10 ms·

Turning the Labor Shortage Up to 11

45 points by cinquemb 5y ago

maerF0x0 5y ago
Also worth thinking through all who benefit from a "labor shortage" 1. Those who would want to import cheaper labor from abroad or export the jobs to there. 2. Those who would want evidence they can deny social safety net claims ("oh yeah, you couldnt find a job? but there's a labor shortage") 3. Those who would want to sell all kinds of expensive and unneeded things -- like degrees . 4. companies who are shit at customer service, but now have an excuse as to why It's hard not to be ignorant when it's so profitable.
- memonkey 5y ago
  Good points and I hope this puts a renewed flame under the ass of the labor movement.
- p2t2p 5y ago
  > companies who are shit at customer service We call it "customer shortage" now.
1680168l 5y ago
Hard to call it a "labor shortage" when companies large and small are firing 10% of staff for refusing to get vaccinated. But, alas, hypocrites abound.
garbagecoder 5y ago
>labor shortage Suddenly corporate America forgot all about the supply and demand laws they claim should rule us.
- SllX 5y ago
  They haven’t. But if labor is already one of your biggest costs, increasing compensation will also mean increasing prices. If you increase your prices, then all the rational thinking in the world isn’t going to save you if your customers don’t think it’s worth the price you’re asking because they’re not thinking in terms of inflation versus a year or ten years ago, they’re thinking in terms of the number in front of them versus what they’ve paid in the past and what’s in their bank accounts right now.
  - foerbert 5y ago
    Only if the company is barely hanging on as is. If they're profitable, they still have room to increase wages. There is no law out there saying a company has to make as much or more money this year than last year.
    - SllX 5y ago
      Increased labor costs without the headroom to raise prices is more likely to kill small and medium sized businesses, read: most businesses. Even if it doesn’t make them profitless, it’s the same result of the owners decide what they take home at the end of the year is no longer worth their time, shut down or sell (so now the employees are out their jobs) and take a W2 salary for themselves somewhere else. The market won’t care, we’ll just further consolidate under fewer corporate banners and move on with our lives. I mean I like having a diverse array of businesses to choose from, but maybe you feel differently?
      - foerbert 5y ago
        I don't think this reduces down that far. That's part of it, but it's not all of it. Even if this is true, why is it true? Why are these businesses getting so much less return per employee? Is the only solution to sacrifice wages? Is it worth sacrificing wages for everybody? We can't just declare a thing presumably bad for smaller businesses and then say end of discussion, there's nothing else worth considering here.
        SllX 5y ago
        Because most businesses are low margin, and they’re low margin because of basic supply and demand in a competitive business environment. Some places might get away with charging novelty prices for stupid crap, but the coffee shop that charges $10 for a cappuccino and passes the extra margins to their employees is going to receive fewer customers than the place that charges $3 and produces a roughly equivalent cappuccino. Maybe it’s not as good, but is the other one really $7 better? You can demand higher employee compensation all you like, but customers will be the ones paying for it, as they pay for all costs that the business incurs (if the owners want to stay in business anyway).
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Well, considering you didn’t have to pay rent for the last 15 months and you were getting $1200 more per month for not working it’s no wonder plenty of people decided to not work anymore. UBI was tried the last year and I think it mainly failed.
  - garbagecoder 5y ago
    What does increasing wages have to do with free money? Are you suggesting we should work for free? Earning money is entirely different. And I paid my mortgage every month. No break for us.
    - nemo44x 5y ago
      Just arguing that many (not all) people aren’t choosing not to work because the pay isn’t good enough but rather that because they can’t be evicted while also receiving an additional $1200/month on top of various stimulus checks. So we should get rid of those things first before we make the argument wages need to be lifted to incentivize people to work.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rossipedia 5y ago
> labor shortage that's a funny way of spelling "wage"
- x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
  Try reading the article before commenting.
dragontamer 5y ago
With baby boomers retiring in mass numbers, the argument that pop ratio to employment is null and void. We have more people at retirement age than ever before.
- evancox100 5y ago
  It's "working age population" for a reason
- xpe 5y ago
  > With baby boomers retiring in mass numbers, the argument that pop ratio to employment is null and void. That isn't a complete sentence -- I am not following. Can you restate it? What argument do you disagree with?
cletus 5y ago
