9 ms·

There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

51 points by hourislate 10y ago

niftich 10y ago
I'm trying to reconcile these two quotes: > a few good auto-glass installers, no experience necessary and, > commissioned a study of company shortages. Energy, water, and land came up, but the No. 1 answer around the world was skilled labor Perhaps no experience is necessary for the auto-glass gig, but the metal stamping and machining? Are these all trades one can pick up on the job, by walking in from the street? Because if so, potential workers are leaving money on the table. More likely, they have stopped looking for work altogether. Unemployment is often discussed, but the Labor Participation Rate is less so, which fell greatly [1] after 2008. [1] http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000
- neaden 10y ago
  The anecdote at the beginning of news articles is often meaningless, but people like hearing specific stories rather then trends in graphs so it's fairly de rigueur.
- madengr 10y ago
  For a machinist, generally not, as there is usually a formal training program, either company based or through community colleges. Though an enthusiastic person with good technical aptitude could definetly pick it up via on the job training.
- zhivota 10y ago
  Draw that graph back further before 2006 and you'll see that labor participation was lower from 1948-1984, almost 40 years. It appears to have peaked between 1990 and 2008, but even today it's not quite as low as it was during a time of pretty solid prosperity (50s and 60s). Even today's rate is only 3% or so lower than the 2006 rate, so if you add it to the unemployment rate it's still not very bad. Just another perspective on this as it seems to be something that comes up over and over in these discussions.
  - madengr 10y ago
    I assume the low rate from 1948-84 was due to 1 person working in a married household. Then it increased as both persons worked to maintain middle class, followed by recession. So low labor participation with high prosperity back then, and low participation with low prosperity now.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
swolchok 10y ago
I feel like I've seen a lot of articles about people who can't find jobs or who are worried about their increasingly-outdated jobs going away in the short term. This article says we also have a lot of jobs that can't find people. What's the missing piece? Re-training? What does that actually look like for a 30- or 40-year-old person who has a family to support and doesn't much care for government handouts?
- niftich 10y ago
  I'm hypothesizing, but I imagine a lot of it has to do with geographical mismatch. How many auto-glass installers do you need in Elkhart, Indiana [1]? Or Casper, Wyoming, or Lafayette, Louisiana? EDIT: to expand on my point, in metropolitan areas that are experiencing a population boom, demand creates opportunities for businesses, and therefore opportunities for prospective workers. It's a virtuous cycle. Meanwhile, a large employer's departure in established areas will leave behind skilled talent, but some of those people will depart and disperse, making the area less attractive for new job creation in related fields. [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Funny you mention Elkhart because I live right next door. Their main industry is RV manufacture. When the economy is rocking, RV sales go up, the Elkhart has a big lack of workers. When the economy is rubbish, they all get laid off and move elsewhere. The metro area here has over 550,000 people. Not New York City, bit big enough that there SHOULD be enough glass installers, or at least a pool to train enough glass installers form.
  - madengr 10y ago
    I'd think more in WY or IN due to snow plowing and freeze/thaw cycles.
    - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
      I lived in indiana the first 30+ years, and live in Norway now. I've never heard of car glass breaking because of the freeze/thaw cycle. More common, it is things like hail during thunderstorms or gravel from a road.
onion2k 10y ago
If we're generous and say that the auto-glass installer job pays a bonus of $10,000 a year that leaves $60,000 earned at $12/hour ... which is about 96 hours a week. I can think of plenty of reasons why you'd have trouble finding people to do that job.
- chasing 10y ago
  "...pay starts at $12 an hour and goes up to $70,000 a year including overtime and bonuses..." So let's call it $24k (not including bonuses) up to $70k (including bonuses). That's my interpretation.
  - mdellavo 10y ago
    I'm also assuming that 70k figure is heavy on overtime and bonuses are meager. Such a shock they can't find labor!
    - chasing 10y ago
      Median household income in South Carolina (where they're located) is, according to Wikipedia $43,916. So. While you and I might scoff at whatever amount $70k is before bonuses, if you're unemployed in South Carolina you could do a lot worse.
- bradb3030 10y ago
