14 ms·

Yep. Every time people say "Americans don't want to do these jobs" or anything else suggesting that there is a labor shortage in some sector I always mentally a

• devoply 8y ago
  There are many usually smaller sized businesses that simply won't work because of the nature of their economics and would cease to exist if you raise pay too much. There are though many other businesses of larger size that earn multiples on each employee and could afford to pay them much more and pay the shareholders and execs much less or nothing.
  • CM30 8y ago
    Isn't the answer then that said businesses simply shouldn't be trying to hire too many new employees yet, or should shut down? Because at the end of the day, if your company can't function without underpaying employees, then perhaps it's simply not a sustainable business/not sustainable to hire that many employees yet. If a company's business model doesn't work, then it shouldn't really stay open/continue to exist.
    • devoply 8y ago
      Maybe. From an overall perspective of entrepreneurship and job creation no. The reason being that many companies are bootstrapped on the backs of cheap labor until they reach a point where they can sustain jobs. You are basically saying that bootstrapping should never happen and you should always have investors to create companies... unless maybe if the founder can make a company based around a very small team work somehow who are working for next to nothing for equity.
      • kristianc 8y ago
        You’re welcome to set up a company and pay yourself as little as you want - that doesn’t mean you can compel others to accept mediocre wages too.
        • Thiez 8y ago
          Not a native speaker, but doesn't mediocre mean average? Surely most people are working for a mediocre salary or less?
          • consp 8y ago
            Normally yes, but it is also used as a degenerate term, though in this case other words might have been a better choice.
          • thaumasiotes 8y ago
            In modern American usage, mediocre is a pejorative word. To Horace, aurea mediocritas was a good thing, but we translate that as "golden mean" because mediocrity is, by definition, bad. The sense of "middle" has been lost.
            • sam0x17 8y ago
              It goes deeper than that. Average is viewed as negative in American culture. When people say mediocre they are thinking "eww average" in the back of their mind.
          • roel_v 8y ago
            Didn't you get the memo? Our goal is to pay everyone above-average wages! Anything else is a terrible injustice!
      • NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        Bootstrapped usually means cheap labour of the founders, as part of the risk they took founding the business. Not paying unreasonably low wages to all around. Job creation comes after the business has become self-sustaining.
        • starbeast 8y ago
          Recently got told by some founders doing a farming technology startup that nobody gets paid because "We don't even pay ourselves!", but if I would like to volunteer my time doing automation and robotics R&D, then that would be great. I always think that you should account a startup as though you are going to be paying everyone properly even when you cannot, and then start to pay out based on a combination of need and who has the oldest outstanding credit, when money starts to appear. If you do this, then your company accounts are actually useful documents that you can project costs off going forward and actually attract investment, rather than living in some optimistic dreamland where the numbers you have do not represent anything like the actual costs of running the business properly.
          • consp 8y ago
            > Recently got told by some founders doing a farming technology startup that nobody gets paid because "We don't even pay ourselves!", but if I would like to volunteer my time doing automation and robotics R&D, then that would be great. So they are saying you should do slave-labor? I hope they expected to give you plenty of equity (which is cheap as the company is worthless as there is no money being made yet), otherwise it would be idiotic to expect people to work without compensation.
          • imtringued 8y ago
            Those founders are getting paid by having 100% ownership in the business. If in 5 years the business becomes profitable then the original unpaid employees won't see any of that money. The only way this payment structure can be morally sound is by treating every unpaid employee as a founder and giving them an equal share of the company.
            • 8y ago
      • darawk 8y ago
        Businesses aren't bootstrapped on the back of cheap labor. They're bootstrapped on the back of high cost variance labor. They're paid in equity that may be worth nothing or may be worth a lot. You convince people based on the merit of your idea. They evaluate whether or not your idea has a sufficiently high probability of success to be worth their time. The labor isn't cheap, it's just not paid for with cash.
        • adrianN 8y ago
          I think historically a lot of businesses were bootstrapped on cheap labor.
          • rusk 8y ago
            Not meaning to be facaetious, but this sounds like something an 18th Century sugar plantation owner might say. Historically, there were slaves.
            • adrianN 8y ago
              That's exactly my point. A lot of the big companies today have at some point in their past exploited workers. Basically every manufacturing company started before WW2 or so.
