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Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

• LatteLazy 5y ago
  Neither. If employers really wanted more workers, they'd up wages. If employees really wanted to work they'd settle for less. If neither is happening then everyone is happy and anyone complaining is a liar in the economic sense.
  • mc32 5y ago
    Apparently close to 30% of household income right now is from government payments. I think on average people are getting the equiv of $15/hr from gov checks. So for people to want to work it’s going to have to exceed that by some non trivial amount.
    • jnwatson 5y ago
      Ultimately, this is a problem with all government benefits with an strict binary income limit. The result is that, in some circumstances, earning 1 more dollar results in losing thousands of dollars. The marginal income tax system was set up this way for a reason. If these unemployment benefits were paid out UBI-style, regardless of current employment, there wouldn't be a disincentive to find work.
      • petre 5y ago
        > earning 1 more dollar results in losing thousands of dollars They might either go out of business or automate those roles if they can't afford to pay blue collar workers a living wage. I'm not a socialist, but some business do rip off low income workers. So they might as well cease to exist if they can't find workers to rip off, instead of claiming that people are lazy.
      • christophilus 5y ago
        > The result is that, in some circumstances, earning 1 more dollar results in losing thousands of dollars. I think your new marginal rate only applies to anything over the limit that bumped you into a new tax bracket, so I don’t think this is right. A raise always gets you more money. The exception being if it bumps you out of the government assisted healthcare bracket. Then, a raise could indeed be a loss. Edit: I thought you were talking about income tax, but you might have been talking about business subsidies, which I know nothing about.
        • somebodythere 5y ago
          They are talking about welfare benefits. Many of these are structured so that the marginal dollar you earn results in $0.75 to $1000+ being taken away from you in benefits.
    • LatteLazy 5y ago
      I'm a brit so I'm far from an expert but I though you kept the US covid payouts whether you worked or not? (unless you earn something like 400k a year)? Sorry if I'm missing your point...
      • jpindar 5y ago
        The three individual "stimulus checks" went to everyone whether they worked or not. But in addition, unemployed people have been getting unprecedented amounts of weekly Unemployment Insurance payments. In normal times, you can only get these for a few months while proving that you are actively looking for work. During the pandemic, these have been extended and greatly increased, and the government has mostly stopped checking whether people were really looking for work. The normal rules are going to go back into effect soon, though.
    • intergalplan 5y ago
      > Apparently close to 30% of household income right now is from government payments How much is it normally? Definitely not 0%. Also, what's "government payments"? Does it include wages to government employees, for instance? (I expect the figure is higher than normal, I'm just not sure from this how much higher)
      • mc32 5y ago
        It does not include wages. These are “welfare/unemployment benefits” These are spikes. During the last recession it spiked into the teens. Before that it was lower. So, yeah, it’s a lot of money.
        • intergalplan 5y ago
          Ah, OK—if so then the total share of all household income from all government sources must be well over 50% right now, no? Wages, pensions, (including military, in both cases, and state and local government) Social Security, et c.
    • paulpauper 5y ago
      but much of that temporary.
  • mschuster91 5y ago
    > If neither is happening then everyone is happy and anyone complaining is a liar in the economic sense. The complaining is an economic act in itself - employers whining about "unable to find workers" usually get political help as a result, either in the form of tax breaks/other subsidies or in the form of relaxed labor laws/enforcement (e.g. loosening the requirements to fire someone, reducing the amount of inspection for undocumented workers).
  • xondono 5y ago
    This. Everyone is trying to milk the government for “support”, especially if they can get it in cash.
    • colpabar 5y ago
      Why shouldn't they? The government taxes everything it possibly can, and for the past year the government has put a ton of restrictions in place that caused a lot of people to lose their jobs. It is now time for the government to start using those taxes to provide the safety net it promises us. If the pentagon can "lose" 125 billion dollars ($125,000,000,000), I really don't care that people with the ability to "milk" the gov for cash are taking advantage of that ability. It's their own money in the first place!
      • intergalplan 5y ago
        Seriously. I'd rather "deadbeat Johnny" down the street milk the government for a few hundred a month than Halliburton milk them for $50,000,000,000. At least he's gonna spend a fair bit of that money locally.
      • xondono 5y ago
        I’m not saying they shouldn’t. I’m just saying you should not be surprised of their complaints.
    • Clubber 5y ago
      I mean, every year the government milks me, and it certainly is in cash.
  • Jiejeing 5y ago
    But who even wants to work for a minimum wage job for the pleasure of it? The corporation needs labor, but the employee need money, not labor (but it happens that most common way for normal people to earn money to live is through labor).
  • throwaway292893 5y ago
    The people with jobs paying taxes aren't very happy to support freeloaders simply taking unemployment because they don't want to work.
    • colinmhayes 5y ago
      I feel happy enough with the situation. No one should be forced to work a shitty job imo.
      • throwaway292893 5y ago
        Well I'm not. Now there's two anecdotes to work with. I worked a shitty job to get through college, it's a stepping stone. These jobs aren't meant to live on. They should be used as part time jobs for people transitioning in their careers, like students. When you give handouts to people who don't want to work you are not doing them any favors. They become reliant and trapped in that loop. That's not to say there shouldn't be a safety net with strict qualifications. You're doing no service to the people who need it by allowing those who don't. We should be spending money creating new, better paying jobs, not new social programs.
        • wildrhythms 5y ago
          We hear this same diatribe every time this topic comes up. "Fast food work is a stepping stone to a better job!" Have you been to a McDonalds or Wendys recently? Most of the workers are in their 30s-40s+. The concept of a low-wage "stepping stone" job is a fallacy that people have subscribed to to justify paying unlivable wages.
          • throwaway292893 5y ago
            That's not my experience, I mostly see teens and sometimes one or two adults. Do you have a source backing up that claim? > We should be spending money creating new, better paying jobs, not new social programs.
    • 5y ago
  • itronitron 5y ago
    There is also a nasty waiting game that is playing out right now. Employers don't really want to hire people that need a paycheck as those people, if hired, are more likely to ask for more sooner. So employers have no incentive to advertise higher wages for an open position because they will just get more applicants from people who 'need money', not necessarily better applicants.
    • AlexandrB 5y ago
      I don't think a lot of people work in fulfillment centers, construction, fast food, or retail because they love the job. Most people are there because they "need money". If employers think otherwise they have been drinking too much of their own coolaid about "passion".
• Clubber 5y ago
  I think the "life is short," phenomenon that recently occurred to everybody due to COVID is also playing a part. People are thinking, something along the lines of, "I could have died and my gift of life has mostly consisted of working for this shithole company for the last 5 years." Employers might want to consider hiring more people in smaller shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4 day shifts rather than 5-6. It'll be interesting if this phenomenon holds. Of course the US workforce has been constantly squeezed for the last 40 years, so maybe the COVID was the breaking point. No more cheap labor because people are unwilling to live with their parents / not have health insurance. People really mastered how to live cheap over the last year as well. Make no mistake, COVID was a seismic event in the US economy that will have lasting changes.