  Or a realistic interpretation of what was intended by having content after "starts at $12 hour" would be that they demonstrated they could both do the work and demonstrate customer service skills, and began earning more like $25/hour to get to that "up to 70k/year" more easily.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  I doubt the 70k makes $12 an hour. Likely a supervisor making say $20 an hour.. comes to a base of 42k. Other 28k he would make in 17 hours of overtime per week (Remember you get time and a half for overtime), for a total of 57 hour weeks. Not out of the question hours in a busy factory. I did some of those in college summer days...
michael_h 10y ago
I'm always baffled by the people in these articles. From the anecdote at the beginning: he's having trouble hiring people for $12/hour (up to $70K/year with bonuses, etc). I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are just lazy and don't want to work.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Did you try going to Spanish mass and ask if anyone wants to write you some code like the anecdote did?
- moxious 10y ago
  Yeah, the journos who are writing big articles about big trends always seem to want to anchor them with anecdata from the 2 local guys they talked to, as if that actually sheds light on the situation. Usually it just confirms whatever narrative their story is pushing. I don't know what's a fair price in every area of the country for all of these jobs, so beats me if $12 is good or bad, but beyond this one anecdote, people have been saying for years that there was a shortage of skilled labor in the country. So aside from whether this one guy is paying fairly or not, it does appear to be a real issue.
  - fullshark 10y ago
    People relate much more to anecdotal examples than statistics. A good journalist for these types of stories has hard data underlying their premise and usually a good in-person interview or two to put a human face on it.
    - moxious 10y ago
      Agreed, people relating to them is why they do it, no question. It's just that engineers and scientists are typically trained to know that anecdata is a very poor way to reason about the world, it consistently leads you into the wrong conclusion, making you feel like you have support for a fact when you actually don't. If the good journalist has hard underlying data, I would not at all begrudge them the anecdotes, and yet I'd still like to see their data thank you very much.
hkon 10y ago
Can't find workers means: can't find cheap skilled workers.
- shams93 10y ago
  Exactly, there is a shortage of people with 20 years experience and a master's degree willing to work for $14/hour.
twoquestions 10y ago
As someone else has already said, the biggest shortage is skilled labor, not unskilled. Trouble is, it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job that may not be there when you graduate, and it's unwise to train someone when they could get poached by the next company not willing to shell out for training. I also wonder how sticky their wages are. If a business can endure not filling a position until they can find their person willing to work for peanuts, why offer more? It's amazing how little bargaining power workers have even in this extremely tight labor environment. I'd be shocked if the Republicans that now control most layers of government will be willing to step in and help this situation, and I doubt they'd know what to do to help even if they were willing. Does anyone here know a good way out of this situation?
- moxious 10y ago
  There's no fast way out of the situation. Training and education is ultimately the answer, but to fill today's jobs, that needed to happen 2-4 years ago. So today, I think we're up a creek in any case. Still, best get to training and educating people ASAP, because 2 years from now is coming sooner than most people think. We could complain about how much it costs to do this, or we could just shut up, do it, and then enjoy the sweet, sweet tax dollars that those high educated, high earning workers throw off. The article talks a lot about under-investment in infrastructure like roads and bridges. I guess I'm making the same argument in the end, I'm just pointing out that people are infrastructure, in that you can't do business without them, just like roads. So maybe we should invest in them.
  - blfr 10y ago
    There's no fast way out of the situation. Of course there is and at least some Republicans at least claim they're going to take it: slash immigration, lower the labour supply, raising its prices.
    - moxious 10y ago
      Yes, no matter how big or complex the problem, there will always be someone promising a quick and easy fix. And there will always be those in enough pain that they want to buy the quick fix. I'm not a big fan of magic beans though, because I'm young enough I still have to live here for a long time, I'm not cashing out of this place next year. If the problem is not enough skilled workers, it would seem that lowering the labor supply is exactly the wrong thing to do.
lkrubner 10y ago
Let's do this experiment: let's have all businesses double whatever wage they are currently paying. Is there still a shortage of workers? No? Ah, in that case, we have solved the problem.