              • rusk 8y ago
                Sorry, do you mean your comment could be a candidate for the `/s` tag?
              • Retric 8y ago
                Early factory workers where not exploited in terms of pay, they made more money than the average worker of their time period. Safty is a different story.
          • roel_v 8y ago
            If someone starting a business works many hours themselves for $2/hour, and asks their spouse/children to chip in, and calls in favors from family and friends to get things going - then that's bootstrapping on cheap labor, but nobody in their right mind would call that 'slavery'. When starting a business when you have nothing, you have to be frugal, yet you can't do everything alone - that doesn't mean all ways you can get work done at below-market rates are sleazy or immoral.
      • woolvalley 8y ago
        Usually you get that cheap labor with lower experienced and younger employees. You do get what you pay for in many ways, but you do find those talented young people who can be really good for the first 1 or 2 years, or do things that many big companies refuse to do, like hire remote or give things like flexible work arrangements in exchange for cheaper pay.
      • SimonPStevens 8y ago
        But where is the line? Can I import hundreds of people to manually have them dig coal out of the ground with their bare hands because I can't afford the machinery yet and claim I'm bootstrapping a mining business. We would typically call this exploitation. Many types of business can't be bootstrapped. That is not unusual. Bootstrapping is primarily a popular approach now due to easy computer automation that makes a small subset of companies viable with the very small staff and no expensive hardware. It certainly isn't a default across all industries. The labour pool is a market. You are not entitled to cheap labour just because you want it. If you can't find someone willing to do your work at the rate you want to pay it's because someone else is paying more for the same work, so you need to pay more to attract the labour. Importing people from abroad is something that only exists as a solution because of the imbalance of development levels around the world right now. I expect that this is an anomaly that we are going to see correct itself in time once all countries reach a similer level of development. Where will you import your cheap labour from then? In the UK we used to employ children to work in the mines and the mills. This was eventually realised to be exploitative and made illegal. I'd bet that all the business owners at the time complained how would they ever be profitable without the cheap child labour. But they either adjust or die, and I'm happy with that tradeoff. If a business is only viable with child labour I would prefer it didn't exist at all.
        • thaumasiotes 8y ago
          > Importing people from abroad is something that only exists as a solution because of the imbalance of development levels around the world right now. I expect that this is an anomaly that we are going to see correct itself in time once all countries reach a similer level of development. This has never been the case in the past; there is no reason to expect it in the future.
          • ben_w 8y ago
            Disagree. In the past, “abroad” was physically closer and in what is now the same country. Londoners can pay the Welsh less, but they can’t go on literal slave-gathering raids c. 999 AD. It’s all a matter of degree. Degree of progress, degree of wage difference, etc.
      • briandear 8y ago
        Businesses are bootstrapped on the backs of the founders who exchange high personal risk for potential reward. I have had a bootstrapped company and my employees always got paid first and correctly. I don’t hire people unless I can pay them what they fairly cost. Any shortfalls came from my pocket and savings and never on the backs of my team. Maybe I am an outlier. It seems to me that the Amazons and Ubers of the world are built upon “cheap” labor more so than bootstrapped companies. Those types of companies have a competitive advantage from their access to cheap labor that is magnified at scale. Your typical bootstrapped company isn’t at the scale where exploitive labor makes much sense.
    • dingaling 8y ago
      Or they could invest in training instead of expecting perfectly-qualified staff to walk in the door. Every week I see job ads with "${INDUSTRY_CERTIFICATION} essential". Companies are lazy and spendthrift and have some illusion of a vast labour market just itching to retrain themselves in MIG welding or whatever. The last ad I remember that said "full training will be given " was for a bakery!
      • pytester 8y ago
        Training requires loyalty to work - if companies can't expect trained personnel to stay then the investment is pure overhead. To be fair, it's corporate America that burned that bridge in the 80s with layoff culture, citing "economic efficiency".
        • ForHackernews 8y ago
          You could build some measure of "loyalty" into a contract: * We train you for six months and pay you full salary. * You have to work for us for two years past the end of your training period. * If you leave before that, you owe us 50% of salary from the training period. (or whatever) In a competitive market, you might even see other companies willing to buy employees out of their contracts.
