15 ms·

It is strange that the top known factors for this are not even mentioned in this or other similar news stories. First, closing of schools caused large numbers

It is strange that the top known factors for this are not even mentioned in this or other similar news stories. First, closing of schools caused large numbers of women to leave the workforce in order to care for children. Until schools are fully open and day care is available those women will probably not be going back to work. Second, all markets are cultivated things. Employers in the most troubled sectors have recently spent roughly a year and a half telling desperate workers they have nothing for them. Now that there are openings it should be no surprise that workers have moved on and have little interest in transitioning back. All of this stuff about workers disappearing and people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on.

lumost 5y ago
It’s funny, I hear a ton about worker productivity and similar worker centric views of production, labor, and wages. But, as any Walmart, warehouse, or even pizza shop worker will tell you - their ability to negotiate wages, change production practices, or make any difference in the workplace amounts to a suggestion box and a 25 cent raise.
encryptluks2 5y ago
> people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on I disagree... COVID-19 made a lot of people reconsider their priorities. If you only had limited time left with a family member, would you really want to spend your time working a crappy job while struggling to pay rent? Pretty soon I imagine the government will start doing something like what they did to people who went on strike.. they'll find ways to start punishing people that don't want to work certain jobs anymore and changing careers will rarely be an option.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  If only there was a better way to get people to work shitty jobs... like maybe paying them more...
  - dazc 5y ago
    I agree but I think a lot of the problem also is that there were/are many businesses that are not finacially viable and cheap labour has carried them along thus far. Now the tide has gone out they are facing reality.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > would you really want to spend your time working a crappy job while struggling to pay rent? Nobody ever wanted this, they did this because they had to. There's nothing to reconsider. They would have always preferred doing something else.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> All of this stuff about workers disappearing and people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on. Well said. We’ve been bombarded with news articles and thought pieces about how COVID has forever changed the workforce, how people are refusing to work jobs they don’t like, how people are quitting en masse because their employers won’t allow remote work, and how companies are abandoning office spaces in favor of full remote for months now. Yet every time I dig for the actual numbers it turns out little has changed on the whole. It’s usually journalists taking isolated stories or small changes in certain statistics and re-casting them as society-wide social movements. Many of these articles are simple clickbait so the reader can think “Duh, pay more!” But it doesn’t make sense that people would choose no job at all over a job that doesn’t pay the wage they want. People are obviously either getting other jobs somewhere, waiting for enhanced unemployment to end, or waiting for other life circumstances to allow them to return to work. And like you said, many of these situations are the result of parents having to leave the workforce to care for children while their schools and daycares were closed down. People without kids may not realize how disruptive that was to families that had planned routines and jobs around kids attending schools and daycares. I suspect we’ll see sharper increases in employment when school is back in session and enhanced unemployment ends this fall. There isn’t some large movement of low-wage people simply refusing to work because without other sources of income. The logic in that narrative just doesn’t make any sense. This problem is temporary while the economy, market, and extended unemployment benefits transition back to normalcy. Journalists are seizing on the narrow window of change to try to insert more dramatic narratives, but those too will fade.
- whall6 5y ago
  Right. Why would I seek a job if the unemployment benefits pay me nearly as much to do nothing?
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    And the employer perspective: Why would I try to compete with unemployment benefits that are ending in a few months? The situation is temporary and has obviously causal factors that are coming to an end soon (unemployment benefits, school out for summer). Journalists seem to be going out of their way to ignore these and pretend that something else is happening.
ashtonkem 5y ago
It’s propaganda to justify cutting social welfare programs.
nimbius 5y ago
Anecdotal but...can we mention burn-out? as a "blue collar" worker i dont think anyone mentions it enough. I have a coworker who left a 9-5 body shop making decent money as a painter for a medical billing job that was closer to her father in 2020. she came back to that body shop just two weeks ago because she was pulling non-stop mandatory overtime in a salary position that treated her like trash. she never even gave notice she was quitting, just stopped showing up. I have a friend who quit his bartending job to work at a grocery store and had the same experience. mandatory overtime, limited breaks, and the angriest customers. He quit about seven months into the pandemic and picked up a CDL position as a regional truck driver. these "hero" fields that exist as a sort of meat grinder during covid have chewed through all the social credit most people are willing to give them.
- kktkti9 5y ago