- moxious 10y ago
  You miss the point. Labor is inelastic. If you double the wage, it might take the market years to respond if the skill in question is not quickly acquired. Buying high skilled workers is not like buying gumballs, where prices and high demand can quickly stimulate supply, and the two meet in the middle. Gumballs don't have to sell their house and move. Gumballs don't have to take care of their kids while going back to school.
  - mason240 10y ago
    True, but this OP's scenario is very similar to what happened during the ND oil boom in 2010. Guys with certain skills (heavy equipment operation, truck driving, ect) could make two or even three times what where in their current jobs. What was the result? A flood of workers coming in how left their families, homes, and everything to live in trailers (or even the truck cabs) for the opportunity. If the this had happened near a real city like Sioux Falls SD with available housing and had been long term (like the OP's scenario), people absolutely would have moved their families and put down roots.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  This is a flipped version of the lump of labor fallacy. If the price of a service is too high, some consumers will do without. So sure, you can double the wages of housecleaners, but that might drastically shrink the number of houses being cleaned. You've already seen this play out in manufacturing: industries with high wages have tended towards automation and/or offshoring work to low wage countries. If you're building automobiles, there's a limit to what consumers are willing to pay for an auto.
- user5994461 10y ago
  Added 50%... still got no one. -- based on a real story
pc2g4d 10y ago
The mismatch between available jobs and the skillsets of the workforce has baffled me. Is it just that autoglass installers aren't in sufficient demand for people to train to become autoglass installers? And so would it be economically inefficient for the government to subsidize the education of more autoglass workers? But maybe it's not a question of insufficient demand for these skills. Maybe it's a question of matching up job opportunities, workers, and the capital necessary to train the workers for the jobs. Imagine this: a site/app where employers post job openings with certain skill requirements, and where workers apply for jobs. These sites already exist. But add to it an element where workers can say they want to work a certain type of job but need additional training to do so. Then investors can put forward the money to train the worker, in exchange for 10% of the worker's future earnings until the loan is paid back plus interest. Microfinance not as foreign aid but as grease for the labor market.
- insickness 10y ago
  The problem with this is that its often difficult to tell whether a person is suited for a job or even would like a job until the person starts training in it. You could decide you want to go into HVAC because there's a lot of money in it. But six weeks into the training you hate it or you realize you suck at it. Who foots the bill for that failure?
  - aharrison3 10y ago
    The debtor would. They can choose to stick it out until their loan is repaid or find another way to pay it.
- ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
  There is no skills/jobs mismatch. These types of articles are part of a stealth propaganda campaign primarily designed to push for more immigration for the purpose of driving down wages. If people think there are not enough skilled workers domestically, they will support more immigration. Don't fall for it! Employers can't find skilled workers... at slave-wage salary. That's the part they never include. How is an app going to fix the problem of employers posting fake jobs domestically, in order to circumvent the immigration rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
sien 10y ago
This is a bit weird. US unemployment is at 4.6% http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 US growth is about 2% http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=US http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locati... That's really pretty good. Most developed countries would be happy with that.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  2% growth is very low. Jobs =! well paying secure jobs.
  - knz 10y ago
    And well paying isn't even necessarily a measure of your ability to participate in the consumer economy. In this day and age it's whether you can afford health care, child care, and education - all of which are essential for a healthy society.
  - sien 10y ago
    What developed country has sustained better growth?
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?year_high_desc=true http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?year_h... Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Iceland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Spain, the UAE, and Israel (although there are more depending on your definition of a developed country).
      - sien 10y ago