          • k_sh 8y ago
            This would be illegal in some (most?) places - labor laws ban employers from clawing back pay for almost any reasons. In California, for example, you can't even dock someone's final paycheck if they fail to return a uniform - if someone worked the time to earn a wage and you don't pay them in full, you're going to find yourself in court.
            • ForHackernews 8y ago
              I'm not familiar with CA labor laws, but money is fungible so it could be just be structured as "This is a three year contract, and if you quit early, you're in breach and owe us $X". Then it's not "clawing back" pay, it's just a fine for breach of contract. I do think laws should prevent low-wage employers from screwing over their employees for piddling stuff like uniforms, but I think that's different than something like a professional apprenticeship.
    • C1sc0cat 8y ago
      And rely of corporate welfare or working tax credits as its known in the UK - I don't mid my taxes paying for nurse doctor or teacher training subsidising Starbucks baristas not so much
      • NullPrefix 8y ago
        Should punctuation training come from welfare money?
        • gpderetta 8y ago
          Welfare, no. Education budget, definitely.
      • Delmania 8y ago
        > subsidising Starbucks baristas not so much I'd recommend you read the Power of Habit. The author talks about the training program Starbucks puts its employees through to build willpower.
    • sinxoveretothex 8y ago
      I think the question you should be asking is why are people taking these "too low" wage jobs? Companies do close down all the time because expenses are higher than revenues. Restaurants are a very well-known industry where that is super common (and it's not because restaurants tend to pay exhorbitant wages). It's literally a meme to accountants that having a restaurant as a client is a good way to never get paid (they may close down in the 30 days after delivery they are typically given to pay you). Also, in a way, we already "shut down" companies that pay too little: you just can't even offer to pay someone 2$/hour. The question I'd ask is "who would take that job if it were allowed?" In essence, having low wage jobs should never be an issue: if you're of the opinion that these companies shouldn't exist in the first place, you're essentially saying that those workers have better options already available. Do we really need to fire them to get them to go for those?
      • minikites 8y ago
        >you're essentially saying that those workers have better options already available If you're following the fable of capitalism, those people should start their own, more efficient businesses if none are available.
        • sinxoveretothex 8y ago
          Yes? Or just get hired by one? Or change field? Or move? It's no fable. Some of us don't have what it takes to start their own company, that's true. Probably there is no hope for some. I don't know how you'd show that there is a system that doesn't suffer from this problem. I mean, you'd have to show that even with less incentive to produce and more demand for products (since everyone is owed "decent living" or whatever it's called nowadays), there is no possibility for demand to exceed production.
      • FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
        Because capitalism forces them between a job that does not pay enough and no money to buy food and housing and clothing and such. The solution is of course something like a basic income to liberate people and break the power of companies.
    • logicchains 8y ago
      >Because at the end of the day, if your company can't function without underpaying employees, then perhaps it's simply not a sustainable business/not sustainable to hire that many employees yet. Do you think the employees would prefer being unemployed or being underpaid? The business closing doesn't magically create new, better-paying jobs for them. If better-paying jobs existed that they were capable of doing, they'd already be doing those instead.
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        > Do you think the employees would prefer being unemployed or being underpaid? Depends on how underpaid doesn't it? There's a line for everyone where all that work just isn't worth still not being able to afford a decent standard of living.
        • logicchains 8y ago
          >There's a line for everyone where all that work just isn't worth still not being able to afford a decent standard of living. Then shouldn't this be up to the workers in question to decide? Closing their low-paying workplaces just cuts down their options, it doesn't create new jobs for them.
          • deleted 8y ago
            [deleted]
          • androidgirl 8y ago
            Workers do decide on things such as the minimum wage, through voting. If a business wants to offer more pay to attract more employees, that's their call and their right.
            • logicchains 8y ago
              >Workers do decide on things such as the minimum wage, through voting. That's a much weaker form of decide. A vote only means at least 50% of voters wanted it, so you can only say with certainty that there's a 50%+ chance that any given voter wants it. Whereas if a worker has chosen to work for a particular salary, there's a 100% chance he's chosen that as nobody else can make that decision for him.
