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I know this article is about Tahoe and paints a rather bleak picture...but this is nationwide. I traveled most of the east coast over the past few months, and

by axaxs 5y ago

I know this article is about Tahoe and paints a rather bleak picture...but this is nationwide. I traveled most of the east coast over the past few months, and every single city's service sectors are begging for employees. I've never seen so many fastfood places closed. And not like, boarded up, but appearing operational but having zero employees. And most weren't high cost of living areas...

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
I took a weekend trip to Ocean Shores Washington last weekend, and…the restaurants were all packed and wanting of long waits due to lack of servers and cooks. Resorts towns have been hit really hard, but this might also have to do with them laying off all of their staff at the start of the pandemic. Did they just expect these people to wait around?
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  No? They expected to have a chance at surviving as a business. And many didn't.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Surely yes, they had to make a really hard decision, though I don’t think this consequence was foreseen even if it wouldn’t have changed the decision much.
thrower123 5y ago
There was a marked drop-off in fast-food having rolling staffing brown-outs once school ended. High school kids flocking to the $15-$18 per hour jobs at Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds and Dairy Queen that had been sitting unfilled for months.
andrew_ 5y ago
Please be more nuanced in your replies when painting with a wide brush. Florida is absolutely exploding right now, and there's so much housing construction here that one can expect to wait for months for contractor availability. I've been in three of the five major FL cities in the past few months and while there are a lot of "help wanted" signs, businesses are open and busier than ever. What's hurting this region is supply chain delays and shortages, which we know are worldwide.
- axaxs 5y ago
  I'm unsure what you're asking of me...please clarify? I've traveled in or through Asheville, Greenville, Savannah, Knoxville, Jacksonville, and noticed it. Savannah was probably the worst, and it is not a high cost area, at all. I live in Florida. There's a burger king near me that is just...empty. Lights on, nobody there. The 7/11 near me has one employee. He runs 3 registers to keep the line moving. I see him training people about once or twice a month, but they never seem to stick around.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    I didn't ask a question. So your milage varies - not surprising. My experience differs vastly with yours. I've yet to see an understaffed establishment in the Tampa Bay area, nor the three metro areas in FL I've been in recently. Different experience, doesn't make it any less valid.
    - axaxs 5y ago
      You asked me to be more nuanced. Or told me. I'm just asking what you meant by that specifically.
      - andrew_ 5y ago
        I made a request for more nuance, which you provided in a follow up reply. I certainly did not demand that of you; to do so would have been laughable.
- BrianOnHN 5y ago
  Florida resident here, and I don't ever remember seeing $500 signing bonuses for gas station employees before now. Yes, restaurants are busy here, but the service and food quality is obviously suffering. Look up housing prices in the Tampa bay area. The new construction is all "Luxury" (just a word, still crappy) so they can sell $1,500 one bedrooms to foreigners. Not that anyone's surprised, but look to Florida for more collapses (ecosystems, economic, not just buildings) coming soon...
BurningFrog 5y ago
We're in the middle of a gigantic reallocation of the economy after Covid. It's going to take a while to sort out who works where in the new equilibrium.
- victoro 5y ago
  Exactly. Government has been backstopping/de-risking asset ownership since the Great Recession and massively increased that program in March 2020. At the same time, they started to de-risk the asset consumer class with eviction moratoriums and significantly increased unemployment benefits. Seems to me one of those two classes will need to be inconvenienced if we don't want inflation to spiral out of control, because otherwise the asset owners will continue to buy more assets with cheap money that will push prices up, while asset consumers will continue to require higher and higher salaries to afford to pay the increasing rents to the asset owners. Asset owners should be the ones taking the hit since they have been backstopped for far longer and are in a much better financial position to deal with it. But the asset owner class is also the one running the country and its tough to imagine them doing something against their short-term self interest. Gonna be interesting to see what kind of equilibrium shakes out. I hope this plane can be landed without crashing...
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    “ Asset owners should be the ones taking the hit since they have been backstopped for far longer and are in a much better financial position to deal with it. But the asset owner class is also the one running the country and its tough to imagine them doing something against their short-term self interest.” Very true. The Fed pretty much exclusively worries about asset owners and how to drive up asset prices even more. And most people in political or business leadership are asset owners. I don’t think this will end well. Either we will become a society of super rich people that live separately from a large underclass or there will be a revolution at some point.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
saddata 5y ago
It’s almost like people are being disincentivized to work or pay rent or not shoplift, in those high cost coastal cities.

by axaxs 5y ago

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

I took a weekend trip to Ocean Shores Washington last weekend, and…the restaurants were all packed and wanting of long waits due to lack of servers and cooks. Resorts towns have been hit really hard, but this might also have to do with them laying off all of their staff at the start of the pandemic. Did they just expect these people to wait around?