        What definition are you using for sustained? 10 years? 20 years? I didn't include this either. Just curious.
- Terr_ 10y ago
patrickg_zill 10y ago
You can check this kind of stuff out by looking on your local Craigslist postings. Machinist wanted (with decent level of understanding multiple machines, reading blueprints etc.) - 5 years experience - $25/hour in the Denver/Boulder area. e.g. http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html (and you have to supply some of your own tools) ... this is not a cheap area to live in BTW. $50-60K is barely middle class for this area. We've been praising the guy who hires 10 plumbers and then automates his back office (he is scaling), while looking down on the plumbers who do the actual work. Then we wonder why it's tough to find plumbers...
- sgnelson 10y ago
  I sometimes see job placements come in for machinists which demand almost every machinist skill one can have. Manual machining on every available type of machine, CNC machining on every type of machine, CNC programming, CAD and CAM Design in all the main software, GD&T, Blueprinting, etc. And for a list of requirements that takes up a full page, and frankly sometimes even requires skills that you would earn with a bachelors in mechanical engineering. All for $10/hour. And they wonder why no one has taken them up on their offer. And this is also in a major Southern city, with an ever increasing cost of living.
jwtadvice 10y ago
America recently redefined what unemployment means. It used to mean "the amount of people currently capable of working, who are not employed in work." The new definition is "the amount of people who want a job, but can't find one". Basically the difference between structural unemployment and transitive unemployment. America used to track transitive unemployment, but through a series of reforms have narrowed in on measuring structural unemployment. Originally if you were not employed you would be unemployed. Slowly this was altered so that if you were not employed and hadn't found a job in a month you were unemployed (because you were looking and not finding, and therefore there was no job for you). Slowly that got moved out. I don't have the most recent numbers committed to memory, but an not employed person is not considered unemployed unless they've been looking and have not found for a large amount of time. This article hits on that theme. The argument/opinion it expresses is that the jobs ARE there - that structural unemployment is low - but that workers aren't finding good work ("transitive unemployment is high"). There's been huge moves in the labor market as middle skilled jobs are disappearing. The only move for the labor pool is down to low-skilled labor jobs, work that masses of the labor pool are not only overqualified for, but will be compensated significantly less for and which represent much less socioeconomic mobility.
- madengr 10y ago
  It seems like now binomial, people are making <$20/hr or >$60/hr. The middle has been sucked out.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cbdfghh 10y ago
The issue is that US workers now compete with the whole world. Until the 70s, the US really had no competition. To compete, you need a stable (legal) system - No one would invest money in a country where it's not far-fetched that someone will overthrow the government, nationalizes your company and throws you in jail. Oh, and because of geo-politics, one couldn't invest in USSR friendly countries (both from the US side and the other side) So no one would invest in the USSR, Africa, the Middle East, China or India, Europe and Japan were in shambles. So who built up industry? The US. After the 60s, different countries started stabilizing. First Japan, then China, now most of the world is actually quite stable, so now the average US worker has to compete against all of India, China, Bangladesh, etc. You have more supply and the same demand (the world). And the problem is nothing can really be done about it.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  US workers are having to deal with reality itself after an entire history of avoiding it. "Free land" from genocided native Americans. No equivalently armed and organized opposition from Virginia to California. "Free labor" from slavery. Poverty wages during the gilded age; easy-to-access industrial fuels like lumber and coal, and later oil. Again, all available on stolen land. Early 20th century, Europe was beating itself up so often America became a superpower by pure virtue of being the only power not bombed to shit by 1945. Through mid 20th century, America artificially suppressed the domestic cost of living at home through economic imperialism by, among other things, overthrowing other regimes - including democracies - that threatened America's economic dominance and control of natural resources, like Guatemala for food and Iran for oil (although the U.K. started it). So this is the first time the US has ever had to compete on anything close to an even footing.
logfromblammo 10y ago
I wanted a career, but all they were offering was jobs.