  Turns out a “services based” economy is a euphemism for austerity based economy. Adam Smith claimed that “…landlords' role in the economic process is passive. Their ability to reap a revenue solely from ownership of land tends to make them indolent and inept, and so they tend to be unable to even look after their own economic interests". Look at dollar rich rent seekers destabilizing their value store. Dead guys already had human economics figured out. Humans haven’t literally evolved that much in 200 years.
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    > Humans haven’t literally evolved that much in 200 years. You’re being generous. I would say we haven’t evolved in thousands of years. I mean sure, the tech is better but we’re the same self absorbed, careless bipeds we’ve always been.
    - derefr 5y ago
      > I would say we haven’t evolved in thousands of years. We’ve become slightly more lactose-tolerant!
      - 5y ago
tzs 5y ago
> It is strange that the top known factors for this are not even mentioned in this or other similar news stories. First, closing of schools caused large numbers of women to leave the workforce in order to care for children. I'm a bit skeptical of that explanation in the US because schools close for 3 months every summer, without an accompanying large number of women quitting their jobs.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Between summer camps and the weather being nice enough to just go outside and entertain oneself, the 3-month summer vacation is a notably different effect on the economy than the year-long covid isolation with indeterminate future horizon. What you find when you look at the numbers is an awful lot of White collar firms simply get less done during the summer months. "We expect to move forward on that project, but we're blocked on the report from the ads team, and 2/3 of the ads team just took a week-long vacation with their families" is a common pattern in summer.
  - bumby 5y ago
    To echo this, a previous employer has scheduled downtime that coincides with spring break because they recognized so many parents take time off because of having school-aged children.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  Those months can be planned for well ahead of time, and there's generally plenty of child caring activities (camps, schools offering day sessions, etc). This was... very different, and a lot more difficult for most people.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  In many families, summers are typically full of "summer camps" that are actually "themed daycare for older kids". Those were mostly closed as well during the pandemic lockdown phase, and some still haven't come back (in the US, anyway).
  - 5y ago
silexia 5y ago
Another element is that the government now pays people to stay at home and not work. That is the number one factor. If people did not have money, they would work.
- beambot 5y ago
  Plus mortgage forbearance and eviction moratoriums... So you have more money in monthly unemployment and a pause on peoples' #1 expenses. Until these programs end, I wouldn't even speculate about the future state of labor markets.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Eviction moratoriums ended yesterday (7/31/2021). Not the smartest thing to just cut off all at once. An obvious tell as to who the government (both parties) considers their constituents. Also not the smartest thing to do during a pretty large resurgence of COVID. Expect another year of this at least. People without a place to live are a great way to spread a communicable disease. I mean we're talking millions all at once. Expect an uptick in crimes of desperation. We might even read a few articles about dead bodies on the streets in the coming months. It could get that bad. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/30/housing-eviction-moratorium-white-house-summit/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/30/housing-e... I dunno what's gonna happen, but it probably won't be good. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/06/22/as-cdcs-eviction-moratorium-ends-states-prepare-for-flood-of-cases https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
    - beambot 5y ago
      I'm not advocating for the cessation of mortgage forbearance nor eviction moratoriums. All I'm saying is that they distort the labor markets and will continue to do so until we reach a new post-COVID steady state. (Don't know why this triggers down votes.)
raydev 5y ago
Another aspect is that most of the people in working low wage jobs who may have been living on their own or with roommates eventually had to abandon them and move back in with their parents, or find more roommates. The people who worked these jobs may simply be gone. And with COVID lingering, there's no reason to leave current stable living situations even if they're still relatively broke.
alisonkisk 5y ago
> workers have moved on Moved on to what? Not other jobs, obviously. Unemployment insurance for income, eviction moratorium (reducing expenses), maybe, but that's all ending. Lower income standard of living? More efficient higher density households? Dropping out of the rat race?
- Clubber 5y ago
  Unemployment rate is at 6%, which isn't perfect, but pretty low all things considered. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
  - pklausler 5y ago
    Unemployment (in this sense) does not count those who are not (any longer) searching for jobs.
DougN7 5y ago
But all those workers that have moved on - where have they gone? I can understand restaurant workers moving on for example, but that should mean they have filled positions elsewhere. It just doesn’t seem like the numbers add up. But your comment about women staying home to care for children might be it.
Chyzwar 5y ago
In the context of this article, the main reason is Brexit. In fact UK, government was helping a lot with Covid situation including paying to furloughed employees. UK no longer can attract workers from EU. Eastern Europeans are moving back because after the Brexit vote they no longer feel welcomed and theirs home countries improved a lot in last 10 years. UK created perfect storm in last 10 years: 1. Add tuition fees for higher education. 2. Build negative perception on immigration. 3. Reduce council housing, keep house prices artificially high. 4. Vote Brexit and fail in process, destroying currency value. 5. Fail to provide opportunities for upward mobility for most immigrants.

