> And/or the people looking for jobs don't have the skills required for high quality jobs. I think that is key here. The NYT article assumes that if you have

> And/or the people looking for jobs don't have the skills required for high quality jobs. I think that is key here. The NYT article assumes that if you have had a job in the past, you must be qualified for a similar job. However, that is just not the case. Some people are not a good fit for a job, and they move on (fired, laid off, quit, lateral transfer or role change within the same company, many ways this can happen). If someone is terrible at their job, and they move on, it's not a given that they should be able to find another similar job. I can give an (extreme) example that fits the fact of the first person talked about in the article. We hired a Project Manager at one company I worked at. The role was meant to be a contract position, but once people were convinced the position was important to create we would have made it full time. They turned out to be impossible to work with, they would scream and cry during meetings, lash out and publicly insult and blame others. It turned into a really weird and bad situation, and eventually they were fired. They had consulted for a ton of big, top companies in the past. I'm sure they keep landing consulting work here and there, but they never can get a full time job because companies always call references for those, and if you are trying to get a job via contract-to-fulltime positions you have to (at a minimum) be able to not act like a lunatic for the duration of your initial contract.