It's no secret that real wages have remained stagnant for most people for over 40 years [1]. I'm of the school of thought that believes that we're at real risk of creating a permanent ruling class and a permanent working class by virtue of massive amounts of inherited wealth. This is what an aristocracy and serfdom looks like. What fascinating to me is how history repeats itself. In the 14th century, the Black Plague devastated Europe. It's impossible to know but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that as much as HALF the population was killed. This created a massive labour shortage after the plague passed, which ironically was a huge boon for workers rights, so much so that King Edward III tried to regulate worker wages in an effort to stop "gouging" [2]. Like pretty much all attempts at price-controls it failed. So here we are almost 700 years later in a pandemic and we may be seeing the first increase in real wages in 40+ years. As an aside, it's so bizarre to me how many ordinary people will jump to the defense of billionaires when it comes to estate taxes. What I think many such people don't seem to understand is that wealth will ultimately get redistributed one way or another. The ultimate forms of wealth distribution are revolution and war and that's really in nobody's best interests. It's actually good for everyone if the masses aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck. [1]: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45090.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45090.pdf [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351
- cinquemb 5y ago
  > In the 14th century, the Black Plague devastated Europe. It's impossible to know but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that as much as HALF the population was killed. If all the variants are to completely overwhelm all the vaccines and treatments (that did not exist then) to render them all ineffective and create this devastation over the next 100 years, time will only tell if half the world will be killed. As of now, we are pretty far from that (but most of the century from the first cases has yet to play out). > wealth will ultimately get redistributed one way or another. I agree with what you are saying. > The ultimate forms of wealth distribution are revolution and war and that's really in nobody's best interests. I don't necessarily disagree, but is there some kind of shared "best interests" concept that everyone agrees on here that would make the "nobody" true? Are we excluding those who enable war (even to varying degrees) without taking on the higher risk of such (higher share of future resources from those who no longer are around to compete for such, by getting others to take on the higher risk of not being around for such future resources instead of one themselves)? > It's actually good for everyone if the masses aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck. This will be largely bounded by whether any given society has enough resources at its disposal to offer an "acceptable" standard of living, the resources to allocate such standard without squandering it between its intended destination, and the choices individual actors make with the current varying resources they have their disposal (not strictly bounded by the physical, but also by those intangible like "knowledge" of cheaper resource allocation in adverse environments).
908B64B197 5y ago
They should stop the whining. Just hire a bunch of Stanford grads and innovate. https://cafexapp.com/ https://cafexapp.com/ https://misorobotics.com/ https://misorobotics.com/
indymike 5y ago
I'm a founder at a company that supplies top of the funnel recruiting automation software that is used mostly in high volume recruiting. We've spend the last year moving people out of restaurant and bad retail jobs (there are still some good players there) to much better paying jobs. Everything from logistics, to tech, to healthcare. This labor shortage is really not a shortage, it's an overabundance of business that were relying on the availability of underpaid labor to make profits. Restaurants and retail are really the poster-children for this. Everything from re-shoring of manufacturing, the rise of the gig economy, to the shift to ecommerce have created a ton of much better paying jobs. This trend started in 2016, and by 2019 was in full force. When COVID hit the extended benefits reduced the supply of labor. I'm really happy to see working-class people start to get paid better. It's really the best for everyone. Now we just need to figure out how to get less money spent on buildings and more on teachers and we might just be on to something.
- cudgy 5y ago
  “We've spend the last year moving people out of restaurant and bad retail jobs (there are still some good players there) to much better paying jobs. Everything from logistics, to tech, to healthcare.” Does your company provide training for these jobs? The comment implies that your company actively moves people from lower wage to high wage. Or are you filling positions with recent college or vocational school graduates?
  - indymike 5y ago
    > Does your company provide training for these jobs? The comment implies that your company actively moves people from lower wage to high wage. Or are you filling positions with recent college or vocational school graduates? No. Employer supplies training, and it's all paid, full wage training. Welcome to what an employee's market looks like.