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    Ngl it’s got me wondering if I should make some life shattering changes myself.
    • Clubber 5y ago
      I've been working professionally for 25 years now. I could take a year off financially, but I'm still shackled by health insurance being so expensive on the private market. Think about this, when you are on your deathbed, whenever that is. Could be tomorrow, could be in 60 years. What regrets will you have?
      • the_only_law 5y ago
        > Think about this, when you are on your deathbed, whenever that is. Could be tomorrow, could be in 60 years. What regrets will you have? Tomorrow? Definitely not going for anything’s. In 60 years? I can’t tell. It would all depend on if the risks work out or not.
    • david_allison 5y ago
      Unsolicited advice: dip your toe in the water and introspect after a couple of months to see if it's a sustainable change that you want to make.
• andreshb 5y ago
  If a business can’t pay a living wage, automate the role.
  • erhk 5y ago
    And tax the labour that automation provides
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • mc32 5y ago
      Lots of things have been automated over time. What’s the cutoff? Tractors automate things. Email automates things. Computing in general automated things.
    • kristjansson 5y ago
      What? No. Automation doesn't need a new tax, it's just capital investment like any other. Tax the proceeds from investment (in automation and everything else) at a rate commensurate with taxes on labor...
  • throwaway292893 5y ago
    Looking at you California farms.
    • nradov 5y ago
      Strawberry picking robots are coming. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rob.21889 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rob.21889
      • throwaway292893 5y ago
        Those exploited immigrants won't hold their breath. I'm sure those farms unwilling to pay a fair wage will start investing in those expensive machines' R&D. Then do it for all other crops.
• recursivedoubts 5y ago
  Maybe one of these days the pro-labor left and the pro-labor right are gonna figure it out, stop taking the bait, and we'll finally get a real revolution.
  • mc32 5y ago
    Everyone knows how to make a revolution. The hard work is the day after the revolution. The same problems will exist. They don’t magically go away.
    • medium_burrito 5y ago
      Also what are they gonna revolt about? Immigration and automation I can definitely see, but there's nobody but the Yang stumping about this. And then you have the question of what happens when the A and C arks leave for Mars?
  • cratermoon 5y ago
    > pro-labor right Such a thing does not exist.
    • kokanator 5y ago
      Greed permeates all parties as it is a human characteristic. The point is to create an environment that encourages strong businesses and discourages greed. Left or Right. Are you talking right business owners or politicians. If you answer both, how many conservative business owners do you actually know? I know a number of them and they have thriving businesses with well compensated and well covered employees that have worked for their businesses for decades.
    • paulpauper 5y ago
      how about socially conservative union workers, for example.
      • cratermoon 5y ago
• medium_burrito 5y ago
  This is super exciting and scary- we've basically gone basic income, but with zero planning. We'll see how it turns out. We're having some price inflation due to supply chain issues. Cost of housing is more interesting... should we go public housing like Signapore, but contract it out to a country that isn't full of morons that cant plan/lawsuit/consult/build infra for a reasonable price?
  • brightball 5y ago
    We haven't though. The key to basic income is that it provides a baseline and then you can go to work to earn more money. With high unemployment pay, you lose that money the moment you go get a job so it creates a disincentive to work.
    • phillipcarter 5y ago
      > so it creates a disincentive to work This framing can make it come off as though the wages were fair to begin with. The consensus seems to be that they were never fair. And people in the US are largely tired of the government giving handouts to businesses over people. It's time for those who reaped disproportional benefits over the past 40 years to eat some costs instead.
      • brightball 5y ago
        > This framing can make it come off as though the wages were fair to begin with. This framing passes the buck for inflation from the government onto businesses that have no control over it whatsoever. When the money you have buys less and less, the wages suddenly become less and less "fair" without the employer doing anything differently. Who's to say that their business has increased enough to support the higher wage? This is, IMO, why basic income is critical because it puts the cost of dealing with inflation directly back on the government itself, rather than the small businesses that are constantly framed as paying "unfair" wages. If the taxes to support it come from the people at the top who've reaped disproportionate benefits...GREAT. But the small businesses at the bottom struggling to keep their doors open are not the enemy here but they will absolutely be the ones that suffer the most from wage-based legislation that they can't afford. And let's not forget that the moment such legislation passes, it just encourages more automation or exporting of jobs to other countries where a fraction of the original wage is somehow "fair".
• gred 5y ago
  Given the surge in online shopping and the blue-collar labor shortage (not really a shortage, just wages triplicating within 1 or 2 years), logistics automation is in overdrive right now. Many of these jobs won't be available to come back to (at any price) once the helicopter money runs out.
• mywittyname 5y ago
  I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation. These jobs have been propped up by debt. It looks like the pandemic has put and end to this. Transportation costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that it's basically impossible for a poor person to even get a car, because they are going to be outbid by a not-poor person who is willing to pay a lot more for the same crappy car because of shortages. Repair shops are having issues getting replacement parts, so even maintaining a vehicle is getting difficult. We built our economy on exploitation, and now the exploited have been drained dry. So now we have to either pay up or do without.
  • gruez 5y ago
    >I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.
    • jolux 5y ago
      >It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day Well thankfully we don't have to imagine, people have researched this: https://livingwage.mit.edu/ https://livingwage.mit.edu/. According to these data, the living wage across the US in 2019 was $16.54: https://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/61-new-living-wage-data-for-now-available-on-the-tool https://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/61-new-living-wage-data-.... So it's not at all inconceivable that the federal minimum is a poverty wage, in fact it almost certainly is.
      • gruez 5y ago
        But that has nothing to do with GP's claim? GP was talking about your "net pay is below zero", meaning that the job itself pays negative. eg. you get paid $50/day but spent $55/day to earn it. Your comment seems to be about the minimum wage not being able to sustain a given living standard, eg. you get paid $50/day but you need to spend $55/day to survive.
• unethical_ban 5y ago
  Occasionally, Twitter provides some nice insights in digestible forms (of course, nuance gets stripped). I saw a post recently that said something like "We watch Star Trek and marvel at their post-scarcity world. We are living in a post-scarcity world now, but all the benefits are being funneled by wage slaves up to the 0.1%." Paraphrased. I was talking with a friend who mentioned that a local pizza place is offering *$18/hr* for bussers at the restaurant. To me, that is a great wage for someone to wipe down tables and sweep floors. If they're still having trouble filling that, is it because making $37k a year in Texas isn't good enough for a no-education, no-experience job? Is it because the high-schoolers who would normally do that aren't looking for jobs due to pandemic? Is it the unemployment security and not having to actually do work 40 hours a week? I wonder if the roles of people at restaurants will have to shift, so each person does some of everything, and get paid more, instead of having dedicated low-wage cleaners. Or that profit-sharing and healthcare may be the new model for restaurants.
  • unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
    Maybe the pizza shop would get a stronger response if they hired permanent workers on an annual $37k salary? An $18/hr wage is not identical....
    • ForHackernews 5y ago
      Yeah, $18/hour sounds less appealing if it comes with an unpredictable schedule and uncertain hours from week to week. I used to work retail, and it was rough trying to attend classes not knowing when I might get called in for a shift.
    • _wldu 5y ago
      But then they'd have to provide benefits (like health insurance, parental leave, etc.) and treat workers with dignity and respect. In America, that's unlikely to happen without government regulations enforcing it.
      • scotu 5y ago
• gonational 5y ago
  Timeline of Stupidity A: "we should give everyone free money!" B: "no, that'll make everyone lazy..." A: "no, people will work on things they love instead!" [everyone gets free money] [nobody works, everyone plays video games all day] A: "see, this proves that everyone was being exploited!" B: [smh] Plato's Five Regimes. We're entering the fourth regime.
  • petre 5y ago
    Video games are considered e-sports in South Korea and some people do get paid to play them. Imagine a full stadium with a few guys playing games and the audience watching them on big screens.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • gruez 5y ago
      You're technically right in the sense that some people do play video games for a living, but you're still wrong because GP talked about "everyone" playing video games for a living. just like you can't have everyone being actors/writers/musicians, you can't have everyone be esports players. There's only so much attention to go around, and the overwhelming majority is captured by a few at the top.
    • luckylion 5y ago
      They don't "play games" in any common meaning of the term though. It's not entertainment, it's work. It's not intended to pass the time, they train long hours to get better. Very, very, very few people do that, because it's not fun, it's work.
  • AlexandrB 5y ago
    Ok, but at some level of automation the number of low-skill jobs will be much less than the number of candidates. When this occurs, what's a viable career path for someone without a College education? Or even someone with a College education that's no longer relevant/in demand? We already have more than enough bullshit jobs... Perhaps the answer is to start shortening the work week.
• kokanator 5y ago
  Pre-covid businesses which paid borderline wages are going to find it really difficult to compete with the government. Basically, you have an administration 'silently' waging war of certain types of business or jobs without needing to pass controversial legislation for things like a minimum wage increase or universal income. If it feel subversive, it is. But the cost of controversy these days causes people to find alternative options. It is now possible to make 130% to 200% your pre-covid salary/wage by being on unemployment. [0] It is generally human nature to do as little as possible to survive. In this case you don't have to do anything to survive. Why would you go look for a job. This will put large swaths of businesses who could stay afloat pre-covid and were forced to close due to covid to not be able to open their doors again. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/09/it-pays-to-stay-unemployed-that-might-be-a-good-thing.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/09/it-pays-to-stay-unemployed-t...
  • treve 5y ago
    This is a good thing. Businesses that rely on paying people salaries that keep them under the poverty line have no right to exist. Your business is exploitative and doesn't deserve to survive.
    • luckylion 5y ago
      What do you do with people who don't have any skills that are worth more money? Do you just let the government take care of them perpetually?
      • Avshalom 5y ago
        Yes. We already do that. Many of my coworkers at Target are on medicaid and SNAP and get child care assistance and they will be, perpetually (well not so much the child care part). We just also make them work until they're 70+ anyway.
        • luckylion 5y ago
          > We just also make them work until they're 70+ anyway. Or in other words: we make them work. If we didn't we'd still need someone to do the work, only it wouldn't be your current coworkers. And we'd have to tax that person severely, so we have enough money to fund the early retirement of your coworkers. I'm not sure that person will be happy.
• thrower123 5y ago
  The problem is essentially that you can get paid $X to not work at all, or you can maybe get paid $Y to work some shitty job. But you can't get the $X that you'd get if you didn't work at all, and add on $Z dollars working a job of some kind. The perverse incentives of these programs around their phaseouts are and have long been a reality of low-income communities.
  • pydry 5y ago
    This is by design. It's a good way to inhibit employees asking for wage hikes.
• lacker 5y ago
  Personally, the pandemic has taught me how little I really need physical stores. Only a few items, like bicycles, shoes, and backpacking backpacks, do I really prefer buying them in a physical store. So for me at least, it would be okay if all these retail jobs went away, and all these retail stores just went out of business, and you just bought everything online. It seems like it could really be a disaster for people working in retail though. Hopefully those retail jobs would end up replaced by something better, like working in an Amazon warehouse....
  • disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    How do you handle buying clothes?
    • cratermoon 5y ago
      That's a tricky one, but it's solvable, if you're willing to give up the idea of having new and different styles regularly. Find a style & brand you like, figure out what size you wear and just buy that. You might have to send something back until you nail it. For people with odd size requirements like me (I'm short), shopping online usually means you can find a better fit, because stores tend not to carry much outsize the most common sizes. Shoes are a great example: A size 7.5 (US) is about the biggest I can wear, sometimes a size 8 if they run small. The "standard" mens size is 9, and you can find lots of styles in size 9 to 11, but rarely anything smaller than 8. Guess what? that shoe is made in 7, but stores don't carry it. Sometimes the maker will discontinue a line though, which means a switch. Shoemakers are notorious for this.
      • disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        So yeah, re-buying clothes/brands is fine. But I spent a bunch of money on clothes online and ended up with stuff that is nice, but which feels weird (and with some too-small pockets). I don't really know how one can solve for these kinds of issues online, even if we could CV together what clothes would look like on people (which is at least theoretically solvable with current technology). And fwiw, clothes are like one of the things that everyone needs to buy, so online only is almost certainly not going to happen in this space.
• stakkur 5y ago
  "But what if, she writes, those benefits are actually providing a safety net to American workers so that they do not need to take terrible jobs for low wages at terrible companies under terrible management?" Exactly this. A significant part of American business depends on cheap, low-overhead labor. America outsources a lot of that overseas (both white and blue collar), but fundamentally depends on filling shitty jobs and providing as few benefits as possible.
• rossdavidh 5y ago
  Well, there's a straightforward (I don't say easy) way to fix this: you require a high enough minimum wage (and healthcare, and sick leave, and etc.). It's not like the restaurant owner has the option of just deciding to pay twice or three times the labor costs, and trust that their customers will be happy to cover the difference, if their competitors don't have to do the same. Because, those restaurant (and retail and etc.) business owners are mostly not the ones making big money. Restaurants, in particular, are horribly low margin. The end result of getting rid of "terrible" jobs, is that everything at the restaurant costs 2-3x as much, and so on at the many other businesses (agriculture?) which rely on cheap labor. Which means all those people in professional class jobs (e.g. programmers) will find that their salary doesn't go nearly as far as it used to. Personally, I'm ok with that, I think it's the right thing to do. But it's not like it's the small business owners that are standing in the way of it; they cannot pay higher wages if their competition is not, so it has to be mandated. What's standing in the way of it is that this would be, at least temporarily, quite inflationary, and we have a professional class that is accustomed to not having to pay much for anything except houses.