51 points by hourislate 10y ago

I'm trying to reconcile these two quotes: > a few good auto-glass installers, no experience necessary and, > commissioned a study of company shortages. Energy, water, and land came up, but the No. 1 answer around the world was skilled labor Perhaps no experience is necessary for the auto-glass gig, but the metal stamping and machining? Are these all trades one can pick up on the job, by walking in from the street? Because if so, potential workers are leaving money on the table. More likely, they have stopped looking for work altogether. Unemployment is often discussed, but the Labor Participation Rate is less so, which fell greatly [1] after 2008. [1] http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000

neaden 10y ago
The anecdote at the beginning of news articles is often meaningless, but people like hearing specific stories rather then trends in graphs so it's fairly de rigueur.
madengr 10y ago
For a machinist, generally not, as there is usually a formal training program, either company based or through community colleges. Though an enthusiastic person with good technical aptitude could definetly pick it up via on the job training.
zhivota 10y ago
Draw that graph back further before 2006 and you'll see that labor participation was lower from 1948-1984, almost 40 years. It appears to have peaked between 1990 and 2008, but even today it's not quite as low as it was during a time of pretty solid prosperity (50s and 60s). Even today's rate is only 3% or so lower than the 2006 rate, so if you add it to the unemployment rate it's still not very bad. Just another perspective on this as it seems to be something that comes up over and over in these discussions.
- madengr 10y ago
  I assume the low rate from 1948-84 was due to 1 person working in a married household. Then it increased as both persons worked to maintain middle class, followed by recession. So low labor participation with high prosperity back then, and low participation with low prosperity now.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

swolchok 10y ago

I feel like I've seen a lot of articles about people who can't find jobs or who are worried about their increasingly-outdated jobs going away in the short term. This article says we also have a lot of jobs that can't find people. What's the missing piece? Re-training? What does that actually look like for a 30- or 40-year-old person who has a family to support and doesn't much care for government handouts?

niftich 10y ago
I'm hypothesizing, but I imagine a lot of it has to do with geographical mismatch. How many auto-glass installers do you need in Elkhart, Indiana [1]? Or Casper, Wyoming, or Lafayette, Louisiana? EDIT: to expand on my point, in metropolitan areas that are experiencing a population boom, demand creates opportunities for businesses, and therefore opportunities for prospective workers. It's a virtuous cycle. Meanwhile, a large employer's departure in established areas will leave behind skilled talent, but some of those people will depart and disperse, making the area less attractive for new job creation in related fields. [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Funny you mention Elkhart because I live right next door. Their main industry is RV manufacture. When the economy is rocking, RV sales go up, the Elkhart has a big lack of workers. When the economy is rubbish, they all get laid off and move elsewhere. The metro area here has over 550,000 people. Not New York City, bit big enough that there SHOULD be enough glass installers, or at least a pool to train enough glass installers form.
- madengr 10y ago
  I'd think more in WY or IN due to snow plowing and freeze/thaw cycles.
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    I lived in indiana the first 30+ years, and live in Norway now. I've never heard of car glass breaking because of the freeze/thaw cycle. More common, it is things like hail during thunderstorms or gravel from a road.

onion2k 10y ago

If we're generous and say that the auto-glass installer job pays a bonus of $10,000 a year that leaves $60,000 earned at $12/hour ... which is about 96 hours a week. I can think of plenty of reasons why you'd have trouble finding people to do that job.

