6 ms·

Just raise wages. We seem to always get this "worker shortage" marketing campaign every few years from our fat cat leaders. There is no shortage. If I want

Just raise wages. We seem to always get this "worker shortage" marketing campaign every few years from our fat cat leaders. There is no shortage. If I want a wagyu steak but only want to spend $5.00, does that mean there's a food shortage? Labor, goods and services are all subject to supply and demand. Let it work itself out. No special government subsides for people whining about shortages. I want a trip on one of these orbital space ships. Is there a space ship shortage?

avmich 5y ago
I'd propose a somewhat opposite explanation: worker shortage is an illusion created by a sort of accounting which decided to keep positions open and not fill them, even when qualified candidates come. So, not only there is no space ship shortage :) there is actually much bigger worker shortage, as I keep a billion positions open (I want slaves, of all kinds, especially with Wall Street experience) and can't fill them (I don't bother to try).
- warkdarrior 5y ago
  What does it buy you, as employer, to whine about made-up worker shortages?
  - slim 5y ago
    Gov assistance
  - onion2k 5y ago
    You can tell your staff that you're trying to hire more people but it's hard, and if they can just put in the extra effort now it'll be easier in the future. Meanwhile, you get to save paying for an extra person and get more from your staff, so profits go up.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Employees have to temporarily take on extra work while managers promise that the open headcount for the senior dev who just left will be filled as quickly as possible. In fact, you should refer your friends! (who will all be promptly rejected)
  - dv_dt 5y ago
    For one it lets them lobby to cut unemployment benefits and to incidentally cut taxes, which many business also lobby to avoid. It’s a free rider problem of profitable corporations on labor of society.
  - blfr 5y ago
    Easier lobbying for increased immigration, H-1B visas, and other "necessary" sources of (easily exploited) labour to avoid rising wages.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Possibly in some countries increased education spending. Thus in future increasing labour supply. And complaining is pretty cheap...
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    Believe it or not, this has become a political issue where conservative media is trying to spin this as people being too lazy to work, or welfare being too good. This is being called "the war on work" by conservative media [0]. The goal is to get popular support to weaken an already laughable welfare situation in the US so that workers have no choice but to go to work at terrible wages/benefits/conditions. This is a shared goal of conservatives and business owners. This also further divides people because of the consistent use of the "Welfare Queen" [1] stereotype by conservatives to vilify people on welfare. 0 - https://reason.com/2021/06/01/the-bipartisan-war-on-work/ https://reason.com/2021/06/01/the-bipartisan-war-on-work/ 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen#In_political_discourse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen#In_political_dis...
  - avmich 5y ago
    Employers keep doors open for really stellar candidates - they keep interviewing - and if such a candidate comes, a position can be created, with overall goal of improving quality of employees. However the pool of extraordinary candidates is shallow, so the stable state is "positions are supposedly opened - interviewing happens - nobody get hired", with rare exceptions. This skews the statistics - everybody reports "hiring and can't find (exceptional) candidates", but workers in fact can't find a job for a long time. It's not whining, it's a strategy, when interviewing costs relatively little. Even startups spend weeks of interviewing for a single candidate, because prevailing opinion is that it's more costly to hire a subpar employee than to do those interview rounds, even in a jurisdiction where laws allow firing with relative ease.
- RobertoG 5y ago
  How is that an opposite explanation?
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Raising wages doesn’t create more workers, though. It will just convince them to leave other jobs for the higher paid alternatives. This creates new job openings that still need to be backfilled. I don’t think it’s obvious that large numbers of people are choosing to stay home and earn $0/hour instead of getting a job working $10/hour because they really wanted $15/hour. The worker shortage is a real phenomenon of more jobs existing than people in the workforce. On the other hand, raising wages would produce inflationary pressure on everything from housing prices to food prices, which would force more people to get jobs just to survive. Not exactly what you meant, I know.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Raising wages doesn’t create more workers, though. Of course it does. My wife doesn't work because there's nothing that particularly motivates her to work rather than doing her hobbies. If you offered her more money, it might motivate her to re-enter the work force. And if you can get 100k without a degree people who would be in college will be in the work force instead.
  - runeks 5y ago
    Also, there’s less demand to buy labor for $20/hr than to buy it for $10/hr. So, all else being equal, fewer companies will demand workers if they’re more expensive, which will also reduce the deficit. That’s the theory at least.
    - guerby 5y ago