  • Clubber 5y ago
    "According to "Papa" John Schnatter, the cost of providing health insurance for all of his pizza chain's uninsured, full-time employees comes out to about 14 cents on a large pizza." And this is the reason he gave for not supporting ACA. $0.14 a pizza. To this day, I struggle to understand the psychology behind it.
    • paulpauper 5y ago
      but that is not a fixed cost though, although it is small relative to the price of a pizza
  • jolux 5y ago
    >It's not like the restaurant owner has the option of just deciding to pay twice or three times the labor costs, and trust that their customers will be happy to cover the difference, if their competitors don't have to do the same. This feels a bit backwards. We don’t know that their competitors aren’t already paying more, we only know that some people can’t seem to get labor at the price they were paying before. I think the numbers here are currently inconclusive, but I conjecture that what we’re seeing is small business owners losing labor monopsonies that they had come to rely on, and consequently a more competitive labor market. Of course competition causes upward pressure on prices, that’s the whole point. This is tangential but I think America has been too scared of inflation for too long. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of inflation, especially if it means we can get closer to full employment. We haven’t even been meeting the fed’s (very low) target for quite a while.
• honksillet 5y ago
  There are no such things as “jobs americans won’t do”. It’s just you have to compensate people accordingly. With this failing stealth UBI experiment that we are currently engaged in, people aren’t willing to work when many of them are getting near 100% the same income not to work. The rest of us are being crushed by inflation.
  • solosoyokaze 5y ago
    > The rest of us are being crushed by inflation. The top 1% are making more money than ever before. If you're holding assets impacted by inflation, you're doing quite well now. If we take it as a given that in a modern, humane society no one should starve to death on the street and everyone should have access to the basics of survival, then the answer to the labor "shortage" is simply to shift some of the historically record breaking wealth inequality back down the org chart from the executives to the roles that need filling.
    • AdrianB1 5y ago
      How do you define the basics of survival? In parts of the world people live with 2 hamburgers a day, is that what you propose? Even $15/hour seems huge compared with basics of survival. Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that, so the executives theme is a straw man.
      • solosoyokaze 5y ago
        I would define the basics of survival as: * Basic groceries * Healthcare * Housing I don't think these things are easy to achieve but they seem like obvious goals to societal progress. If not, what are we even progressing towards? > Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that, so the executives theme is a straw man. I said if a company wants to fill a role, that they should pull from executive pay. The average CEO gets 70-1 the pay of the average employee. There is absolutely a surplus of capital to pull from to increase worker pay (thus filling the role). https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• macinjosh 5y ago
  If this is happening it is truly a good thing. I have always felt that the best way to have improvements for entry-level labor is if they just refused to take the shitty jobs and the market turned on employers. What employers refer to as shortages aren't really that at all. The truth is that the labor market is just not in their favor as it typically is. I do not think it is ideal that the alternative option being utilized is government handouts. I'd rather people have the mindset to, for example, run their own hot dog stand on the street instead working for a fast food chain. But entrepreneurship is not easy for everyone.
  • cratermoon 5y ago
    It's not even the shitty entry-level labor that is underpaid. There's plenty of examples of companies offering $15/hr for mid-career jobs requiring some post-secondary education.
  • djfobbz 5y ago
    I'm not too sure about that one! I've seen some entry level laborers getting paid $10/hr to sleep in their car. I don't think "Sleeping in your car" is a valid job description for any business.
  • sthnblllII 5y ago
    If there are a dozen people in line to take the job who will have to return to a third world country if they dont get it, no amount of worker solidarity with other Americans will increase your wage because every single job will be filled by a foreign worker for whom minimum wage is still many times higher than what they get in their home country. There is no way around the immigration issue. Covid wont last forever.
• neilwilson 5y ago
  Business should always have to compete for labour. That way there is an incentive to replace labour with machines and better processes - which is where increased standard of living comes from. However there is a problem. The 'standard job' is now gardening leave with a wage, which any other job has to compete with. And what that leads to is a 'dead zone gap' in the wage structure between the 'standard job' and the next reasonable job (say working 9-5 Mon-Fri with full benefits, close to home). A private employer has to pay a much higher wage than the payment for the 'standard job' to get people to work for their 'reasonable job'. (You get the same between unemployment benefit and the 'minimum wage' in many countries). However we could have everybody earning the living wage working for a publicly provided 'reasonable job' at a living wage, which would mean the that the private employer would only have to pay a penny more per hour to get the labour they need. The most efficient construction is when the 'standard job' and the 'reasonable job' are the same. That eliminates the 'dead zone wage gap', and allows people to smoothly move between public and private jobs, increasing the efficiency of the use of labour - all without exploitation. And those business that can't deliver a profit with this system? Well they get to close to make room for better businesses that can. Business is there to serve people, not the other way around.
• lastofthemojito 5y ago
  I'm surprised that the article Kottke links to didn't quote/acknowledge FDR. Maybe the author just came up with >We should ask ourselves, our communities, and our government: if a business can’t pay a living wage, should it be a business? independently, but it sounds a lot like FDR's [0]: >It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living. [0]: http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
• beckingz 5y ago
  The company: Cybersecurity Skills Gap! The job: low pay for unicorn candidates with 30 years DevSecOps on AWS experience.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• motohagiography 5y ago
  It's like people don't understand how their wages impact the price of the goods they are producing. The problem is domestic producers can't compete against the actual terrible jobs with poverty wages that foreign producers pay. The trade off is binary. Either you put tariffs on cheaper foreign goods and protect your economy from predatory countries, or you tolerate downward wage pressure. There is no middle ground. It's such a simple and established reliable dynamic that even politicians can understand it. Our democracies have chosen cheap stuff and downward wage pressure, with the spoils going to the people who manage the capital flows. It's not a right/left thing either, as both sides cynically advocate and exploit globalization to inflate those capital flows.
  • lucian1900 5y ago
    You’re describing the effects of imperialism on the working class of the imperialist countries, a point we communists make all the time. It absolutely is a left/right thing, it’s just that the imperialist countries have largely managed to exclude politics left of centre.
    • motohagiography 5y ago
      Imperialism is bunk and an artifact of a movement predicated on deception, so, there's that. I think the whole critical theory basically lets itself out on reasonable discourse.
      • lucian1900 5y ago
        Lenin’s work more than a century ago is very much still relevant today. If you haven’t read it, give it a try https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
    • parineum 5y ago
      Would a communist United States not trade with China?
