USA Today: Police Agencies Buried in Resumes

One of my "very long" term theories is the United States shall be moving much closer to a Western European model as global competition on wages increase and lack of social safety net is addressed over time. We've been making huge strides towards this just in the past year alone! Already the only job drivers (as we've documented for well over a year) have been ... lo and behold... healthcare, government, and education (government) Remember many of our government jobs have been almost completely buffered from the savage "adjustments" that the private economy has taken, and even when affected its generally a fraction of the same pain. I don't know when this country reaches a point that a subset of workers of the governmental kind can no longer retire at 53 with full benefits for life - bought and paid for by the taxpayer. But we'll get there - locally you are starting to see people show up in DROVES at city council meetings and the like, finally paying attention to the robbery - err I mean pay & benefit packages that have been doled out. When the pie is growing for everyone - I guess it doesn't matter. Now? It matters. And will increasingly in the years ahead as more and more taxes are pushed onto the people to pay for the messes / obligations promised. Remember our stories from lovely (and now bankrupt) Vallejo, CA where hundreds of city workers made six figures.... just a canary in the coal mine. [May 7, 2008: Vallejo California Votes for Bankruptcy]
[May 8, 2008: It Pays to be a Firefighter in Vallejo]

Government and healthcare are 2 areas you do not want to be drivers of your economy but that's where the country is going. Behold!

Below is an interesting story about how police agencies are being buried in resumes. I would expect to be reading similar stories about the armed forces a year from now as the economic/employment picture darkens further.

• Job seekers are swamping federal, state and local police agencies during the economic downturn, a reversal from recent years when departments struggled to find qualified recruits.
• Police chiefs expect the new prospects, many of them highly experienced and victims of corporate cutbacks, will be better suited to fill a range of public safety jobs, from dispatchers to beat cops. "We're talking about people who have been in the workforce for a long time," Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt says. "They know what being part of a team means and are more mature about the world of work."
• The FBI, which said in December it would hire about 3,000 agents and staffers, is sorting through 227,000 applications, the largest such response in its history. Among the usual accountants, military veterans and recent college graduates are computer technicians and financial executives.
• "This year, there is great appeal in government work," says Gwendolyn Hubbard, who is overseeing the bureau's hiring for jobs paying $35,000 to $153,000, with health care and retirement plans. "People are attracted by the benefits and job security."
• In Las Vegas, car salesmen, mortgage brokers and construction workers — representing some of the nation's most troubled industries — want to help keep the peace in America's playground. Normally, about 280 prospects take the entrance test each month. That rose to 400 in the past few months, says police Lt. Blake Quackenbush. A 69-year-old man who "out-ran a lot of younger people" and two chiropractors recently took the exam.
• Houston's Police Chief Hurtt says his agency has been getting about 200 more applications a month since late last year. He sees evidence of better-qualified officers. Cadets that graduated from the local police academy last week posted the highest combined score on academic tests of any class in city history. One of the cadets also broke the record for most consecutive push-ups: 1,100.
• The Phoenix Police Department set an annual record for the most applicants last year — 4,000 — before the hiring program was shut down in October because of budget cuts. "The economy had to play a part in this," Sgt. Forrest Vincent says, though he also credits the agency's aggressive recruiting.
• Police agencies are among the few employers still hiring. When the Justice Department invited local agencies to apply for a share of $1 billion in stimulus funding to hire more officers, its website got 19,000 inquiries within a week. "It's been unbelievable," says Justice Department spokesman Corey Ray.