10 ms·

After Slashing 33% of Workers in 6 Years, Railroads Complain of Labor Shortages

99 points by DocFeind 5y ago

PostThisTooFast 5y ago
After extorting the U.S taxpayers for handouts, the airlines are complaining about the same thing. Assholes.
jakelazaroff 5y ago
Offer more money. That’s the entire solution. These people didn’t become ghosts. If there’s no supply of labor at the price you’re offering, then increase the price.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  Inflation is going to be great!
  - KirillPanov 5y ago
    Going? Evidently you have not visited a lumberyard in 2021...
    - bruce511 5y ago
      It's important to understand that the price of one thing does not inflation make. Yes, lumber has shot up, but that is a function of supply and demand, not inflation. Demand went through the roof, supply was constrained, prices rose, and are now falling, although there is still backlog and so prices remain high. Supply and demand pricing is not inflation, it is the Free Market in action in all of its glory.
      - KirillPanov 5y ago
        Of course. But lots of things are going up in price [1]. Lumber makes the best anecdote because it's a tangible commodity that everybody has bought at some point (and many buy semi-regularly), and it can't be blamed on semiconductor shortages. Not even with Deere's silly LTE-enabled feller-bunchers. Also, unlike so many other industries, it makes no sense for forestland owners to take a hit to their profits in order to not "lose customers". Firstly, it's a commodity. But more importantly, they need to use those dollars they earn at the sawmill today to plant, manage, and maintain roads (expensive!) to a crop that won't come to market for another fifty years. This is especially true when they decide (always with trepidation) to accelerate the cycling of a few years' worth of land, as Rayonier has just done during the past month. Accelerating X years of harvest means making a bet that you know what the next X years of inflation look like. The futures markets' liquidity depth is nowhere near sufficient to hedge the amount of harvest acceleration that homebuilders are clamoring for. That's why they are a canary in the coalmine for sudden and non-transient inflation. I'm sure Janet Yellen will downvote this comment. [1] https://nyts.link/https:/www.wsj.com/articles/whirlpool-considering-more-price-increases-if-inflation-exceeds-forecasts-11626987883 https://nyts.link/https:/www.wsj.com/articles/whirlpool-cons...
        nradov 5y ago
        The increase in lumber prices recently was due to sawmill capacity constraints. Forest land owners didn't have higher profits.
      - aunty_helen 5y ago
        You should see this: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi The guy that predicted the 2008 housing crash (the guy from the movie) rang alarm bells earlier in the year on twitter that the US is headed for hyper inflation. That was until the SEC paid him a visit and he deleted his twitter. If you want, go on youtube, type 'inflation 2021', adjust your portfolio. August 11 is the date this will all hit the fan as July's numbers will be out.
  - eru 5y ago
    Inflation is a monetary thing. Depends mostly on how much money gets 'printed'.
    - Ma8ee 5y ago
      No, that is not how inflation work (even though some Monetarists still believe so). See any of the following links: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/what-is-inflation/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/what-is-inflation/ https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111314/what-causes-inflation-and-does-anyone-gain-it.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111314/what-causes-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation?wprov=sfti1
      - eru 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Causes is pretty much in line with what I said. (Just to be clear, by inflation I mean an increase in the general price level. Not the enlargement of the stock of money itself.)
- aledalgrande 5y ago
  Yeah simple free labor market rules.
  - na85 5y ago
    Corporations, especially not giant entrenched monopolies like railroads, don't actually support the free market. They pay lip service to free market ideals when it's beneficial to do so, but as soon as the free market means they need to pay more for labor, well, they offshore what they can and then complain of a skills gap or a labor gap. It's actually just a "5 years experience university educated and willing to work for peanuts" shortage.
    - aledalgrande 5y ago
      They might not believe in it, but the market doesn't care about it. When it tilts on the workers side like now, for the sheer number of available jobs, companies have to adapt. When there is a job shortage, workers have to adapt.