chasing 10y ago
"...pay starts at $12 an hour and goes up to $70,000 a year including overtime and bonuses..." So let's call it $24k (not including bonuses) up to $70k (including bonuses). That's my interpretation.
- mdellavo 10y ago
  I'm also assuming that 70k figure is heavy on overtime and bonuses are meager. Such a shock they can't find labor!
  - chasing 10y ago
    Median household income in South Carolina (where they're located) is, according to Wikipedia $43,916. So. While you and I might scoff at whatever amount $70k is before bonuses, if you're unemployed in South Carolina you could do a lot worse.
bradb3030 10y ago
Or a realistic interpretation of what was intended by having content after "starts at $12 hour" would be that they demonstrated they could both do the work and demonstrate customer service skills, and began earning more like $25/hour to get to that "up to 70k/year" more easily.
brianwawok 10y ago
I doubt the 70k makes $12 an hour. Likely a supervisor making say $20 an hour.. comes to a base of 42k. Other 28k he would make in 17 hours of overtime per week (Remember you get time and a half for overtime), for a total of 57 hour weeks. Not out of the question hours in a busy factory. I did some of those in college summer days...

michael_h 10y ago

I'm always baffled by the people in these articles. From the anecdote at the beginning: he's having trouble hiring people for $12/hour (up to $70K/year with bonuses, etc). I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are just lazy and don't want to work.

brianwawok 10y ago
Did you try going to Spanish mass and ask if anyone wants to write you some code like the anecdote did?
moxious 10y ago
Yeah, the journos who are writing big articles about big trends always seem to want to anchor them with anecdata from the 2 local guys they talked to, as if that actually sheds light on the situation. Usually it just confirms whatever narrative their story is pushing. I don't know what's a fair price in every area of the country for all of these jobs, so beats me if $12 is good or bad, but beyond this one anecdote, people have been saying for years that there was a shortage of skilled labor in the country. So aside from whether this one guy is paying fairly or not, it does appear to be a real issue.
- fullshark 10y ago
  People relate much more to anecdotal examples than statistics. A good journalist for these types of stories has hard data underlying their premise and usually a good in-person interview or two to put a human face on it.
  - moxious 10y ago
    Agreed, people relating to them is why they do it, no question. It's just that engineers and scientists are typically trained to know that anecdata is a very poor way to reason about the world, it consistently leads you into the wrong conclusion, making you feel like you have support for a fact when you actually don't. If the good journalist has hard underlying data, I would not at all begrudge them the anecdotes, and yet I'd still like to see their data thank you very much.

hkon 10y ago

Can't find workers means: can't find cheap skilled workers.

shams93 10y ago
Exactly, there is a shortage of people with 20 years experience and a master's degree willing to work for $14/hour.

twoquestions 10y ago

As someone else has already said, the biggest shortage is skilled labor, not unskilled. Trouble is, it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job that may not be there when you graduate, and it's unwise to train someone when they could get poached by the next company not willing to shell out for training. I also wonder how sticky their wages are. If a business can endure not filling a position until they can find their person willing to work for peanuts, why offer more? It's amazing how little bargaining power workers have even in this extremely tight labor environment. I'd be shocked if the Republicans that now control most layers of government will be willing to step in and help this situation, and I doubt they'd know what to do to help even if they were willing. Does anyone here know a good way out of this situation?

moxious 10y ago
There's no fast way out of the situation. Training and education is ultimately the answer, but to fill today's jobs, that needed to happen 2-4 years ago. So today, I think we're up a creek in any case. Still, best get to training and educating people ASAP, because 2 years from now is coming sooner than most people think. We could complain about how much it costs to do this, or we could just shut up, do it, and then enjoy the sweet, sweet tax dollars that those high educated, high earning workers throw off. The article talks a lot about under-investment in infrastructure like roads and bridges. I guess I'm making the same argument in the end, I'm just pointing out that people are infrastructure, in that you can't do business without them, just like roads. So maybe we should invest in them.
- blfr 10y ago
  There's no fast way out of the situation. Of course there is and at least some Republicans at least claim they're going to take it: slash immigration, lower the labour supply, raising its prices.
  - moxious 10y ago
    Yes, no matter how big or complex the problem, there will always be someone promising a quick and easy fix. And there will always be those in enough pain that they want to buy the quick fix. I'm not a big fan of magic beans though, because I'm young enough I still have to live here for a long time, I'm not cashing out of this place next year. If the problem is not enough skilled workers, it would seem that lowering the labor supply is exactly the wrong thing to do.