• nonameiguess 5y ago
  There are obviously a lot of factors that go into the decision making process of whether you should take a particular job at a particular wage. But at least two are 1) how much you're getting otherwise from other sources, and 2) competition from other sources of labor. For 2, consider this: https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/special-reports/legal-immigration https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/special-reports/l... New entries in Q4 2020 down 78% from the year before, and that's on top of a general downward trend in net immigration to the US that's been happening for a decade. Is this temporary because of Covid? Probably. But immigration at the low end of the wage scale is a factor that drives down the wages. Anyone who has ever lived in an apartment complex in Santa Ana and seen neighbors with 14 people packed into a 3 bedroom apartment understands why. Native born Americans simply aren't willing to live like that. The expectation for what constitutes a baseline reasonable lifestyle isn't the same. For 1, these comments about "experimenting with UBI" or freeloaders living off the government seem to miss the point that augmented benefits are a temporary pandemic relief measure. Of course the low end of the labor market is abnormally depressed right now. That is on purpose as part of a calculated, intentional public health response making it easier for people to decide not to work. Lo and behold, many are now actually making that decision. For some reason, there seems to be this widespread notion that this is a permanent change, but it isn't. You're still not technically allowed to just quit or refuse to work because you want unemployment, but go ahead and look at the actual description of what constitutes a Covid-related reason to apply for relief: https://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/UIPL/UIPL_16-20.pdf https://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/UIPL/UIPL_16-20.pdf If your place of employment was closed, if your kid's school was closed, if you were ever diagnosed, had symptoms, were quarantined, or anyone in your family was, your head of household died, you need to care for some who was diagnosed. None of those are usually reasons you're allowed to claim unemployment benefits. Now they are. How long will this go on? Who knows, but definitely not forever. This is also the answer to why businesses don't just offer more. Prices are subject to a ratchet effect. Offer more now to overcome the inertia of people choosing to stay unemployed during an abnormally favorable time to be unemployed and you're very likely to have to permanently pay higher wages even when the enhanced benefits are gone. Businesses are getting relief, too, and are willing to gamble that they can wait long enough for wages to come back down.
  • 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ajb 5y ago
  A similar point was made in Kalecki's 1943 essay: https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-employment/ https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-em...
• bradlys 5y ago
  I find this is true even within software. There is a large complaint about not enough engineers. There are enough engineers - it’s just that you won’t pay enough for them for the given locale! If every startup started compensating like FAANG, they’d have no trouble finding talent. Personally, I’ve had to go through this recently where I received 5 job offers. All well below what I’d consider “market” rate. They were all lower than past offers. Basically, companies are being very cheap with equity and/or salary. If you live in SF and are a senior engineer, giving equity that only matches FAANG when the company hits an absurd valuation that will likely never come is just not going to get people to come. Why bother? Whole point of startups is that you could earn more than faang if you get lucky enough. It shouldn’t be that you just match FAANG if you get lucky.
  • thunfischbrot 5y ago
    Meh - I see one of the benefits of working outside of FAANG and other enterprises to work on something you trule believe in. Who truly loves working on improving the returns on online advertising to extract more money out of people's pockets?
    • judge2020 5y ago
      Some people truly love problem solving and don't have to believe in the product to feel fulfilled. The 2 million dollar house with a Model S in the garage and the money to start any hobby at any time doesn't hurt either.
    • bradlys 5y ago
      I mean, that’s nice but it doesn’t really afford a typical professional middle class lifestyle that you would see outside the SF bay area. (Unless partner is at FAANG or surgeon) You’re mostly stuck at liquid comp of $180-220k tops. Obviously if the startup works out, hallelujah. But if it doesn’t - that salary sucks for trying to have a home in a nice school district along with some normal vacations and what not.
      • luckylion 5y ago
• AdrianB1 5y ago
  I see a logical fallacy because I lived in some conditions that are very relevant. Paying everyone a living wage (last sentence) is impossible; not because 'living wage' is relative - from a city to another, from a country to another, from a person to another (can you live without an iPhone? why not?) - but because increasing wages to that level, assuming you can determine one, will just increase the prices to fit. My first job was paying $100 and it was about the average in the capital city of my country. 5 years later I was earning $700, but that was just double the average pay. Another 10 years later, a bit over $1000 was above average, but not by much. The salaries grew 10 times, but the prices adjusted about the same rate, at least the price of food, rent and houses: if you pay 10x more to workers, the house will cost 10 times more. If you increase the salaries of many people, you will not increase their standard of living, just create inflation because they will not produce more, it's just their cost is higher and the money value is reduced. This is the real story of a country with 20 million people. If you increase the wages of the lowest paid, you need to increase to everyone to keep some proportions, otherwise you will pay restaurant cleaners more than teachers or doctors and that is dangerous, ~ 20% of the younger doctors in my country emigrated because at some point their salary after 20 years of tough school was sometimes lower than a driver's salary. If you increase the salary of everyone, that is very soon making all prices to increase at the same rate, changing practically nothing.
  • AdrianB1 5y ago
    And another thing: if you have workers that you cannot pay 'living wages' because they don't produce output to pay them more, automate and leave them on the streets. Do this with all low skilled workers. Is this what the article is suggesting?
  • djfobbz 5y ago
    agreed!
• dang 5y ago
  Url changed from https://kottke.org/21/04/labor-shortage-or-terrible-jobs https://kottke.org/21/04/labor-shortage-or-terrible-jobs, which points to this.
• prepend 5y ago
  This seems pretty simple to me since the special unemployment insurance is up to $600/week[0] through at least July 31 it’s going to be hard to convince someone to work for less than that. So if it’s a choice between $15/hour, steady to not work and $18/hour variable to bus tables or whatnot I’m not surprised that people choose the $15. I expect this will be different once unemployment goes back to pre-covid and people are forced to make decisions. Many jobs are terrible, I mean no one wants to be a janitor. So when finances allow me to not have to clean toilets and I can make a similar amount not doing it, any rational person will choose not to. I’m really surprised that any low wage jobs are able to get folks to come into work right now. It’s odd that the article doesn’t bring this up as the opportunity cost aspect seems like the most important factor in the “labor shortage.” [0] https://www.dol.gov/coronavirus/unemployment-insurance https://www.dol.gov/coronavirus/unemployment-insurance
  • hh3k0 5y ago
    > Many jobs are terrible, I mean no one wants to be a janitor. I honestly fail to see how janitor is a terrible job -- being in charge of keeping a building in shape, doing the repairs, etc.? That seems like a great job to me. I'd wager most people would have a problem with the pay rather than the job itself.
    • prepend 5y ago
      I don’t like cleaning toilets, that’s the main blocker for me. Operating that giant floor waxing/buffer machine seems pretty cool though but I would not want to be responsible for cleaning a bathroom.
  • chasd00 5y ago
    I don’t see how this isn’t more obvious. 18 months ago the US was pretty much at full employment the only thing different then and now is the pandemic and the bailouts. I feel like this article and the others like it are just political opportunism.
  • selimthegrim 5y ago
    I think it's only 3 or 400 this go around.