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      I have to laugh at these too. Prior to coming into CS, I did a lot of general labor. I couldn't get machinist jobs or general blue collar labor jobs even though the positions said "willing to train." None gave me the time of day. On top of that, higher paying (compared to most) general labor factory jobs wouldn't even set up interviews. I'm pretty sure I didn't get picked for one job just because I asked what "swing shift" was. A lot of these companies are liars masquerading as if they can't find people. There are people who are applying, but HR is choosier than most even in the CS field. I really don't get it. Also, many factories do shady garbage where you go through temp-to-hire agencies, promising getting hired on after 90-120 days, then hold you on the leash for 12 months and not hire you. All these companies can suck it. They absolutely deserve the "shortage" they've created. Most people end up wanting to go to retail or get a degree because they're sick of being treated like a literal personal labor slave who honestly is more likely to be fired on a whim than the average office worker. General labor working conditions are at rock bottom. We traded excessive safety for being treated like robots. Ever tried talking to someone for fun at a factory full of temp-to-hires? You don't exactly get to know anybody. So the system is devised to treat you as a robot. If robot-38273 does not perform, decommission them and get a new robot.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I suspect they'll support increasing the supply of labor instead.
  - eru 5y ago
    That would be great, too.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      For everyone other than the country's current labor force, yes.
      - eru 5y ago
        Actually, not. There's at most a very minor effect on wages. The baby boomers entering the labour force didn't impoverish the existing labourers, for example. If you are concerned, there's a relatively simple key-hole solution for migration: just auction off visas to the highest bidders, and distribute the proceeds amongst existing voters.
        ALittleLight 5y ago
        "at most a very minor effect on wages" strikes me as deeply implausible. The US has added tens of millions of immigrants in the past few decades. Many of them are willing to work for conditions and wages that native workers aren't willing to put up with. How could that do anything but depress wages? Nearly 90% of farm workers are immigrants[1]. That has, at most, "a minor effect on wages"? I'm extremely skeptical of that. 1 - https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/about-farmworker-justice/who-we-serve/ https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/about-farmworker-justice/w...
        eru 5y ago
        If there were less migrants, natives wouldn't have cushy farmworker jobs. That wouldn't be profitable. By and large, there would simply be fewer farmworker jobs: Farmers would switch to less labour intensive crops, eg wheat instead of fruit, and make slightly less money. Migrant's basically 'create' their own farmworker jobs. Those jobs wouldn't exist without them. Researchers have looked at the effect of migration on wages. Just ask your favourite search engine for 'migration and wages' (or similar terms), and see many papers. Eg https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration-reduce-wages https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration... or https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/ https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/th... or https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-the-wages-of-native-workers/long https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-th... or https://www.oecd.org/els/42365109.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/42365109.pdf (just to give the top results I get from Google). Basically, the papers say that the effect is probably zero, or at most very small. So something you could relatively easily compensate existing workers (or voters) for, by laying a fee or tax on the migrants.
- mjevans 5y ago
  More money? Much of the problem yeah. Good Bosses Stable CAREERS (regular, predictable, hours; real advancement, a career path) Maybe a strong union that's worth joining. Rail probably has one of these, but a Barista probably doesn't (and should).
  - planet-and-halo 5y ago
    Yeah the stability thing is huge. Businesses and workers are at complete odds on this, because workers want to have a steady income and stop worrying about it, while businesses want the ability to adjust their labor costs on the fly. Workers have caught onto the game now, though, and are taking the same mercenary approach that businesses do. What I think we're living through is the natural end result of that process: incredible short-termism, catastrophic loss of institutional knowledge, social instability due to a pervasive sense of insecurity and worthlessness/lack of social bonds. This is what happens when your economic theories abstract away everything about human beings except their desire to maximize utils.
    - SantalBlush 5y ago
      Completely agree. But to be fair, I think a lot of economists would also agree with you here.
    - datavirtue 5y ago
      "catastrophic loss of institutional knowledge," Government Engineering has been a giant sucking sound of retirements. The knowledge loss is crazy. Larry even tried to quit so they dropped his targets and increased his pay.
- refurb 5y ago
  The money isn't the only problem. At least in Canada, railroad work is a completely shit job because it's so poorly run by the companies. Not sure the company could pay enough to keep from having a "shortage" and still stay profitable.
  - prawn 5y ago