      If I follow you maximum demand to buy labor is at $0/hr. But if don't pay labor, no one is going to buy your product at the end of the day. If you pay more for labour, that's more money to spend on product and services. There's an optimum somewhere between the two. Presenting only one side is a polical statement.
      - Ekaros 5y ago
        Always makes me wonder when people say that about jobs in service and food sector. Isn't those people exactly the ones that spend largest part of their income on those services? So if they earned more they would be first one to spend more... And labour isn't that high percentage of costs anyway...
WFHRenaissance 5y ago
Fine, there is a shortage of cheap/affordable labor. These corps don't want wagyu...they want chicken fingers. They can't afford wagyu. Wagyu wouldn't even fit the occasion! They're not hosting a dinner party man; they're drunk in an Uber on the way home from the club.
- adwn 5y ago
  I think you got a little lost in that analogy...
closeparen 5y ago
It's possible that we're simply in a new world with less and more expensive stuff to buy than there was in 2019. It's still an interesting question how that came to be and whether it will last, which is what's actually explored in TFA. There is no call for subsidies.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dcow 5y ago
I’ve been trying to coach my partner (who works in retail) that companies could hire more workers tomorrow if they wanted to participate competitively in the labor market. She’s constantly stressed at work to the point of it physically affecting her wellbeing because her store is under staffed. It’s not some act of god that the store is not staffed. People didn't just disappear. It’s on her company and its management to create a successful business. It’s not on her to go the extra mile and literally harm herself to keep the store running. It’s really hard to convince people stand up for themselves when they’re used to being exploited by their employer over and over (in different ways) their entire career.
- bittercynic 5y ago
  Maybe I'm repeating what you've already said, but it is really harder to stand up for yourself when you're used to being exploited, and your employer is likely to take your very reasonable boundaries as contempt when they are accustomed to exploiting you. We really need to empower all kinds of front-line workers to enforce reasonable boundaries with both customers and management.
  - arodyginc 5y ago
    Is it communism where workers rule, or are there any other - unknown until now - means to ensure rights for unprivileged?
    - dukeyukey 5y ago
      Not OP but the fundamental problem is workers not having enough power to ensure good working conditions. There are lots of ways they can get more power - labor shortages, unions, workplace democracy, regulations (kinda) - but you gotta fix the problem, not the symptoms of it. If managers are scared of pushing their workers too hard because they could be voted out, managers will get a lot more reasonable.
adam_arthur 5y ago
Well, right now companies have to compete with government benefits in many states. Benefits that exceed the free market wage by a significant margin in most cases. Why would companies raise wages now when they can wait a few months to see if the situation changes? People seem upset by this, but if you have a free market economy, you should anticipate that actors will work in their own best interest. Changing regulations around compensation will be much more effective versus hoping that a company will act on a specific moral principle.
- throwaway743 5y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/early-end-to-federal-unemployment-pay-in-26-states-not-getting-people-to-work.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/early-end-to-federal-unemplo...
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
And lower cost of living. Can't work in a place if you can't pay the cost of living there.
douglaswlance 5y ago
What do we do for the businesses that cannot support a sudden increase in labor costs?
- kieselguhr_kid 5y ago
  Businesses have no right to exist. If you can't pay the prevailing wage, then you don't belong in business. I know that sounds harsh but that's the reality that workers live with every day. Can't pay the prevailing rent? You have to sleep in the streets. Can't pay for medical insurance? You get to die from a treatable disease. Why should there be more consideration for businesses than there is for human beings?
  - douglaswlance 5y ago
    > If you can't pay the prevailing wage, then you don't belong in business. They may be able to pay an increased wage when the rest of the economy catches. So it may be optimal for the economy as a whole to support businesses temporarily.
    - kieselguhr_kid 5y ago
      That's fine. I'm not against temporary subsidies, especially during particularly weird times. But I am frustrated by how the same people who regularly preach about how we need to let the free market work are now mewling about the wage market being too hot.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Nobody is claiming that businesses have a right to exist. Workers need jobs so that they don't end on the street and die. The concern is viable job opportunities disappearing and not being replaced. Businesses closing is an important subject to monitor because nobody wants to live in a failed economy where most of the population is unemployed and starving.
    - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
dfxm12 5y ago
And the other side is to raise supply by making immigration easier. Maybe the pandemic is a good excuse to not consider this right now (I don't think it is, but it's an argument I'm at least willing to listen to), but there are a lot of people willing to work that get turned away at the border.