GavinMcG 5y ago
No? They expected to have a chance at surviving as a business. And many didn't.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Surely yes, they had to make a really hard decision, though I don’t think this consequence was foreseen even if it wouldn’t have changed the decision much.

thrower123 5y ago

There was a marked drop-off in fast-food having rolling staffing brown-outs once school ended. High school kids flocking to the $15-$18 per hour jobs at Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds and Dairy Queen that had been sitting unfilled for months.

andrew_ 5y ago

Please be more nuanced in your replies when painting with a wide brush. Florida is absolutely exploding right now, and there's so much housing construction here that one can expect to wait for months for contractor availability. I've been in three of the five major FL cities in the past few months and while there are a lot of "help wanted" signs, businesses are open and busier than ever. What's hurting this region is supply chain delays and shortages, which we know are worldwide.

axaxs 5y ago
I'm unsure what you're asking of me...please clarify? I've traveled in or through Asheville, Greenville, Savannah, Knoxville, Jacksonville, and noticed it. Savannah was probably the worst, and it is not a high cost area, at all. I live in Florida. There's a burger king near me that is just...empty. Lights on, nobody there. The 7/11 near me has one employee. He runs 3 registers to keep the line moving. I see him training people about once or twice a month, but they never seem to stick around.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  I didn't ask a question. So your milage varies - not surprising. My experience differs vastly with yours. I've yet to see an understaffed establishment in the Tampa Bay area, nor the three metro areas in FL I've been in recently. Different experience, doesn't make it any less valid.
  - axaxs 5y ago
    You asked me to be more nuanced. Or told me. I'm just asking what you meant by that specifically.
    - andrew_ 5y ago
      I made a request for more nuance, which you provided in a follow up reply. I certainly did not demand that of you; to do so would have been laughable.
BrianOnHN 5y ago
Florida resident here, and I don't ever remember seeing $500 signing bonuses for gas station employees before now. Yes, restaurants are busy here, but the service and food quality is obviously suffering. Look up housing prices in the Tampa bay area. The new construction is all "Luxury" (just a word, still crappy) so they can sell $1,500 one bedrooms to foreigners. Not that anyone's surprised, but look to Florida for more collapses (ecosystems, economic, not just buildings) coming soon...

BurningFrog 5y ago

We're in the middle of a gigantic reallocation of the economy after Covid. It's going to take a while to sort out who works where in the new equilibrium.

victoro 5y ago
Exactly. Government has been backstopping/de-risking asset ownership since the Great Recession and massively increased that program in March 2020. At the same time, they started to de-risk the asset consumer class with eviction moratoriums and significantly increased unemployment benefits. Seems to me one of those two classes will need to be inconvenienced if we don't want inflation to spiral out of control, because otherwise the asset owners will continue to buy more assets with cheap money that will push prices up, while asset consumers will continue to require higher and higher salaries to afford to pay the increasing rents to the asset owners. Asset owners should be the ones taking the hit since they have been backstopped for far longer and are in a much better financial position to deal with it. But the asset owner class is also the one running the country and its tough to imagine them doing something against their short-term self interest. Gonna be interesting to see what kind of equilibrium shakes out. I hope this plane can be landed without crashing...
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  “ Asset owners should be the ones taking the hit since they have been backstopped for far longer and are in a much better financial position to deal with it. But the asset owner class is also the one running the country and its tough to imagine them doing something against their short-term self interest.” Very true. The Fed pretty much exclusively worries about asset owners and how to drive up asset prices even more. And most people in political or business leadership are asset owners. I don’t think this will end well. Either we will become a society of super rich people that live separately from a large underclass or there will be a revolution at some point.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

saddata 5y ago

It’s almost like people are being disincentivized to work or pay rent or not shoplift, in those high cost coastal cities.