    Might depend on the job itself, but in Australia I get the impression that there are some easy and very well compensated rail jobs. Double pay on weekends, triple pay if it rains. $50/h to stand around a lot of the time. A friend does it on the side and can make more in a shift or two over a weekend than he does doing 5 days/week at his normal white collar day job.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Dunno about the employee side, but the big Canadian railroads became quite hated by their customers when they moved to "precision scheduled railroading". Basically, running trains on a scheduled and your load better be ready when the train is going. So more like a scheduled transit service than a "we'll wait for you and set up runs for you". I guess that improves margins, but I also wonder how much work/profit they throw away by becoming more hostile to their customers. It's worked out well for the shareholders anyway.
    - nradov 5y ago
      That doesn't seem like hostility, it's standard practice in many parts of the transportation industry. If you want to send cargo from Hong Kong to Long Beach the ship is going to leave port on schedule whether your container arrives in time or not.
      - Scoundreller 5y ago
        I'm guessing it leaves the logistics to the customer rather than the railroad. You probably can't send your railcar too early either. Unlike a ship, trains get broken up and re-assembled regularly on long journeys, so you might draw the short end of the scheduling stick.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  These "just pay more" arguments seem to assume all employers have infinite money, and only refuse to pay employees more because they're mean. Or am I missing some more sophisticated angle?
  - nine_zeros 5y ago
    Just as workers lose income from time to time when they lose jobs, it is ok for business owners to cut their own salaries and profits for a short period of time while they attract workers.
  - agrajag 5y ago
    Would you feel better with “demand in other sectors has been deemed more valuable and your business model may be unfeasible in the current labor climate?” Means the same thing.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      That would be true if workers are getting better employment in other jobs. If people find unemployment more attractive than working, that is a different problem. The percent of the population working a job has dropped 6‰ since a peak in 2000. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
      - 8note 5y ago
        That still sounds like a "your business model is bad" problem. If you can't pay people a wage to match how bad the job you want them to do is, your business shouldn't exist
        s1artibartfast 5y ago
        That is a different point than the idea that everyone is moving on to higher paid jobs. I fully agree that some jobs aren't worth doing at a given price. But this is all relative to someone's next best option. You have take both sides of the decision into account and there are more factors at play. Of course some business models are unsustainable. That said, I think it is dishonest to claim people are finding better pay elsewhere. If people think they can have a better life by not working at all, I think it is relevant to discuss why that is the case and if that is problem that needs to be discussed.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Is "pay more money" your solution to the housing shortage as well?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
dagenix 5y ago
Lol - "Labor Shortage". It's like me complaining that there is a MacBook shortage because I refuse to pay more than $200 for a MacBook. There is no such thing - they just don't like the prices that labor is asking for. Maybe a "people willing to work for the money that they want to offer shortage" - but that sounds much less nice for the business.
- andagainagain 5y ago
  part of the issue is how fast they want to hire them too. People do not just think of themselves as employees in waiting. If you are a business that is going to lay off a bunch of people... temporarily... then be sure get an agreement that they will come back. Imagine you're one of these workers laid off. You move. You find another way to live entirely, another way to pay the bills, another entire path to another entire career. Heck, even if they give you your old job back... even at a higher wage. Would you take it back? It's not an obvious decision.
  - dagenix 5y ago
    Ya. Just because the company would like for people to come back, doesn't mean they have the right to expect them to. The same way that the company chooses to stop paying people, people choose that maybe they'd like to do something else.
    - bruce511 5y ago
      Not to mention they've created a huge amount of bad will. Got fired from the trains because "down sizing", or maybe dad did? Now they're like, "hey come work on the railways" - and the answer is "fool me once, shame on me..." Maybe it's not just money, maybe it's not just shitty work conditions, maybe people notice when you treat employees like commodities and choose not to become a commodity.
  - thayne 5y ago
    There is a solution for that. Hire unskilled, or underqualified employees and train them. But that costs money and takes time so of course companies don't want to do that. Then there is the fear that the employee will leave and work for a competitor after you train them. The solution to that is to treat them well enough they don't want to leave. But again, that cost money.
henning 5y ago
Not quite the whole truth. They merely decided they didn't want to work for your shitty company that sucks.
KirillPanov 5y ago
Glad to see a Wolf Street article here on HN. That site is full of great case studies that question the macroeconomic/inflation narrative coming from the corporate media. Backed up with data from all the unsexy industries nobody wants to talk about on television, like railroads and used cars and farm products. You know, the stuff the economy is actually made out of.
