4 ms·

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 sing

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.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    How does lowering the labor supply solve the problem of the labor supply being too low? Next up: solve hunger by setting food on fire.
    - blfr 10y ago
      It solves the problem of cheap employers since that attitude will become untenable.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  People aren't stupid. They don't just want jobs; they want careers. Training makes sense for a job that has a career path. If you learned to drive a road tractor, you started by working for a transport company until you save up enough to buy your own rig, then you were a contractor for one of those companies until you got an agent to get you the loads you wanted on the routes you liked. Maybe eventually you got off the road to work in the management office for a transport company. With automated trucks on the horizon, young folks are less likely to even bother learning how to drive such vehicles. No one wants to be told that the skill they already spent half their lives honing will not carry them through to retirement. Big companies have been dismantling careers and repackaging them as cheaper and more fungible jobs for decades now. There is no consideration given whatsoever to the fact that employees are people that cannot spring fully formed from Zeus's brow when the company calls, nor store themselves in a closet and turn themselves off until needed again. If you won't pay for people to live their lives outside of your workplace, they won't waste any of their finite time in it. It isn't just training. The company needs an ecosystem that moves humans from graduation to retirement. They don't have to own or control the whole thing, but all the pieces have to be there. And if a piece breaks, it has to be repaired or replaced to keep other parts healthy. That hasn't been happening since the 80s, so now there are huge, gaping holes in the career pipeline, and what companies remain are often parasites upon it rather than contributors to the ecosystem. So, yeah, good luck finding someone to install your auto glass, buddy. All those kids know that you will never be paying that $70k/year (with bonuses!) you teased them with, because three years from now, you might just replace the guy you hired this year with yet another sucker at $12/hr. What happened to your previous glass guy? Did you promote him, or fire him?
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    Generally people don't give a shit whether you call it a job or a career as long as it helps them achieve their life goals. The reality is that unless you're doing something related to IT or got a cushy management job through nepotism, or getting massively subsidized by your parents, you're unlikely to progress to major life goals, like house ownership and starting a family, both of which require the ability to save a decent portion of your paycheck. People just want jobs that leave them with something after rent+food+healthcare and the reality is that the pool of these "good" jobs is shrinking by the year and requires multiple years of expensive education and at least above average intelligence, because you're competing globally against the upper middle classes of other countries as well.
paulddraper 10y ago
> it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job that may not be there when you graduate Few jobs disappear in a few years. A few decades, maybe. (Yeah, yeah, we'll have flying autonomous vehicles in 2020 putting all taxi drivers out of work.) You are correct there is a shortage of skilled labor. Physicians, engineers, lawyers, accountants etc. have been and will continue to be in demand. Blue collar jobs too: mechanic, plumber, electrician, HVAC. Sure, getting an psychology undergrad from a $40k/yr tuition school is a bad move, but there are plenty of reliably good moves out there.
cle 10y ago
The core problem here is that we can't adapt quickly enough to change. To ensure we can adapt quickly enough, we can either slow down change and make progress more difficult (which seems to be the popular sentiment), or we can make adaptation easier and faster. When framed like that, IMO it's obvious--we need to focus on adaptability, not conservatism. We are ineluctably bound by the laws of survival and natural selection, and if we can't sufficiently adapt to changes, then we will die (figuratively and literally).
- ared38 10y ago
  But how? If it takes 4 months to train on a new CNC machine or 8 to learn the latest web design tools, how do we make people more adaptable? There are certainly some jobs that are currently over trained, as evidenced by nurse practitioners taking over some common general practitioner roles. But I'm not convinced that's the situation in manufacturing.
  - cle 10y ago
    I honestly don't know. I'm mainly concerned that it's not part of the conversation--the national conversation currently revolves around getting back lost jobs, or preventing jobs from being lost, instead of adapting to change. Jobs will be lost, industries will die, money will shift--it's inevitable. How can we adapt? It's something I don't have a good answer for, but that I'm confident can be solved if we actually try.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Case in point: my employer has a vacancy that has been unfilled for the better part of a year now because they want to hire a full-time Database Administrator and not pay more than $65k. My theory is that they're intentionally low-balling it so that no one will apply and they can hire an H1B.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Job vacancies below market rate should not be counted as openings. Pretty easy to determine market rate from data provided by payroll providers (ie ADP).
  - tricolon 10y ago
    That $65k may very well be the "prevailing wage" determined by the Department of Labor.
- toyg 10y ago
  > a full-time Database Administrator Do those even exist anymore, in the US? In the UK I very rarely encounter UK-based DBAs, 99.99% are offshore.
  - Taylor_OD 10y ago
    I was a technical recruiter for a couple year and only met two USA based DBAs. They both do fully remote work and bill 100 an hour as a contractor.
  - pragmatic 10y ago
    I've mostly encountered them in banks where there is regulation or a strong desire not to let developers access production data/systems (Sarbox or something, I forget). However their use seems to be declining in most other industries.
greglindahl 10y ago
In most parts of the US, community colleges already work with local businesses to offer the right courses for workers to acquire skills relevant to local unfilled positions. Here's an example program from the area I grew up in: http://www.gvltec.edu/cnc/ http://www.gvltec.edu/cnc/
user5994461 10y ago
> If a business can endure not filling a position until they can find their person willing to work for peanuts, why offer more? If the skill is rare enough or the pay is low enough, they will simply NEVER get anyone. The job ads and the "we can't find people" will stick though.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Does anyone here know a good way out of this situation? Yes, you reprice labor. It is potentially inflationary though.