lkrubner 10y ago

Let's do this experiment: let's have all businesses double whatever wage they are currently paying. Is there still a shortage of workers? No? Ah, in that case, we have solved the problem.

moxious 10y ago
You miss the point. Labor is inelastic. If you double the wage, it might take the market years to respond if the skill in question is not quickly acquired. Buying high skilled workers is not like buying gumballs, where prices and high demand can quickly stimulate supply, and the two meet in the middle. Gumballs don't have to sell their house and move. Gumballs don't have to take care of their kids while going back to school.
- mason240 10y ago
  True, but this OP's scenario is very similar to what happened during the ND oil boom in 2010. Guys with certain skills (heavy equipment operation, truck driving, ect) could make two or even three times what where in their current jobs. What was the result? A flood of workers coming in how left their families, homes, and everything to live in trailers (or even the truck cabs) for the opportunity. If the this had happened near a real city like Sioux Falls SD with available housing and had been long term (like the OP's scenario), people absolutely would have moved their families and put down roots.
greglindahl 10y ago
This is a flipped version of the lump of labor fallacy. If the price of a service is too high, some consumers will do without. So sure, you can double the wages of housecleaners, but that might drastically shrink the number of houses being cleaned. You've already seen this play out in manufacturing: industries with high wages have tended towards automation and/or offshoring work to low wage countries. If you're building automobiles, there's a limit to what consumers are willing to pay for an auto.
user5994461 10y ago
Added 50%... still got no one. -- based on a real story

pc2g4d 10y ago

The mismatch between available jobs and the skillsets of the workforce has baffled me. Is it just that autoglass installers aren't in sufficient demand for people to train to become autoglass installers? And so would it be economically inefficient for the government to subsidize the education of more autoglass workers? But maybe it's not a question of insufficient demand for these skills. Maybe it's a question of matching up job opportunities, workers, and the capital necessary to train the workers for the jobs. Imagine this: a site/app where employers post job openings with certain skill requirements, and where workers apply for jobs. These sites already exist. But add to it an element where workers can say they want to work a certain type of job but need additional training to do so. Then investors can put forward the money to train the worker, in exchange for 10% of the worker's future earnings until the loan is paid back plus interest. Microfinance not as foreign aid but as grease for the labor market.

insickness 10y ago
The problem with this is that its often difficult to tell whether a person is suited for a job or even would like a job until the person starts training in it. You could decide you want to go into HVAC because there's a lot of money in it. But six weeks into the training you hate it or you realize you suck at it. Who foots the bill for that failure?
- aharrison3 10y ago
  The debtor would. They can choose to stick it out until their loan is repaid or find another way to pay it.
ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
There is no skills/jobs mismatch. These types of articles are part of a stealth propaganda campaign primarily designed to push for more immigration for the purpose of driving down wages. If people think there are not enough skilled workers domestically, they will support more immigration. Don't fall for it! Employers can't find skilled workers... at slave-wage salary. That's the part they never include. How is an app going to fix the problem of employers posting fake jobs domestically, in order to circumvent the immigration rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

sien 10y ago

This is a bit weird. US unemployment is at 4.6% http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 US growth is about 2% http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=US http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locati... That's really pretty good. Most developed countries would be happy with that.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
2% growth is very low. Jobs =! well paying secure jobs.
- knz 10y ago
  And well paying isn't even necessarily a measure of your ability to participate in the consumer economy. In this day and age it's whether you can afford health care, child care, and education - all of which are essential for a healthy society.
- sien 10y ago
  What developed country has sustained better growth?
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?year_high_desc=true http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?year_h... Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Iceland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Spain, the UAE, and Israel (although there are more depending on your definition of a developed country).
    - sien 10y ago
      What definition are you using for sustained? 10 years? 20 years? I didn't include this either. Just curious.
Terr_ 10y ago