seibelj 5y ago
I had a roofer come today and it was the company owner, he said 3 of his guys are out taking the free money so he's back to working. I've heard enough anecdotes to believe that getting free money for rent and food is enough to keep a decent amount of workers at the beach and the netflix. It's called incentives, but no one likes to see obvious things anymore.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  What was the company owner doing before going back to working?
  - seibelj 5y ago
    Managing crews of workers - but I see ownership and management as work, as I am myself a business owner and manager of many people. But some would argue management is somehow not "real work" even though I've been pulling 70 hours a week for years!
    - SantalBlush 5y ago
      I've done quite a few roofs in my day and managed crews. If someone is "managing" without getting up on the roof, they're not doing the real work.
  - markkanof 5y ago
    Not the OP but the owner was probably doing any number of tasks required to run a company other than driving nails on a roof. . ie. Doing estimates, arranging for materials, bookkeeping, etc.
- prawn 5y ago
  This happened in Australia. It was very difficult to find a house cleaner last year, and it's still a challenge now. Quotes were $40-50/hour or more. If you worked for yourself as a contractor (most cleaners), you only needed to demonstrate that your income had dropped some percentage from the equivalent period 12 months ago, and you could claim $600/w. Scrub toilets every day, or get $600/w to sit at home... Or get paid cash and still claim the $600. On the other hand, a very simple/easy system meant that the process wasn't overly onerous at a time where other contractors were legitimately missing a lot of business due to pandemic restrictions.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
PhileinSophia 5y ago
The posts talking about "not paying enough" are completely missing the crux of the issue. There are 12 million people on unemployment, they are unemployed by choice. The government is killing these businesses by making it impossible for them to hire, and it's at the taxpayer's expense.
- glasss 5y ago
  I know lots of people, probably not a huge percentage of that 12 million figure, on unemployment not by choice but by circumstance. Restaurants closed, others aren't paying enough or offering enough hours for them to move out of their parent's house again. My friends would love to be off of unemployment and living on their own again, but their field of work isn't sustaining them anymore and other fields aren't hiring enough.
- eru 5y ago
  You are being downvoted, but you are right that on the margin paying people _not_ to work does have an impact. But I say on the margin, because it's not 100% of the story. It's not easy to design a system that provides for the needy, doesn't cost too much, and doesn't give undue incentives to become/stay needy.
  - alex_young 5y ago
    Maybe the downvotes are from some of the 12 million people the OP said ‘chose’ to be unemployed
  - PhileinSophia 5y ago
    I'm not saying this to be funny, I fully intend this to be taken seriously, the solution is to follow the principle of justice. The "needy" have no claim on the output of the productive. There is no free lunch, there is no claim to the unearned. The solution is to get rid of welfare entirely, on principle. Anything less leads to this mess eventually.
    - hug 5y ago
rubyist5eva 5y ago
"labour shortage" - literally does not exist. Pay more.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Animats 5y ago
Looking at the Union Pacific job site, they have five openings for train crew. They're in Rawlins, WY (pop. 8K), Boone, IA (pop. 12K), Portland, OR (pop. 650K), Green River, WY (pop. 12K), and North Platte, NE (pop. 26K). Except for Portland, all those places are so tiny that they probably already employ everyone who wants to work for the railroad. If they want people, they're going to have to convince them to re-locate. Their web site does not indicate they are trying. (Those are locations of railroad switchyards, which don't have to be near destinations. There's a tendency in the US to put them in them middle of nowhere, where there's cheap land for tracks, rather than, say, downtown Chicago, where they were a century ago.)
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Rawlins isn't a switchyards. Green River isn't much of one. They have yards, but they're primarily for temporary storage of in-transit trains.
  - Animats 5y ago
    True, but because they are storage yards, they are also crew change points, and people are based there. The worst of both worlds - on the road most of the time, in a small railroad town when not on the road. On 90 minute call, too, 24/7, in a business that never closes and is pretty much equally active around the clock. As you build up union seniority, you get more control of your schedule.
croes 5y ago
Interesting euphemism. In reality, there is not a shortage of labour, but of labourers.
andreskytt 5y ago
Talking to an experienced European HR professional, there appears to be a systemic misunderstanding of the function of HR specifically in the US. HR is seen as paper-pushers there to protect short-term interests of the company rather than working on strategic level to develop the workforce in a long-term direction.