    • merpnderp 8y ago
      You perfectly make the point that the true minimum wage is $0/hour. Raising minimum wage has often reduced the number of jobs, often creating black markets of cash workers who often compete directly against people not allowed to legally work in US, further depressing wages. The real question is if a worker and an employer agree to a pay rate, why do you get to call it "underpaying"? Are they not adults, ostensibly free to live their lives how they see fit?
    • closetohome 8y ago
      This has always been the argument against companies who claim they can't survive without using undocumented immigrant labor. If your business model relies entirely on not paying your employees reasonable wages, maybe your business model is a failure.
    • txsoftwaredev 8y ago
      There will always be a need to employee low IQ individuals, developmentally disabled, etc. Would you prefer those types not have a viable option for employment?
  • darawk 8y ago
    There are definitely businesses that wouldn't exist due to their inability to find labor cheap enough to make their unit economics work. We usually say "those businesses shouldn't exist, then". For instance, you could make a version of AirBnB that was supported by ads alone, if instead of paying homeowners for the use of their homes, you simply compelled them to let you rent them out for nothing.
    • vincnetas 8y ago
      you mean https://www.couchsurfing.com https://www.couchsurfing.com?
  • sgroppino 8y ago
    In this case these businesses should invest in tools that make fewer workers more productive.
  • Ar-Curunir 8y ago
    Businesses that are only profitable because they short-change workers... should not exist. Businesses don't have a "right to labour".
  • dominicr 8y ago
    Usually this is because customers have gotten used to paying less than reasonable prices. Paying people more is often hand in hand with customers paying more. But people like the first idea more than the second! Companies will try to only pay staff more when they can justify that to the shareholders as being a way to make more money for the shareholders. A public company exists solely for the benefit of the shareholders and all actions stem from that.
    • mooreds 8y ago
      > A public company exists solely for the benefit of the shareholders and all actions stem from that. Not sure about this. First off, there's the principal/agent problem that causes many public companies to be run for the benefit of their upper management. Second, this idea of the shareholder above all other stakeholders is a new phenomenon (since the 1980s). It's also primarily an Anglo Saxon idea (USA, Britain). Other countries include other stakeholders more explicitly. And the USA could as well, of the political will was there. I agree with you that this is how American capitalism is structured now, but it didn't spring from the mind of God, it's a human institution that can be changed.
      • jsmith45 8y ago
        Yeah. I've often said that in any business decisions there are the following stakeholders: Upper Management, The employees, the board members, the shareholders, the customers. Business decisions are almost always made looking at the perspective of perhaps 2 or three of these stakeholders. The employees are basically never considered in the US, often only the biggest one or two customer's desires are considered if any consideration is given at all, etc. And way too much attention is payed to certain Wall Street types who get all upset when earnings exceed the company's own projections, but fall short of wildly optimistic estimates by third parties.
  • PeterisP 8y ago
    That's one loop of the self-balancing process - if there's a scarcity of labor, wages go up, some businesses can't afford it and close down, that reduces the needed number of workers and solves/balances the scarcity. And it's a beneficial process, as it moves these people from business where their labor is less valuable (as evidenced by the fact that it's not profitable to employ them at a slightly higher wage) to businesses where their labor is more useful. The least efficient businesses being forced to close is a good thing that allows the labor, facilities, land, materials, capital, etc to stop being used poorly so that they can be used better in the economy. The other balancing loop is that higher wages in some field is motivation for people to get the skills needed for that field, either through choice of education for younger people or by transferring from another type of job. This balances the supply side in a beneficial way, but as it's much slower than the balancing loop above, the largest immediate impact comes from the demand-side balance.
    • gronne 8y ago
      “And it's a beneficial process” only to an extend. To much volatility result in a net loss for the market and society.
  • mikeschmatz 8y ago
    Shall we legalize slavery then? Just imagine how many business models would become viable if labor was free
    • idontpost 8y ago
      I wouldn't say slavery is free. You still have to pay someone to beat the slaves.
    • war1025 8y ago
      You still need to pay the slaves in the sense that since you own them, you are responsible for their upkeep, which takes resources.
  • tomjen3 8y ago
    Then they will have to adapt. Here in Denmark we don't have greeters, we bag our own stuff and most of the time we have to put a coin in to get the shopping cart out, which will be returned when we return it. Of course there will be businesses that can't adapt. These will die out and those employees will then, slightly, decrease salaries.