lumost 5y ago

It’s funny, I hear a ton about worker productivity and similar worker centric views of production, labor, and wages. But, as any Walmart, warehouse, or even pizza shop worker will tell you - their ability to negotiate wages, change production practices, or make any difference in the workplace amounts to a suggestion box and a 25 cent raise.

encryptluks2 5y ago

> people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on I disagree... COVID-19 made a lot of people reconsider their priorities. If you only had limited time left with a family member, would you really want to spend your time working a crappy job while struggling to pay rent? Pretty soon I imagine the government will start doing something like what they did to people who went on strike.. they'll find ways to start punishing people that don't want to work certain jobs anymore and changing careers will rarely be an option.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
If only there was a better way to get people to work shitty jobs... like maybe paying them more...
- dazc 5y ago
  I agree but I think a lot of the problem also is that there were/are many businesses that are not finacially viable and cheap labour has carried them along thus far. Now the tide has gone out they are facing reality.
pessimizer 5y ago
> would you really want to spend your time working a crappy job while struggling to pay rent? Nobody ever wanted this, they did this because they had to. There's nothing to reconsider. They would have always preferred doing something else.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> All of this stuff about workers disappearing and people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on. Well said. We’ve been bombarded with news articles and thought pieces about how COVID has forever changed the workforce, how people are refusing to work jobs they don’t like, how people are quitting en masse because their employers won’t allow remote work, and how companies are abandoning office spaces in favor of full remote for months now. Yet every time I dig for the actual numbers it turns out little has changed on the whole. It’s usually journalists taking isolated stories or small changes in certain statistics and re-casting them as society-wide social movements. Many of these articles are simple clickbait so the reader can think “Duh, pay more!” But it doesn’t make sense that people would choose no job at all over a job that doesn’t pay the wage they want. People are obviously either getting other jobs somewhere, waiting for enhanced unemployment to end, or waiting for other life circumstances to allow them to return to work. And like you said, many of these situations are the result of parents having to leave the workforce to care for children while their schools and daycares were closed down. People without kids may not realize how disruptive that was to families that had planned routines and jobs around kids attending schools and daycares. I suspect we’ll see sharper increases in employment when school is back in session and enhanced unemployment ends this fall. There isn’t some large movement of low-wage people simply refusing to work because without other sources of income. The logic in that narrative just doesn’t make any sense. This problem is temporary while the economy, market, and extended unemployment benefits transition back to normalcy. Journalists are seizing on the narrow window of change to try to insert more dramatic narratives, but those too will fade.

whall6 5y ago
Right. Why would I seek a job if the unemployment benefits pay me nearly as much to do nothing?
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  And the employer perspective: Why would I try to compete with unemployment benefits that are ending in a few months? The situation is temporary and has obviously causal factors that are coming to an end soon (unemployment benefits, school out for summer). Journalists seem to be going out of their way to ignore these and pretend that something else is happening.

ashtonkem 5y ago

It’s propaganda to justify cutting social welfare programs.

nimbius 5y ago

Anecdotal but...can we mention burn-out? as a "blue collar" worker i dont think anyone mentions it enough. I have a coworker who left a 9-5 body shop making decent money as a painter for a medical billing job that was closer to her father in 2020. she came back to that body shop just two weeks ago because she was pulling non-stop mandatory overtime in a salary position that treated her like trash. she never even gave notice she was quitting, just stopped showing up. I have a friend who quit his bartending job to work at a grocery store and had the same experience. mandatory overtime, limited breaks, and the angriest customers. He quit about seven months into the pandemic and picked up a CDL position as a regional truck driver. these "hero" fields that exist as a sort of meat grinder during covid have chewed through all the social credit most people are willing to give them.

kktkti9 5y ago
Turns out a “services based” economy is a euphemism for austerity based economy. Adam Smith claimed that “…landlords' role in the economic process is passive. Their ability to reap a revenue solely from ownership of land tends to make them indolent and inept, and so they tend to be unable to even look after their own economic interests". Look at dollar rich rent seekers destabilizing their value store. Dead guys already had human economics figured out. Humans haven’t literally evolved that much in 200 years.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  > Humans haven’t literally evolved that much in 200 years. You’re being generous. I would say we haven’t evolved in thousands of years. I mean sure, the tech is better but we’re the same self absorbed, careless bipeds we’ve always been.
  - derefr 5y ago
    > I would say we haven’t evolved in thousands of years. We’ve become slightly more lactose-tolerant!
    - 5y ago

tzs 5y ago

> It is strange that the top known factors for this are not even mentioned in this or other similar news stories. First, closing of schools caused large numbers of women to leave the workforce in order to care for children. I'm a bit skeptical of that explanation in the US because schools close for 3 months every summer, without an accompanying large number of women quitting their jobs.