99 points by DocFeind 5y ago

After extorting the U.S taxpayers for handouts, the airlines are complaining about the same thing. Assholes.

Offer more money. That’s the entire solution. These people didn’t become ghosts. If there’s no supply of labor at the price you’re offering, then increase the price.

brianwawok 5y ago
Inflation is going to be great!
- KirillPanov 5y ago
  Going? Evidently you have not visited a lumberyard in 2021...
  - bruce511 5y ago
    It's important to understand that the price of one thing does not inflation make. Yes, lumber has shot up, but that is a function of supply and demand, not inflation. Demand went through the roof, supply was constrained, prices rose, and are now falling, although there is still backlog and so prices remain high. Supply and demand pricing is not inflation, it is the Free Market in action in all of its glory.
    - KirillPanov 5y ago
      Of course. But lots of things are going up in price [1]. Lumber makes the best anecdote because it's a tangible commodity that everybody has bought at some point (and many buy semi-regularly), and it can't be blamed on semiconductor shortages. Not even with Deere's silly LTE-enabled feller-bunchers. Also, unlike so many other industries, it makes no sense for forestland owners to take a hit to their profits in order to not "lose customers". Firstly, it's a commodity. But more importantly, they need to use those dollars they earn at the sawmill today to plant, manage, and maintain roads (expensive!) to a crop that won't come to market for another fifty years. This is especially true when they decide (always with trepidation) to accelerate the cycling of a few years' worth of land, as Rayonier has just done during the past month. Accelerating X years of harvest means making a bet that you know what the next X years of inflation look like. The futures markets' liquidity depth is nowhere near sufficient to hedge the amount of harvest acceleration that homebuilders are clamoring for. That's why they are a canary in the coalmine for sudden and non-transient inflation. I'm sure Janet Yellen will downvote this comment. [1] https://nyts.link/https:/www.wsj.com/articles/whirlpool-considering-more-price-increases-if-inflation-exceeds-forecasts-11626987883 https://nyts.link/https:/www.wsj.com/articles/whirlpool-cons...
      - nradov 5y ago
        The increase in lumber prices recently was due to sawmill capacity constraints. Forest land owners didn't have higher profits.
    - aunty_helen 5y ago
      You should see this: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi The guy that predicted the 2008 housing crash (the guy from the movie) rang alarm bells earlier in the year on twitter that the US is headed for hyper inflation. That was until the SEC paid him a visit and he deleted his twitter. If you want, go on youtube, type 'inflation 2021', adjust your portfolio. August 11 is the date this will all hit the fan as July's numbers will be out.
- eru 5y ago
  Inflation is a monetary thing. Depends mostly on how much money gets 'printed'.
  - Ma8ee 5y ago
    No, that is not how inflation work (even though some Monetarists still believe so). See any of the following links: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/what-is-inflation/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/what-is-inflation/ https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111314/what-causes-inflation-and-does-anyone-gain-it.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111314/what-causes-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation?wprov=sfti1
    - eru 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Causes is pretty much in line with what I said. (Just to be clear, by inflation I mean an increase in the general price level. Not the enlargement of the stock of money itself.)
aledalgrande 5y ago
Yeah simple free labor market rules.
- na85 5y ago
  Corporations, especially not giant entrenched monopolies like railroads, don't actually support the free market. They pay lip service to free market ideals when it's beneficial to do so, but as soon as the free market means they need to pay more for labor, well, they offshore what they can and then complain of a skills gap or a labor gap. It's actually just a "5 years experience university educated and willing to work for peanuts" shortage.
  - aledalgrande 5y ago
    They might not believe in it, but the market doesn't care about it. When it tilts on the workers side like now, for the sheer number of available jobs, companies have to adapt. When there is a job shortage, workers have to adapt.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    I have to laugh at these too. Prior to coming into CS, I did a lot of general labor. I couldn't get machinist jobs or general blue collar labor jobs even though the positions said "willing to train." None gave me the time of day. On top of that, higher paying (compared to most) general labor factory jobs wouldn't even set up interviews. I'm pretty sure I didn't get picked for one job just because I asked what "swing shift" was. A lot of these companies are liars masquerading as if they can't find people. There are people who are applying, but HR is choosier than most even in the CS field. I really don't get it. Also, many factories do shady garbage where you go through temp-to-hire agencies, promising getting hired on after 90-120 days, then hold you on the leash for 12 months and not hire you. All these companies can suck it. They absolutely deserve the "shortage" they've created. Most people end up wanting to go to retail or get a degree because they're sick of being treated like a literal personal labor slave who honestly is more likely to be fired on a whim than the average office worker. General labor working conditions are at rock bottom. We traded excessive safety for being treated like robots. Ever tried talking to someone for fun at a factory full of temp-to-hires? You don't exactly get to know anybody. So the system is devised to treat you as a robot. If robot-38273 does not perform, decommission them and get a new robot.
ALittleLight 5y ago
I suspect they'll support increasing the supply of labor instead.
- eru 5y ago
  That would be great, too.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    For everyone other than the country's current labor force, yes.
    - eru 5y ago
      Actually, not. There's at most a very minor effect on wages. The baby boomers entering the labour force didn't impoverish the existing labourers, for example. If you are concerned, there's a relatively simple key-hole solution for migration: just auction off visas to the highest bidders, and distribute the proceeds amongst existing voters.
      - ALittleLight 5y ago