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.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  How does lowering the labor supply solve the problem of the labor supply being too low? Next up: solve hunger by setting food on fire.
  - blfr 10y ago
    It solves the problem of cheap employers since that attitude will become untenable.
logfromblammo 10y ago
People aren't stupid. They don't just want jobs; they want careers. Training makes sense for a job that has a career path. If you learned to drive a road tractor, you started by working for a transport company until you save up enough to buy your own rig, then you were a contractor for one of those companies until you got an agent to get you the loads you wanted on the routes you liked. Maybe eventually you got off the road to work in the management office for a transport company. With automated trucks on the horizon, young folks are less likely to even bother learning how to drive such vehicles. No one wants to be told that the skill they already spent half their lives honing will not carry them through to retirement. Big companies have been dismantling careers and repackaging them as cheaper and more fungible jobs for decades now. There is no consideration given whatsoever to the fact that employees are people that cannot spring fully formed from Zeus's brow when the company calls, nor store themselves in a closet and turn themselves off until needed again. If you won't pay for people to live their lives outside of your workplace, they won't waste any of their finite time in it. It isn't just training. The company needs an ecosystem that moves humans from graduation to retirement. They don't have to own or control the whole thing, but all the pieces have to be there. And if a piece breaks, it has to be repaired or replaced to keep other parts healthy. That hasn't been happening since the 80s, so now there are huge, gaping holes in the career pipeline, and what companies remain are often parasites upon it rather than contributors to the ecosystem. So, yeah, good luck finding someone to install your auto glass, buddy. All those kids know that you will never be paying that $70k/year (with bonuses!) you teased them with, because three years from now, you might just replace the guy you hired this year with yet another sucker at $12/hr. What happened to your previous glass guy? Did you promote him, or fire him?
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Generally people don't give a shit whether you call it a job or a career as long as it helps them achieve their life goals. The reality is that unless you're doing something related to IT or got a cushy management job through nepotism, or getting massively subsidized by your parents, you're unlikely to progress to major life goals, like house ownership and starting a family, both of which require the ability to save a decent portion of your paycheck. People just want jobs that leave them with something after rent+food+healthcare and the reality is that the pool of these "good" jobs is shrinking by the year and requires multiple years of expensive education and at least above average intelligence, because you're competing globally against the upper middle classes of other countries as well.

paulddraper 10y ago

> it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job that may not be there when you graduate Few jobs disappear in a few years. A few decades, maybe. (Yeah, yeah, we'll have flying autonomous vehicles in 2020 putting all taxi drivers out of work.) You are correct there is a shortage of skilled labor. Physicians, engineers, lawyers, accountants etc. have been and will continue to be in demand. Blue collar jobs too: mechanic, plumber, electrician, HVAC. Sure, getting an psychology undergrad from a $40k/yr tuition school is a bad move, but there are plenty of reliably good moves out there.

cle 10y ago

The core problem here is that we can't adapt quickly enough to change. To ensure we can adapt quickly enough, we can either slow down change and make progress more difficult (which seems to be the popular sentiment), or we can make adaptation easier and faster. When framed like that, IMO it's obvious--we need to focus on adaptability, not conservatism. We are ineluctably bound by the laws of survival and natural selection, and if we can't sufficiently adapt to changes, then we will die (figuratively and literally).

ared38 10y ago
But how? If it takes 4 months to train on a new CNC machine or 8 to learn the latest web design tools, how do we make people more adaptable? There are certainly some jobs that are currently over trained, as evidenced by nurse practitioners taking over some common general practitioner roles. But I'm not convinced that's the situation in manufacturing.
- cle 10y ago
  I honestly don't know. I'm mainly concerned that it's not part of the conversation--the national conversation currently revolves around getting back lost jobs, or preventing jobs from being lost, instead of adapting to change. Jobs will be lost, industries will die, money will shift--it's inevitable. How can we adapt? It's something I don't have a good answer for, but that I'm confident can be solved if we actually try.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

Case in point: my employer has a vacancy that has been unfilled for the better part of a year now because they want to hire a full-time Database Administrator and not pay more than $65k. My theory is that they're intentionally low-balling it so that no one will apply and they can hire an H1B.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
Job vacancies below market rate should not be counted as openings. Pretty easy to determine market rate from data provided by payroll providers (ie ADP).
- tricolon 10y ago
  That $65k may very well be the "prevailing wage" determined by the Department of Labor.
toyg 10y ago
> a full-time Database Administrator Do those even exist anymore, in the US? In the UK I very rarely encounter UK-based DBAs, 99.99% are offshore.
- Taylor_OD 10y ago
  I was a technical recruiter for a couple year and only met two USA based DBAs. They both do fully remote work and bill 100 an hour as a contractor.
- pragmatic 10y ago
  I've mostly encountered them in banks where there is regulation or a strong desire not to let developers access production data/systems (Sarbox or something, I forget). However their use seems to be declining in most other industries.

greglindahl 10y ago

In most parts of the US, community colleges already work with local businesses to offer the right courses for workers to acquire skills relevant to local unfilled positions. Here's an example program from the area I grew up in: http://www.gvltec.edu/cnc/ http://www.gvltec.edu/cnc/

user5994461 10y ago

> If a business can endure not filling a position until they can find their person willing to work for peanuts, why offer more? If the skill is rare enough or the pay is low enough, they will simply NEVER get anyone. The job ads and the "we can't find people" will stick though.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Does anyone here know a good way out of this situation? Yes, you reprice labor. It is potentially inflationary though.