avmich 5y ago

I'd propose a somewhat opposite explanation: worker shortage is an illusion created by a sort of accounting which decided to keep positions open and not fill them, even when qualified candidates come. So, not only there is no space ship shortage :) there is actually much bigger worker shortage, as I keep a billion positions open (I want slaves, of all kinds, especially with Wall Street experience) and can't fill them (I don't bother to try).

warkdarrior 5y ago
What does it buy you, as employer, to whine about made-up worker shortages?
- slim 5y ago
  Gov assistance
- onion2k 5y ago
  You can tell your staff that you're trying to hire more people but it's hard, and if they can just put in the extra effort now it'll be easier in the future. Meanwhile, you get to save paying for an extra person and get more from your staff, so profits go up.
- paxys 5y ago
  Employees have to temporarily take on extra work while managers promise that the open headcount for the senior dev who just left will be filled as quickly as possible. In fact, you should refer your friends! (who will all be promptly rejected)
- dv_dt 5y ago
  For one it lets them lobby to cut unemployment benefits and to incidentally cut taxes, which many business also lobby to avoid. It’s a free rider problem of profitable corporations on labor of society.
- blfr 5y ago
  Easier lobbying for increased immigration, H-1B visas, and other "necessary" sources of (easily exploited) labour to avoid rising wages.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Possibly in some countries increased education spending. Thus in future increasing labour supply. And complaining is pretty cheap...
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Believe it or not, this has become a political issue where conservative media is trying to spin this as people being too lazy to work, or welfare being too good. This is being called "the war on work" by conservative media [0]. The goal is to get popular support to weaken an already laughable welfare situation in the US so that workers have no choice but to go to work at terrible wages/benefits/conditions. This is a shared goal of conservatives and business owners. This also further divides people because of the consistent use of the "Welfare Queen" [1] stereotype by conservatives to vilify people on welfare. 0 - https://reason.com/2021/06/01/the-bipartisan-war-on-work/ https://reason.com/2021/06/01/the-bipartisan-war-on-work/ 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen#In_political_discourse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen#In_political_dis...
- avmich 5y ago
  Employers keep doors open for really stellar candidates - they keep interviewing - and if such a candidate comes, a position can be created, with overall goal of improving quality of employees. However the pool of extraordinary candidates is shallow, so the stable state is "positions are supposedly opened - interviewing happens - nobody get hired", with rare exceptions. This skews the statistics - everybody reports "hiring and can't find (exceptional) candidates", but workers in fact can't find a job for a long time. It's not whining, it's a strategy, when interviewing costs relatively little. Even startups spend weeks of interviewing for a single candidate, because prevailing opinion is that it's more costly to hire a subpar employee than to do those interview rounds, even in a jurisdiction where laws allow firing with relative ease.
RobertoG 5y ago
How is that an opposite explanation?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Raising wages doesn’t create more workers, though. It will just convince them to leave other jobs for the higher paid alternatives. This creates new job openings that still need to be backfilled. I don’t think it’s obvious that large numbers of people are choosing to stay home and earn $0/hour instead of getting a job working $10/hour because they really wanted $15/hour. The worker shortage is a real phenomenon of more jobs existing than people in the workforce. On the other hand, raising wages would produce inflationary pressure on everything from housing prices to food prices, which would force more people to get jobs just to survive. Not exactly what you meant, I know.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> Raising wages doesn’t create more workers, though. Of course it does. My wife doesn't work because there's nothing that particularly motivates her to work rather than doing her hobbies. If you offered her more money, it might motivate her to re-enter the work force. And if you can get 100k without a degree people who would be in college will be in the work force instead.
- runeks 5y ago
  Also, there’s less demand to buy labor for $20/hr than to buy it for $10/hr. So, all else being equal, fewer companies will demand workers if they’re more expensive, which will also reduce the deficit. That’s the theory at least.
  - guerby 5y ago
    If I follow you maximum demand to buy labor is at $0/hr. But if don't pay labor, no one is going to buy your product at the end of the day. If you pay more for labour, that's more money to spend on product and services. There's an optimum somewhere between the two. Presenting only one side is a polical statement.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Always makes me wonder when people say that about jobs in service and food sector. Isn't those people exactly the ones that spend largest part of their income on those services? So if they earned more they would be first one to spend more... And labour isn't that high percentage of costs anyway...