• ElBarto 8y ago
  Many of the jobs in that category are paid little because it's not really economical to pay more. Wages are constrained by productivity and what customers are willing to pay. E.g. if you have to pay people a lot to wash cars then those jobs will simply disappear.
  • darawk 8y ago
    > Many of the jobs in that category are payed little because it's not really economical to pay more. Wages are constrained by productivity and what customers are willing to pay What do you mean by that? > E.g. if you have to pay people a lot to wash cars then those will simply disappear. What will disappear? The cars? Cleanliness? What I think you mean is that people will demand fewer car washes, which is true. But so what?
    • mifreewil 8y ago
      People will demand fewer car washes or they will start to use fully automated car washes that don’t require people, or they will wash their own car. High labor costs makes automation that may have been thought of as too expensive or complicated before to seem more viable.
      • ollie87 8y ago
        Automated car washes scratch the crap out of your car, so I doubt it. They're more likely to just do it themselves.
    • chrismeller 8y ago
      I think you're being a little too pedantic, the meaning seemed pretty clear to me... 1) In some sectors and job roles pay is what it is because there are other hard costs involved, the quantity of labor required is prohibitively high, and/or customers are not willing to pay $75 for <insert name of item or service>. Customers are willing to pay $25 for <insert name of item or service>, so you take 25 and subtract all the other costs involved as well as a profit margin to make it worth your while, do some multiplication (or division, as appropriate) to figure out how many of <insert name of item or service> each person can complete in a given hour, and end up being able to pay each person working on <insert name of item or service> $10 per hour. Whether or not someone is willing to toil away 8 hours a day on <insert name of item or service> for $10 per hour... well, that's what we're talking about. 2) What will disappear? The manual carwashes, obviously. Whether they get replaced by automatic ones (which eliminates the prohibitively high labor cost at a marginal increase in hard costs that decreases over time) or simply by people washing their cars themselves (which eliminates all of the above) doesn't really matter, as we're talking about labor issues and in either scenario the guy washing the car is out of his job. So what? So nothing, except the whole topic we're discussing.
• stevenicr 8y ago
  Saw an article yesterday, some expert, something like "2 in X working age adults don't want a job / don't want to work" - also skill sets need updating and who should pay to train employees needs debating, maybe a fed subsidy.. Around the city I live in, the past 6 months wages have started to increase a bit, some chain restaurants now have banners out front "starting at $12/hour". Many places are short staffed and lose business because of it. Problem is, the living wage here has increased to around $23 / hour. I'm sure you could live in one of the slums for less, and you could be on the section 8 waiting list for 2 years hoping to live for less if you can couch surf and bridge sleep while waiting... mit's living wage calc says an adult can living wage here for $11.24 / hour - I've tried to help people find cheap housing options in town several times the past two years and I just don't see how those numbers work out. The calculator says 1 adult 1 child, $22.77 per hour - that seems more doable, although I think most people living here would be spending much more than $11,508 on housing, so at that rate they would be sacrificing healthcare and probably transportation or whatever to make it work. People don't want to work full time and not be able to afford basic necessities. Another problem is so many jobs say they drug test, but there is (at least not that I have found yet) not a job listing site or category for "Smiling faces" aka 'we don't test for weed in your system as long as you toke at home and don't show up with red eyes / moving slow with a bag of chips in hand.' So yeah, try paying more for sure. Get more realistic with labeling jobs. In some cases making transportation free would get you some excellent workers who can't afford $20 per day for ubers but want to work further from their apartment where you job is. I've watched many here struggle to find rides to work and jobs that are $5 or under for uber to get there. There is more that can be done for sure. As so many places try to not pay well, I see more and more that are closed when they should be open, or running slow and losing business because they are short staffed. Certainly steak and shake could pay $20 an hour for third shift workers if it meant they could stay open and make many times that. Things I've been noticing in this growing city are not indicative of the whole country / world - so whatever bias yeah I know.
  • chrisseaton 8y ago
    > not a job listing site or category for "Smiling faces" aka 'we don't test for weed in your system Why's this called 'smiling faces'?
• choot 8y ago
  I think once companies have got taste of cheap foreign labor, it becomes difficult to convince them to pay more. They are always looking to do some complex maneuver to get foreign labor doing work cheaply for them. This is why they are complaining.