        "at most a very minor effect on wages" strikes me as deeply implausible. The US has added tens of millions of immigrants in the past few decades. Many of them are willing to work for conditions and wages that native workers aren't willing to put up with. How could that do anything but depress wages? Nearly 90% of farm workers are immigrants[1]. That has, at most, "a minor effect on wages"? I'm extremely skeptical of that. 1 - https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/about-farmworker-justice/who-we-serve/ https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/about-farmworker-justice/w...
        eru 5y ago
        If there were less migrants, natives wouldn't have cushy farmworker jobs. That wouldn't be profitable. By and large, there would simply be fewer farmworker jobs: Farmers would switch to less labour intensive crops, eg wheat instead of fruit, and make slightly less money. Migrant's basically 'create' their own farmworker jobs. Those jobs wouldn't exist without them. Researchers have looked at the effect of migration on wages. Just ask your favourite search engine for 'migration and wages' (or similar terms), and see many papers. Eg https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration-reduce-wages https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration... or https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/ https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/th... or https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-the-wages-of-native-workers/long https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-th... or https://www.oecd.org/els/42365109.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/42365109.pdf (just to give the top results I get from Google). Basically, the papers say that the effect is probably zero, or at most very small. So something you could relatively easily compensate existing workers (or voters) for, by laying a fee or tax on the migrants.
mjevans 5y ago
More money? Much of the problem yeah. Good Bosses Stable CAREERS (regular, predictable, hours; real advancement, a career path) Maybe a strong union that's worth joining. Rail probably has one of these, but a Barista probably doesn't (and should).
- planet-and-halo 5y ago
  Yeah the stability thing is huge. Businesses and workers are at complete odds on this, because workers want to have a steady income and stop worrying about it, while businesses want the ability to adjust their labor costs on the fly. Workers have caught onto the game now, though, and are taking the same mercenary approach that businesses do. What I think we're living through is the natural end result of that process: incredible short-termism, catastrophic loss of institutional knowledge, social instability due to a pervasive sense of insecurity and worthlessness/lack of social bonds. This is what happens when your economic theories abstract away everything about human beings except their desire to maximize utils.
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    Completely agree. But to be fair, I think a lot of economists would also agree with you here.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    "catastrophic loss of institutional knowledge," Government Engineering has been a giant sucking sound of retirements. The knowledge loss is crazy. Larry even tried to quit so they dropped his targets and increased his pay.
refurb 5y ago
The money isn't the only problem. At least in Canada, railroad work is a completely shit job because it's so poorly run by the companies. Not sure the company could pay enough to keep from having a "shortage" and still stay profitable.
- prawn 5y ago
  Might depend on the job itself, but in Australia I get the impression that there are some easy and very well compensated rail jobs. Double pay on weekends, triple pay if it rains. $50/h to stand around a lot of the time. A friend does it on the side and can make more in a shift or two over a weekend than he does doing 5 days/week at his normal white collar day job.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Dunno about the employee side, but the big Canadian railroads became quite hated by their customers when they moved to "precision scheduled railroading". Basically, running trains on a scheduled and your load better be ready when the train is going. So more like a scheduled transit service than a "we'll wait for you and set up runs for you". I guess that improves margins, but I also wonder how much work/profit they throw away by becoming more hostile to their customers. It's worked out well for the shareholders anyway.
  - nradov 5y ago
    That doesn't seem like hostility, it's standard practice in many parts of the transportation industry. If you want to send cargo from Hong Kong to Long Beach the ship is going to leave port on schedule whether your container arrives in time or not.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      I'm guessing it leaves the logistics to the customer rather than the railroad. You probably can't send your railcar too early either. Unlike a ship, trains get broken up and re-assembled regularly on long journeys, so you might draw the short end of the scheduling stick.
BurningFrog 5y ago
These "just pay more" arguments seem to assume all employers have infinite money, and only refuse to pay employees more because they're mean. Or am I missing some more sophisticated angle?
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  Just as workers lose income from time to time when they lose jobs, it is ok for business owners to cut their own salaries and profits for a short period of time while they attract workers.
- agrajag 5y ago
  Would you feel better with “demand in other sectors has been deemed more valuable and your business model may be unfeasible in the current labor climate?” Means the same thing.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    That would be true if workers are getting better employment in other jobs. If people find unemployment more attractive than working, that is a different problem. The percent of the population working a job has dropped 6‰ since a peak in 2000. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
    - 8note 5y ago
      That still sounds like a "your business model is bad" problem. If you can't pay people a wage to match how bad the job you want them to do is, your business shouldn't exist
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
        That is a different point than the idea that everyone is moving on to higher paid jobs. I fully agree that some jobs aren't worth doing at a given price. But this is all relative to someone's next best option. You have take both sides of the decision into account and there are more factors at play. Of course some business models are unsustainable. That said, I think it is dishonest to claim people are finding better pay elsewhere. If people think they can have a better life by not working at all, I think it is relevant to discuss why that is the case and if that is problem that needs to be discussed.
missedthecue 5y ago
Is "pay more money" your solution to the housing shortage as well?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