WFHRenaissance 5y ago

Fine, there is a shortage of cheap/affordable labor. These corps don't want wagyu...they want chicken fingers. They can't afford wagyu. Wagyu wouldn't even fit the occasion! They're not hosting a dinner party man; they're drunk in an Uber on the way home from the club.

adwn 5y ago
I think you got a little lost in that analogy...

closeparen 5y ago

It's possible that we're simply in a new world with less and more expensive stuff to buy than there was in 2019. It's still an interesting question how that came to be and whether it will last, which is what's actually explored in TFA. There is no call for subsidies.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dcow 5y ago

I’ve been trying to coach my partner (who works in retail) that companies could hire more workers tomorrow if they wanted to participate competitively in the labor market. She’s constantly stressed at work to the point of it physically affecting her wellbeing because her store is under staffed. It’s not some act of god that the store is not staffed. People didn't just disappear. It’s on her company and its management to create a successful business. It’s not on her to go the extra mile and literally harm herself to keep the store running. It’s really hard to convince people stand up for themselves when they’re used to being exploited by their employer over and over (in different ways) their entire career.

bittercynic 5y ago
Maybe I'm repeating what you've already said, but it is really harder to stand up for yourself when you're used to being exploited, and your employer is likely to take your very reasonable boundaries as contempt when they are accustomed to exploiting you. We really need to empower all kinds of front-line workers to enforce reasonable boundaries with both customers and management.
- arodyginc 5y ago
  Is it communism where workers rule, or are there any other - unknown until now - means to ensure rights for unprivileged?
  - dukeyukey 5y ago
    Not OP but the fundamental problem is workers not having enough power to ensure good working conditions. There are lots of ways they can get more power - labor shortages, unions, workplace democracy, regulations (kinda) - but you gotta fix the problem, not the symptoms of it. If managers are scared of pushing their workers too hard because they could be voted out, managers will get a lot more reasonable.

adam_arthur 5y ago

Well, right now companies have to compete with government benefits in many states. Benefits that exceed the free market wage by a significant margin in most cases. Why would companies raise wages now when they can wait a few months to see if the situation changes? People seem upset by this, but if you have a free market economy, you should anticipate that actors will work in their own best interest. Changing regulations around compensation will be much more effective versus hoping that a company will act on a specific moral principle.

throwaway743 5y ago
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/early-end-to-federal-unemployment-pay-in-26-states-not-getting-people-to-work.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/early-end-to-federal-unemplo...

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

And lower cost of living. Can't work in a place if you can't pay the cost of living there.

douglaswlance 5y ago

What do we do for the businesses that cannot support a sudden increase in labor costs?

kieselguhr_kid 5y ago
Businesses have no right to exist. If you can't pay the prevailing wage, then you don't belong in business. I know that sounds harsh but that's the reality that workers live with every day. Can't pay the prevailing rent? You have to sleep in the streets. Can't pay for medical insurance? You get to die from a treatable disease. Why should there be more consideration for businesses than there is for human beings?
- douglaswlance 5y ago
  > If you can't pay the prevailing wage, then you don't belong in business. They may be able to pay an increased wage when the rest of the economy catches. So it may be optimal for the economy as a whole to support businesses temporarily.
  - kieselguhr_kid 5y ago
    That's fine. I'm not against temporary subsidies, especially during particularly weird times. But I am frustrated by how the same people who regularly preach about how we need to let the free market work are now mewling about the wage market being too hot.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Nobody is claiming that businesses have a right to exist. Workers need jobs so that they don't end on the street and die. The concern is viable job opportunities disappearing and not being replaced. Businesses closing is an important subject to monitor because nobody wants to live in a failed economy where most of the population is unemployed and starving.
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago

dfxm12 5y ago

And the other side is to raise supply by making immigration easier. Maybe the pandemic is a good excuse to not consider this right now (I don't think it is, but it's an argument I'm at least willing to listen to), but there are a lot of people willing to work that get turned away at the border.