• RGamma 5y ago
  ITT: Americans being afraid of social market economy
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  I just wanted to comment on the photos of the sonic drive-thru, with the sign that basically shames their employees. "People don't want to work." No, people don't want to work for sonic, a company that pays its car hops tip wages and then leaves no mechanism to tip with a card in their unnecessary touch screen kiosks, a company that charges extra for ketchup. Imagine getting paid 2.15 an hour to hear the 10th person today complain about having to ask for ketchup with their fries, and only getting tips on cash purchases, something exceedingly rare. I've never worked for this company, I never would, nobody should, and I can't wait to hear the impending news that the company is filing bankruptcy, I will throw a party. Beyond that, there's too much noise in this article about "capitalism" and "BIPOC" and in reality what's happening is a job market going back to normal, where people actually have options, rather than the extended "recovery" of the great recession where people had none.
• otagekki 5y ago
  > Current average rental cost for a one-bedroom in Missoula: $1010 a month, up 27% from last year Pretty expensive for a little town in the middle of nowhere...
• zizee 5y ago
  Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults? In australia we have a $12.50/hr minimum for 15 year olds. It climbs in increments until about $25/hr. This system allows teenagers to get a foot in the door for low-skilled jobs, and allows adults to get paid a livable wage. The result is that a lot of fast food jobs are performed by teenagers, and they are considered entry level jobs. Adults are then paid more, and take positions where they can add more value that what a teen can provide.
  • bradleyjg 5y ago
    One concern is that this makes teenage employees relatively more attractive and so increases the adult unemployment rate above what it would be with a uniform minimum wage.
    • sharkjacobs 5y ago
      Is this a big issue in Australia?
      • catmanjan 5y ago
        Sort of, it's well known that you're unlikely to get a job at McDonald's as an adult
      • AnotherGoodName 5y ago
        It's not. It really only affects those working part time jobs from 15 to the age of 18. Full time work is not allowed in most Australian states until the age of 17. There's far fewer 15-18 year olds than there are 18-65 year olds. There's also fewer again that can work during school hours. The idea that teenagers are being paid too much or have an advantage in Australians case and that therefore this should prevent changes to minimum wage laws is just a distraction. It keeps getting brought up by people desperate to push a position but who don't want to argue about the far bigger issue of adults trying to survive on minimum wage. Teenagers are an edge case in this discussion and they really shouldn't be the focus.
• fallingfrog 5y ago
  God damn right. God bless Anne peterson for writing this, I could not have said it better. For once I have nothing to add. This world could be so much more than it is.
• hooande 5y ago
  People say "If a business can't afford to pay a living wage, then they should close". But won't that hurt consumers and distort the market? Personally, I like having many options for food to eat. If all the marginal small businesses had to close because they can't pay someone $15/hr to wipe tables, then we might just be left with large chains like Olive Garden or Cheesecake Factory. I think people should get paid what they are worth, whatever the job. But I also like being able to get food from small restaurants from different cultures. And if all the marginal restaurants close, won't that just give more power to the larger corporations? they'll be able to raise prices, lower wages, whatever they want because there will be less competition. Obviously, the unemployment increase / stimulus in the US will end at some point. And then there will be a lot of people looking for jobs at once. People should figure out what they think a fair wage is for entry level jobs and take it if it's being offered.
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > But I also like being able to get food from small restaurants from different cultures. Right now, that only happens because some people aren’t lucky enough to be born in the right house. People don’t work nights and weekends for paltry wages out of their desire to serve people food. So it would hurt consumers. But it would help those who provide to the consumers. Imagine how expensive food would be if the people on this forum demanded to be paid “fairly” for weekend and evening work.
  • devmunchies 5y ago
    > People say "If a business can't afford to pay a living wage, then they should close" I have a cookie company that raised the pay after we opened our 2nd location (economies of scale, buying in bulk, etc). Its in my interest as an employer to raise the pay since it typically raises the buy-in from employees. Companies like Netflix and Costco pay at the top of the competitive range and it allows you to run a tighter ship. Payroll is a cost, sure, but it's also an investment if you can afford it. Raising the minimum wage removes that competitive advantage for me. It takes time to bootstrap a company. It still only pays me half an engineering salary after 3 years.
    • 5y ago
• giantg2 5y ago
  100% terrible jobs.
• nimos 5y ago
  I've never liked the idea we should expect businesses to provide a living wage. If we, as a society, think there is some sort of minimum standard for living. (We should) Then we, as a society, should pay for it. Increasing minimum wage seems like a roundabout unfair way of doing that via selective inflation. Which as far as I can tell would be largely a wealth transfer from the middle class to the lower class. Who spends a larger % of income at places people make minimum wage? I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and top people who don't earn that. Obviously a lot of moral hazard issues and complications with a system like that but I think it is better to have businesses worry about employing people and governments worry about welfare. What seems to always be left out of these "if a business can’t pay a living wage, should it be a business?" discussions is what exactly are people going to do instead? I'm ok subsidizing people's labour. I'm not ok subsidizing people's leisure.
  • shkkmo 5y ago
    >I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and top people who don't earn that. That would be horrible. The bottom of wages would drop to zero (since offering above zero but below the government guatantee would provide no benefit in highering.) This would drag down other low wages since the jump from paying zero to paying just over minmum would be a huge cost increase for a minor highering benefit. UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum wage.
    • chii 5y ago
      > UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum wage. i dont think that's true. re-education and re-training into higher value work is a better investment. it's just that education of adults isn't funded well by society, and thus the debt load for that re-education is too expensive for the benefit. I would argue that society should have a funding system where if you re-trained (may be in some category of work that society determins to be useful, like nursing), the cost of that education is only going to be placed on you if you earned above a threshold wage after graduating from training.
      • 5y ago
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  I wonder if this is evidence of friction in the labor market. Maybe all this terribleness had built up, but most people won't change paths in a big way because it upends their life for a while. You're not going to learn job B if you're already in job A because, even if job B is better, the first year of B will suck more than A while you're a newbie. But then a pandemic comes along and takes away job A, meaning that there's not extra friction to leaving job A. You've already left! All these people have gone to job B (or location B, or family arrangement B, ...) which was better all along, it's just that the change had too much additional overhead in normal times. Now you have places which depended on that friction wondering where everybody went.
• digitaltrees 5y ago
  From 2008 to 2014 everyone was talking about structural stagnation and then there wouldn’t be enough jobs and chronic unemployment for a generation. Meanwhile economist like Paul Krugman and Stiglitz were saying additional government stimulus after the financial crisis would’ve solved the problem.
• bluedino 5y ago
  It’s a shortage when the jobs paying 50% over minimum aren’t being filled. Stores and restaurants are thinly staffed around here. Even the ones with signs out saying they’ll pay a premium.
• kova12 5y ago
  "which somehow fails to mention that the owner is a Covid hoaxer (he believes that doctors have been falsely labeling deaths as Covid-related) and has brazenly violated masking rules, and did not require employees to wear masks" - I could tell, this author strikes right where the problem is: his personal biases.
