your family for $30,000 a year? Don't you think both of these employers would find many more interested applicants if they offered higher wages?

Gross adds that in the past few decades, workers have generally lost ground against employers in negotiating terms of employment. Defined-benefit pension plans have been replaced by 401(k)s, and then employers sometimes cut the matching contributions. A smaller percentage of private-sector jobs today come with health insurance, while many workers who have insurance have to pay more for it. Given globalization, the furious pace of mergers and acquisitions, and continuous cost pressures, job security is increasingly tenuous.

The world's biggest economy is facing the headwinds of globalisation; In Japan, currently the second-biggest economy, about 35% of the workforce are temporary workers, with limited employment rights, and earning less than the Irish minimum wage (€8.65 per hour; US$11.40), while the number of the working poor, earning less than ¥2m (€17,600) annually, continues to rise.

Is any job better than no job? James Pethokoukis, of Reuters BreakingViews, and Dan Gross, of Newsweek, share their views:

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