  • amelius 8y ago
    Yeah, while you are working, your boss is busy trying to outsource your job.
    • wolco 8y ago
      Everyone has a job
      • EForEndeavour 8y ago
        Until they're outsourced.
  • darawk 8y ago
    > They are always looking to do some complex maneuver to get foreign labor doing work cheaply for them. What kinds of maneuvers? The only way you can get foreign workers to work for you is to convince them to leave whatever it is they're currently doing.
• bayesian_horse 8y ago
  At the price "Americans" would do these jobs, the companies may not be able to earn a profit. Because, otherwise, they probably would do just that.
  • tuyiown 8y ago
    If you have no one willing to pay for your service, including actual labor price, your business is irrelevant, and certainly not entitled to any effort from the worker. It's just business management that suck.
    • logicchains 8y ago
      >If you have no one willing to pay for your service, including actual labor price, your business is irrelevant, and certainly not entitled to any effort from the worker. It's just business management that suck. How much people are willing to pay for a service is connected to the value labour generates. If the minimum wage for cleaning was raised to $50/hour, many cleaning companies would close because few people were willing to pay at least $50/hour for a cleaner; the work done by the cleaner does not generate $50/hour of value. For any given individual at any point on time there is a ceiling on how much value they can generate, based on their knowledge and abilities. If somebody is capable of generating $10 of value, and the minimum wage is raised to $20 of value, anybody employing them would be losing $10/hour (paying $20 for $10 worth of labour). In which case it becomes much harder for that individual to find a job, and also to get a foothold for them to gain skills and experience that allow them to generate more value in future. You might argue that such a worker is better off on welfare or some kind of basic income, but shouldn't that be their choice to make, not yours?
      • state_less 8y ago
        > How much people are willing to pay for a service is connected to the value labour generates. It's how much the market will bear. Business owners (shareholders) play a game of arbitrage between what people will pay for the service and the cost of producing the service (e.g. labor costs). I think folks are upset not so much at the cleaning services of the world, but the oligopolies, where you soak up the surplus value of the labor. Sometimes it's done illegally like in the wage collusion case in silicon valley, other times it's done legally through M&A. The wealthy have learned how to leverage their position for maximum profit, and many folks see it for what it is.
• snarf21 8y ago
  I agree with you but I would also say these systems are complicated. Raising wages can also lead to raising prices and at the end of the day what people really want is more buying power. People want manufacturing jobs back in the US at $30/hour rates for people with no experience but then also want to buy these kinds of goods at the dollar store. These things are very incompatible. People always want it both ways. People also want the perfect job 5 minutes from where they already live (understandably) even though it may be cheaper to have people in WV do that same job. Even thinking about more practical things like food harvesting, these jobs can pay ~$15/hour but they are REALLY hard work as that rate isn't guaranteed but rather performance based. If we had to pay even $25/hour to attract unemployed US workers to do these jobs instead of migrants, this would cause a likely doubling of the cost of all the produce you buy. We all have to ask, "Are we willing to pay double for fruits and vegetables to create decent paying jobs for other citizens?" I think the answer is that we are clearly not. The same question goes for services we use constantly like Amazon and Uber. The people doing the work are vastly underpaid and that is exactly where our savings come from! For tech, I think the training path is the right thing. Employers do have to be careful to not spend tons training people just to have them leave. I firmly believe the right answer is apprenticeships. People do work as they learn and their wage rises slowly with the experience and ability to create value. The risk of them leaving is minimized as they have already created corporate value.
  • darawk 8y ago
    I think what you're really hitting on there is the global competitive equilibrium. If we couldn't hire migrants to pick fruit, our farm businesses simply couldn't compete on price (also subsidies). But standard economic theory would say "don't compete then! do something else".
    • war1025 8y ago
      They had a piece on NPR a week or two ago where a vegetable farmer said he'd love to hire locals instead of migrants because you have to pay to house the migrants, which actually makes them more expensive. But none of the locals want to do the work.
• tomjen3 8y ago
  But if the price you have to pay to get somebody to do the job, it would be true that no american wants that job, as the job wouldn't exist unless it cost less to hire somebody to do the job than it is worth to the one who pays.