• shannifin 5y ago
  >"Collectively, we should be thinking of different funding models, different ownership scenarios, and different growth imperatives. Failure to do so is simply resigning ourselves to another round of this rigged game." I don't accept the verdict that these economic hardships necessarily mean that "capitalism is broken" or "rigged" or that we need to rethink "ownership scenarios" (whatever exactly that means). The economy is a vastly complicated system of countless trades per day, and there are a lot of variables in flux that are making things very crappy for a lot of people. But I fear trying to make things better by blaming it on capitalism being "broken" or a "rigged game" is more likely to make things worse.
• uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 5y ago
  The wage issue is generally portrayed in a binary light, with "liveable vs unliveable", but a min wage hike will invariably cause middle earner increases (boss, the frycook makes 25, I might go do that and just write code in my free time), raising the floor, and then were back where we started except everythin is N percent more expensive. The real crooks in medicine must have a hoot everytime they see McDonalds take the fall for the debased living conditions of the photogenically appaling.
• whatever1 5y ago
  Coming from southern Europe, I have to say that we have been there 20 years ago and it looks ugly. In Southern Europe, the family (and not the individual) is the smallest decision making unit and it is typical to have 3 generations of people living under the same roof, all of them supporting (and applying pressure to) each other in different ways. Parents and grandparents are helping youth financially. Youth in Southern Europe is typically highly educated, however, the job opportunities for high-skilled labor are quite limited. Naturally, there are two options for overqualified youth: leave the family and get an underpaid job that cannot help them anyway to break even, or keep relying exclusively on their family (with the attached daily complaining from their end). Result: Youth unemployment rates > 50%, businessess that cannot find cheap labor and close, economy that stays stagnant for decades.
  • ipnon 5y ago
    It would be quite a dilemma to choose between the livelihood of my dependent family and the opportunity to make more money elsewhere. What have been the solutions to this problem in Southern Europe?
    • whatever1 5y ago
      There is no solution. Significant percentage of qualified youth is migrating to Northern Europe or US where there is short supply for high skill labor (doctors, engineers etc), the rest are just coasting with their families. Weddings and birth-rates are also plummeting, which indicates that youth also have low confidence about their future. The reason that this structure exists is that older generations accumulated wealth in an era that economy was roaring, and the state was able to provide ample support (free higher education, healthcare, high pensions). This cannot be sustained with the current stagnant economies. Only solution that I can think of is to embrace immigration, & impose tarrifs to imports from Asia, to restart low cost manufacturing & large scale agriculture in the south. This will also make available positions for high-skilled labor (engineers, mbas etc). The uglier possibility is that the states collapse due to their unsustainable welfare policies, and everyone goes back to their fields for digging.
• readme 5y ago
  Man I worked those kinds of jobs, and I still can’t believe I worked for so little. When you are at the bottom the world looks real different. No one is “too lazy” the wages don’t pay enough to support even a single adult in most places! Most impoverished adults would have a better chance of climbing out of poverty if they DID NOT work at low or minimum wage jobs at all and instead foraged for nuts and berries.
• refurb 5y ago
  The first example just glosses over “tips are shared”. When I worked for tips it was typically as much as my hourly wage or more on some nights.
• steve76 5y ago
  How about murders? Look at the murder rate. You just killed more people than bin Laden. You can't stop the murders. But you can land me a dream job? Puh-leeze.
• thepasswordis 5y ago
  The problem that is never addressed in these "terrible job" "terrible wage. wages too low" stories is: Making dual income households the norm was the mistake that has led us to this point. The reason that a fast food job is so impossible to survive on is that at one point, a single guy living in a small apartment and driving a modest car could afford that because his purchasing power was essentially DOUBLE what it is now. That isn't an option anymore. If you want to be single, you need to also have a high paying job to do it. The other option is poverty, and maybe social services making up some of the costs that for many households is being made up by their spouse. But it actually is a little worse than that, since it's being burned at both ends. For instance: I'm married. My wife and I are both extremely well paid software developers. This means that we have TWICE the power to buy a house, buy a car, pay for services like cleaners, buy a couch, buy a TV, etc. So now not only is a single person's wage lower due to a flood of the supply side, he's also screwed because the people doubling up on their income have pushed the demand side into the stratosphere. It sucks, and it breaks my heart seeing the world that my single friends have to live in. Not only are they basically living in poverty, but it makes them unattractive to potential partners who they need to get OUT of that poverty. I honestly can't really even imagine what the solution is. We certainly aren't going to put the dual income toothpaste back in the tube. Central economic authority forcing businesses to just increase their wages also doesn't seem to be a solution either, since it obviously doesn't even try to address the underlying problem (labor economics, mostly).
  • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Being single more workable (it’s easy to control spending) than having dependents (kids). Once you have a kid or two, your expenses become less predictable and things begin to pile up (literally, a larger house becomes a necessity rather than just a luxury). I see many people putting off kids or just opting out completely because COL increases have just made them too risky.
    • etrabroline 5y ago
      Have you heard of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin?
• almost_usual 5y ago
  The Fed flipped the trickle down economy to a trickle up economy to keep society going. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer as long as it continues, all of this liquidity ends up somewhere..
• adamsiem 5y ago
  Labor shortage. For my beer garden, I couldn’t find part-time workers. However, I could hire people with full-time jobs who wanted to work 1-2 standing shifts each week in a fun place with a respectful community. I think we are more the exception than a Dale’s (article reference), but this answers the labor shortage vs. terrible jobs question for me.
• xivzgrev 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s fair to fully blame these businesses. If they pay their workers a “living wage”, whatever that is, then they need to raise prices just to remain profitable. Customers see the price increase and go to the next restaurant down the street. Of course location, quality, etc matters but price does too, and a business trying to compete in a price-sensitive industry is going to be a bind. What can help is government regulation that raises the wages at ALL restaurants. Then consumers don’t have a choice. I grumble more about paying an extra 4% on top but what am I going to do, never go out again?
• anemoiac 5y ago
  Maybe we should think about building a society that’s less financially cutthroat. I’m not in the financial position of the potential restaurant workers discussed in the article, but I can’t imagine wanting to work in a typical chain restaurant if I was. Not because of the work itself, and I’m not trying to downplay the value provided by restaurant workers either, but because I would feel that it was limiting my potential future earnings. Most chain restaurant jobs just don’t seem to offer real opportunities for upward mobility and their unpredictable shift scheduling can make it difficult to work or study outside of them. Obviously, I’m coming from a position of privilege here, but putting myself in the shoes of a potential restaurant worker, assuming I wanted to put myself in a better long-term financial position, I would simply choose to not be a restaurant worker and study/apprentice for something else instead. I’d imagine that actually working in a restaurant teaches plenty of useful life skills, but unfortunately I’m not sure that experience really translates into a marketable resume. Unfortunately, in a competitive job market, there’s an opportunity cost associated with time spent in jobs that don’t enhance one’s desirability to potential employers. Now obviously not everyone has the option to simply forego low-paying work and become a student/apprentice, and I’m sure some people really like working in restaurants (even fast-food chains), so I’m not arguing that restaurants should simply disappear. Instead, I think we should work to reduce the competitive nature of our economy so that cheap, convenient food (or similar services) isn’t effectively being subsidized by the existence of a permanent economic underclass with no career options beyond low-paying, so-called “low-skill” work. Fast-food workers should be there because they want to be there, not because it’s their only option. American society is built around work and constant competition for better-paying work - that’s certainly not unique to the US, but the high-levels of income inequality and winner-take-all job market dynamics sort of are (at least among countries with similar social + economic profiles). We should try to create a job market where people can choose full-time jobs they enjoy and excel at without worrying about whether they can afford to have children, maintain stable housing, or be able to retire some day. To do that, I’d expect that we need to reduce the power differential between the restaurant/business owners complaining about a lack of people willing to help them make money for low wages and the potential employees they’re complaining about.