patrickg_zill 10y ago

You can check this kind of stuff out by looking on your local Craigslist postings. Machinist wanted (with decent level of understanding multiple machines, reading blueprints etc.) - 5 years experience - $25/hour in the Denver/Boulder area. e.g. http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html (and you have to supply some of your own tools) ... this is not a cheap area to live in BTW. $50-60K is barely middle class for this area. We've been praising the guy who hires 10 plumbers and then automates his back office (he is scaling), while looking down on the plumbers who do the actual work. Then we wonder why it's tough to find plumbers...

sgnelson 10y ago
I sometimes see job placements come in for machinists which demand almost every machinist skill one can have. Manual machining on every available type of machine, CNC machining on every type of machine, CNC programming, CAD and CAM Design in all the main software, GD&T, Blueprinting, etc. And for a list of requirements that takes up a full page, and frankly sometimes even requires skills that you would earn with a bachelors in mechanical engineering. All for $10/hour. And they wonder why no one has taken them up on their offer. And this is also in a major Southern city, with an ever increasing cost of living.

jwtadvice 10y ago

America recently redefined what unemployment means. It used to mean "the amount of people currently capable of working, who are not employed in work." The new definition is "the amount of people who want a job, but can't find one". Basically the difference between structural unemployment and transitive unemployment. America used to track transitive unemployment, but through a series of reforms have narrowed in on measuring structural unemployment. Originally if you were not employed you would be unemployed. Slowly this was altered so that if you were not employed and hadn't found a job in a month you were unemployed (because you were looking and not finding, and therefore there was no job for you). Slowly that got moved out. I don't have the most recent numbers committed to memory, but an not employed person is not considered unemployed unless they've been looking and have not found for a large amount of time. This article hits on that theme. The argument/opinion it expresses is that the jobs ARE there - that structural unemployment is low - but that workers aren't finding good work ("transitive unemployment is high"). There's been huge moves in the labor market as middle skilled jobs are disappearing. The only move for the labor pool is down to low-skilled labor jobs, work that masses of the labor pool are not only overqualified for, but will be compensated significantly less for and which represent much less socioeconomic mobility.

madengr 10y ago
It seems like now binomial, people are making <$20/hr or >$60/hr. The middle has been sucked out.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cbdfghh 10y ago

The issue is that US workers now compete with the whole world. Until the 70s, the US really had no competition. To compete, you need a stable (legal) system - No one would invest money in a country where it's not far-fetched that someone will overthrow the government, nationalizes your company and throws you in jail. Oh, and because of geo-politics, one couldn't invest in USSR friendly countries (both from the US side and the other side) So no one would invest in the USSR, Africa, the Middle East, China or India, Europe and Japan were in shambles. So who built up industry? The US. After the 60s, different countries started stabilizing. First Japan, then China, now most of the world is actually quite stable, so now the average US worker has to compete against all of India, China, Bangladesh, etc. You have more supply and the same demand (the world). And the problem is nothing can really be done about it.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
US workers are having to deal with reality itself after an entire history of avoiding it. "Free land" from genocided native Americans. No equivalently armed and organized opposition from Virginia to California. "Free labor" from slavery. Poverty wages during the gilded age; easy-to-access industrial fuels like lumber and coal, and later oil. Again, all available on stolen land. Early 20th century, Europe was beating itself up so often America became a superpower by pure virtue of being the only power not bombed to shit by 1945. Through mid 20th century, America artificially suppressed the domestic cost of living at home through economic imperialism by, among other things, overthrowing other regimes - including democracies - that threatened America's economic dominance and control of natural resources, like Guatemala for food and Iran for oil (although the U.K. started it). So this is the first time the US has ever had to compete on anything close to an even footing.

logfromblammo 10y ago

I wanted a career, but all they were offering was jobs.