dagenix 5y ago

Lol - "Labor Shortage". It's like me complaining that there is a MacBook shortage because I refuse to pay more than $200 for a MacBook. There is no such thing - they just don't like the prices that labor is asking for. Maybe a "people willing to work for the money that they want to offer shortage" - but that sounds much less nice for the business.

andagainagain 5y ago
part of the issue is how fast they want to hire them too. People do not just think of themselves as employees in waiting. If you are a business that is going to lay off a bunch of people... temporarily... then be sure get an agreement that they will come back. Imagine you're one of these workers laid off. You move. You find another way to live entirely, another way to pay the bills, another entire path to another entire career. Heck, even if they give you your old job back... even at a higher wage. Would you take it back? It's not an obvious decision.
- dagenix 5y ago
  Ya. Just because the company would like for people to come back, doesn't mean they have the right to expect them to. The same way that the company chooses to stop paying people, people choose that maybe they'd like to do something else.
  - bruce511 5y ago
    Not to mention they've created a huge amount of bad will. Got fired from the trains because "down sizing", or maybe dad did? Now they're like, "hey come work on the railways" - and the answer is "fool me once, shame on me..." Maybe it's not just money, maybe it's not just shitty work conditions, maybe people notice when you treat employees like commodities and choose not to become a commodity.
- thayne 5y ago
  There is a solution for that. Hire unskilled, or underqualified employees and train them. But that costs money and takes time so of course companies don't want to do that. Then there is the fear that the employee will leave and work for a competitor after you train them. The solution to that is to treat them well enough they don't want to leave. But again, that cost money.

henning 5y ago

Not quite the whole truth. They merely decided they didn't want to work for your shitty company that sucks.

KirillPanov 5y ago

Glad to see a Wolf Street article here on HN. That site is full of great case studies that question the macroeconomic/inflation narrative coming from the corporate media. Backed up with data from all the unsexy industries nobody wants to talk about on television, like railroads and used cars and farm products. You know, the stuff the economy is actually made out of.

seibelj 5y ago

I had a roofer come today and it was the company owner, he said 3 of his guys are out taking the free money so he's back to working. I've heard enough anecdotes to believe that getting free money for rent and food is enough to keep a decent amount of workers at the beach and the netflix. It's called incentives, but no one likes to see obvious things anymore.