• mk81 5y ago
  The solution to this problem was to not ship millions of manufacturing jobs overseas (destroying middle class employment for people who prefer to work with their hands) and to prevent illegal immigration (flooding the economy with an endless supply of unskilled labour). But Pandora's box was opened, and destabilization seems to be the only possible outcome at this point. It won't be as rosy as this article makes it out to be.
• engineer_22 5y ago
  Open the border.
• derrekl 5y ago
  Not going to speak to the article but want to layout that in 1997 when I was a waiter at Chili’s I made $2.50 an hour base wage, but with tips nearly always cleared $24/h. In 1999 I was a waiter for an upscale steakhouse in the city of Chicago and on average made about $40/h. Several of the waiters there were career waiters and had families. Many career waiters worked very hard to get jobs at higher and higher end restaurants and could clear 100K on the year back in 1999.
  • isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
    I used to live in a touristy area and there was a similar phenomenon with waitresses in the city center - the only issue was that after a few years the waitresses were let go because the employers picked prettier ones as a replacement. A colleague of mine from highschool got hit hard by that, as she thought she'll surely not be one of those that get replaced. She had to take her lifestyle a few good notches down with no higher ed and just waiting experience. She would have had no issues with getting a degree, she was smart but naive.
  • ipnon 5y ago
    It seems like "elbow grease"-type middle class jobs are a thing of the past.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• JackFr 5y ago
  This is a call for UBI that unnecessarily demonizes low skill employers. There is a great human dignity argument for UBI. Demonizing employers who won’t take a negative return by paying employees more than the value they generate isn’t a good way to get there.
• aazaa 5y ago
  > "We have four positions open," Christy Welch, the co-owner of Black Cat Bake Shop, told the Missoulian. "One is for a barista. We've gotten maybe three to four applications for that job, when we would usually get 20-25. We have three back-of-house positions and we've gotten no applications." > Current pay for most of those positions: $10.50 an hour. Overnight shifts get $11.50. Tips are shared. (Current average rental cost for a one-bedroom in Missoula: $1010 a month, up 27% from last year In other words, average rent is 63% of gross income. Completely unreasonable. It's hard to sympathize with the business owners here. If they want to fill positions, the answer is simple: pay more. And more. And more. Until you hit the price that will attract applicants. If you can't find applicants at any price that keeps you in business, time to fold. It's baffling how these stories that the article cites so often feature incredulous business owners shocked to discover they can't fill economically unviable positions. It's almost as if they think they're entitled to sub-subsistence labor.
  • _dps 5y ago
    I'm with you re: "pay more if you want more applicants" but this does not sound like a situation where the jobs are economically unviable. When I was a student in LA in the mid-2000s I lived on basically this amount of money, inflation adjusted. I couldn't afford a one-bedroom, so I split the cost of a three-bedroom with two friends. This was a very common arrangement for people well into their late 20s, especially people in creative professions like writing.
• AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  or... insufficient compensation? (Yes I know the body addresses this, but seriously, why does every single headline in labor supply only do the false dichotomy of "no workers" vs "americans don't want to do X". Why do politicized right-wing economists pretend supply and demand pricing doesn't apply to the labor market? It's supposedly the foundational pillar of right-wing extreme laissez-faire cult economics. Universal healthcare would go miles to making these tolerable/palatable jobs to a wide variety of workers. Often what is lost in the "americans don't want to do job X" is that "Job X DOESN'T GIVE HEALTH BENEFITS".
• jleyank 5y ago
  https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/minimum-wage https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standa... They have fast food and other restaurants here, but there’s a shortage of good bagels. They seem crowded at the times one would expect. I think things come down to what people expect and how they set things up.
• davidgerard 5y ago
  > But X workers are accustomed to being blamed for things that aren’t our fault. We’re trained to feel responsible for failures even when we ought not be certainly applies to tech
• jschveibinz 5y ago
  This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side of the problem. Fast food restaurants, or place like "Dale's" mentioned in the article, make very little profit. It is most likely below 10%. Here is an estimate: https://www.restaurant365.com/blog/what-is-the-average-profit-margin-for-a-restaurant/#:~:text=Although%20factors%20like%20franchise%20affiliation,rate%20due%20to%20faster%20service https://www.restaurant365.com/blog/what-is-the-average-profi.... A 10% profit is very modest. That's not the story of the "fat cats getting rich on the back of the workers" that the article is alluding to. The problem for the business is that the financial model is set by the fixed or imperative costs, i.e. the cost of rent, the cost of maintaining the capital equipment, the cost of cleaning to meet codes, insurance, etc. The cost of labor, for cooks, wait staff, etc. is often the biggest part of the expense budget for restaurants. With such a small profit margin, arbitrarily raising everyone's wages is likely going to kill the business. There is no room in the budget. The only choice is to either automate, which will reduce the labor requirements, or raise prices and hope that customers won't just go down the street. But they will, they will go down the street--until everyone's prices go up and there is nowhere else to go. And all of this is free market capitalism at work. It is a continuous process of reinvention. In short, I'm not saying that higher wages aren't necessary, I'm just saying that both sides of the equation need to be examined, i.e. the plight of the worker AND the plight of the business. And we need to understand that things will probably get ugly before they get better. Because that's how capitalism and free market economies work. But watch out for technology and automation...that is the part of the equation that has been "solving" the labor problem for some time now...
  • fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
    I think the effects of price stickiness (on goods and labor) aren’t being adequately considered in these discussions. Yes, these restaurants could raise their wages to compete with unemployment, and many have. They’ll also need to raise their prices, which they have leeway to do, because everyone is facing the same costs. The problem occurs in a few months when the bonus unemployment runs out. Then there will be millions more people looking for work. At that point, expanding employers will be able to hire at lower wages again. They’ll also be able to offer goods at lower prices. Employers who stepped up to pay higher wages won’t be able to compete. They’ll need to cut prices and cut wages or lay people off. That will be painful, which makes holding out until wages lower more attractive. Employers can get around this by offering signing bonuses instead of higher wages, but they need to be large to compete with unemployment checks, and it may not make sense to do that for a few months of work. These conditions may present a unique opportunity for policymakers to increase employment by raising the minimum wage.