shadowgovt 5y ago
Between summer camps and the weather being nice enough to just go outside and entertain oneself, the 3-month summer vacation is a notably different effect on the economy than the year-long covid isolation with indeterminate future horizon. What you find when you look at the numbers is an awful lot of White collar firms simply get less done during the summer months. "We expect to move forward on that project, but we're blocked on the report from the ads team, and 2/3 of the ads team just took a week-long vacation with their families" is a common pattern in summer.
- bumby 5y ago
  To echo this, a previous employer has scheduled downtime that coincides with spring break because they recognized so many parents take time off because of having school-aged children.
RHSeeger 5y ago
Those months can be planned for well ahead of time, and there's generally plenty of child caring activities (camps, schools offering day sessions, etc). This was... very different, and a lot more difficult for most people.
rossdavidh 5y ago
In many families, summers are typically full of "summer camps" that are actually "themed daycare for older kids". Those were mostly closed as well during the pandemic lockdown phase, and some still haven't come back (in the US, anyway).
- 5y ago

silexia 5y ago

Another element is that the government now pays people to stay at home and not work. That is the number one factor. If people did not have money, they would work.

beambot 5y ago
Plus mortgage forbearance and eviction moratoriums... So you have more money in monthly unemployment and a pause on peoples' #1 expenses. Until these programs end, I wouldn't even speculate about the future state of labor markets.
- Clubber 5y ago
  Eviction moratoriums ended yesterday (7/31/2021). Not the smartest thing to just cut off all at once. An obvious tell as to who the government (both parties) considers their constituents. Also not the smartest thing to do during a pretty large resurgence of COVID. Expect another year of this at least. People without a place to live are a great way to spread a communicable disease. I mean we're talking millions all at once. Expect an uptick in crimes of desperation. We might even read a few articles about dead bodies on the streets in the coming months. It could get that bad. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/30/housing-eviction-moratorium-white-house-summit/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/30/housing-e... I dunno what's gonna happen, but it probably won't be good. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/06/22/as-cdcs-eviction-moratorium-ends-states-prepare-for-flood-of-cases https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
  - beambot 5y ago
    I'm not advocating for the cessation of mortgage forbearance nor eviction moratoriums. All I'm saying is that they distort the labor markets and will continue to do so until we reach a new post-COVID steady state. (Don't know why this triggers down votes.)

raydev 5y ago

Another aspect is that most of the people in working low wage jobs who may have been living on their own or with roommates eventually had to abandon them and move back in with their parents, or find more roommates. The people who worked these jobs may simply be gone. And with COVID lingering, there's no reason to leave current stable living situations even if they're still relatively broke.

alisonkisk 5y ago

> workers have moved on Moved on to what? Not other jobs, obviously. Unemployment insurance for income, eviction moratorium (reducing expenses), maybe, but that's all ending. Lower income standard of living? More efficient higher density households? Dropping out of the rat race?

Clubber 5y ago
Unemployment rate is at 6%, which isn't perfect, but pretty low all things considered. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
- pklausler 5y ago
  Unemployment (in this sense) does not count those who are not (any longer) searching for jobs.

DougN7 5y ago

But all those workers that have moved on - where have they gone? I can understand restaurant workers moving on for example, but that should mean they have filled positions elsewhere. It just doesn’t seem like the numbers add up. But your comment about women staying home to care for children might be it.

Chyzwar 5y ago

In the context of this article, the main reason is Brexit. In fact UK, government was helping a lot with Covid situation including paying to furloughed employees. UK no longer can attract workers from EU. Eastern Europeans are moving back because after the Brexit vote they no longer feel welcomed and theirs home countries improved a lot in last 10 years. UK created perfect storm in last 10 years: 1. Add tuition fees for higher education. 2. Build negative perception on immigration. 3. Reduce council housing, keep house prices artificially high. 4. Vote Brexit and fail in process, destroying currency value. 5. Fail to provide opportunities for upward mobility for most immigrants.