Scoundreller 5y ago
What was the company owner doing before going back to working?
- seibelj 5y ago
  Managing crews of workers - but I see ownership and management as work, as I am myself a business owner and manager of many people. But some would argue management is somehow not "real work" even though I've been pulling 70 hours a week for years!
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    I've done quite a few roofs in my day and managed crews. If someone is "managing" without getting up on the roof, they're not doing the real work.
- markkanof 5y ago
  Not the OP but the owner was probably doing any number of tasks required to run a company other than driving nails on a roof. . ie. Doing estimates, arranging for materials, bookkeeping, etc.
prawn 5y ago
This happened in Australia. It was very difficult to find a house cleaner last year, and it's still a challenge now. Quotes were $40-50/hour or more. If you worked for yourself as a contractor (most cleaners), you only needed to demonstrate that your income had dropped some percentage from the equivalent period 12 months ago, and you could claim $600/w. Scrub toilets every day, or get $600/w to sit at home... Or get paid cash and still claim the $600. On the other hand, a very simple/easy system meant that the process wasn't overly onerous at a time where other contractors were legitimately missing a lot of business due to pandemic restrictions.

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PhileinSophia 5y ago

The posts talking about "not paying enough" are completely missing the crux of the issue. There are 12 million people on unemployment, they are unemployed by choice. The government is killing these businesses by making it impossible for them to hire, and it's at the taxpayer's expense.

glasss 5y ago
I know lots of people, probably not a huge percentage of that 12 million figure, on unemployment not by choice but by circumstance. Restaurants closed, others aren't paying enough or offering enough hours for them to move out of their parent's house again. My friends would love to be off of unemployment and living on their own again, but their field of work isn't sustaining them anymore and other fields aren't hiring enough.
eru 5y ago
You are being downvoted, but you are right that on the margin paying people _not_ to work does have an impact. But I say on the margin, because it's not 100% of the story. It's not easy to design a system that provides for the needy, doesn't cost too much, and doesn't give undue incentives to become/stay needy.
- alex_young 5y ago
  Maybe the downvotes are from some of the 12 million people the OP said ‘chose’ to be unemployed
- PhileinSophia 5y ago
  I'm not saying this to be funny, I fully intend this to be taken seriously, the solution is to follow the principle of justice. The "needy" have no claim on the output of the productive. There is no free lunch, there is no claim to the unearned. The solution is to get rid of welfare entirely, on principle. Anything less leads to this mess eventually.
  - hug 5y ago

rubyist5eva 5y ago

"labour shortage" - literally does not exist. Pay more.

deleted 5y ago

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Animats 5y ago

Looking at the Union Pacific job site, they have five openings for train crew. They're in Rawlins, WY (pop. 8K), Boone, IA (pop. 12K), Portland, OR (pop. 650K), Green River, WY (pop. 12K), and North Platte, NE (pop. 26K). Except for Portland, all those places are so tiny that they probably already employ everyone who wants to work for the railroad. If they want people, they're going to have to convince them to re-locate. Their web site does not indicate they are trying. (Those are locations of railroad switchyards, which don't have to be near destinations. There's a tendency in the US to put them in them middle of nowhere, where there's cheap land for tracks, rather than, say, downtown Chicago, where they were a century ago.)

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Rawlins isn't a switchyards. Green River isn't much of one. They have yards, but they're primarily for temporary storage of in-transit trains.
- Animats 5y ago
  True, but because they are storage yards, they are also crew change points, and people are based there. The worst of both worlds - on the road most of the time, in a small railroad town when not on the road. On 90 minute call, too, 24/7, in a business that never closes and is pretty much equally active around the clock. As you build up union seniority, you get more control of your schedule.

croes 5y ago

Interesting euphemism. In reality, there is not a shortage of labour, but of labourers.

andreskytt 5y ago

Talking to an experienced European HR professional, there appears to be a systemic misunderstanding of the function of HR specifically in the US. HR is seen as paper-pushers there to protect short-term interests of the company rather than working on strategic level to develop the workforce in a long-term direction.