45 points by cinquemb 5y ago

Also worth thinking through all who benefit from a "labor shortage" 1. Those who would want to import cheaper labor from abroad or export the jobs to there. 2. Those who would want evidence they can deny social safety net claims ("oh yeah, you couldnt find a job? but there's a labor shortage") 3. Those who would want to sell all kinds of expensive and unneeded things -- like degrees . 4. companies who are shit at customer service, but now have an excuse as to why It's hard not to be ignorant when it's so profitable.

memonkey 5y ago
Good points and I hope this puts a renewed flame under the ass of the labor movement.
p2t2p 5y ago
> companies who are shit at customer service We call it "customer shortage" now.

1680168l 5y ago

Hard to call it a "labor shortage" when companies large and small are firing 10% of staff for refusing to get vaccinated. But, alas, hypocrites abound.

garbagecoder 5y ago

>labor shortage Suddenly corporate America forgot all about the supply and demand laws they claim should rule us.

SllX 5y ago
They haven’t. But if labor is already one of your biggest costs, increasing compensation will also mean increasing prices. If you increase your prices, then all the rational thinking in the world isn’t going to save you if your customers don’t think it’s worth the price you’re asking because they’re not thinking in terms of inflation versus a year or ten years ago, they’re thinking in terms of the number in front of them versus what they’ve paid in the past and what’s in their bank accounts right now.
- foerbert 5y ago
  Only if the company is barely hanging on as is. If they're profitable, they still have room to increase wages. There is no law out there saying a company has to make as much or more money this year than last year.
  - SllX 5y ago
    Increased labor costs without the headroom to raise prices is more likely to kill small and medium sized businesses, read: most businesses. Even if it doesn’t make them profitless, it’s the same result of the owners decide what they take home at the end of the year is no longer worth their time, shut down or sell (so now the employees are out their jobs) and take a W2 salary for themselves somewhere else. The market won’t care, we’ll just further consolidate under fewer corporate banners and move on with our lives. I mean I like having a diverse array of businesses to choose from, but maybe you feel differently?
    - foerbert 5y ago
      I don't think this reduces down that far. That's part of it, but it's not all of it. Even if this is true, why is it true? Why are these businesses getting so much less return per employee? Is the only solution to sacrifice wages? Is it worth sacrificing wages for everybody? We can't just declare a thing presumably bad for smaller businesses and then say end of discussion, there's nothing else worth considering here.
      - SllX 5y ago
        Because most businesses are low margin, and they’re low margin because of basic supply and demand in a competitive business environment. Some places might get away with charging novelty prices for stupid crap, but the coffee shop that charges $10 for a cappuccino and passes the extra margins to their employees is going to receive fewer customers than the place that charges $3 and produces a roughly equivalent cappuccino. Maybe it’s not as good, but is the other one really $7 better? You can demand higher employee compensation all you like, but customers will be the ones paying for it, as they pay for all costs that the business incurs (if the owners want to stay in business anyway).
nemo44x 5y ago
Well, considering you didn’t have to pay rent for the last 15 months and you were getting $1200 more per month for not working it’s no wonder plenty of people decided to not work anymore. UBI was tried the last year and I think it mainly failed.
- garbagecoder 5y ago
  What does increasing wages have to do with free money? Are you suggesting we should work for free? Earning money is entirely different. And I paid my mortgage every month. No break for us.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    Just arguing that many (not all) people aren’t choosing not to work because the pay isn’t good enough but rather that because they can’t be evicted while also receiving an additional $1200/month on top of various stimulus checks. So we should get rid of those things first before we make the argument wages need to be lifted to incentivize people to work.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rossipedia 5y ago

> labor shortage that's a funny way of spelling "wage"

x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
Try reading the article before commenting.

dragontamer 5y ago

With baby boomers retiring in mass numbers, the argument that pop ratio to employment is null and void. We have more people at retirement age than ever before.

evancox100 5y ago
It's "working age population" for a reason
xpe 5y ago
> With baby boomers retiring in mass numbers, the argument that pop ratio to employment is null and void. That isn't a complete sentence -- I am not following. Can you restate it? What argument do you disagree with?

cletus 5y ago

It's no secret that real wages have remained stagnant for most people for over 40 years [1]. I'm of the school of thought that believes that we're at real risk of creating a permanent ruling class and a permanent working class by virtue of massive amounts of inherited wealth. This is what an aristocracy and serfdom looks like. What fascinating to me is how history repeats itself. In the 14th century, the Black Plague devastated Europe. It's impossible to know but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that as much as HALF the population was killed. This created a massive labour shortage after the plague passed, which ironically was a huge boon for workers rights, so much so that King Edward III tried to regulate worker wages in an effort to stop "gouging" [2]. Like pretty much all attempts at price-controls it failed. So here we are almost 700 years later in a pandemic and we may be seeing the first increase in real wages in 40+ years. As an aside, it's so bizarre to me how many ordinary people will jump to the defense of billionaires when it comes to estate taxes. What I think many such people don't seem to understand is that wealth will ultimately get redistributed one way or another. The ultimate forms of wealth distribution are revolution and war and that's really in nobody's best interests. It's actually good for everyone if the masses aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck. [1]: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45090.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45090.pdf [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351

cinquemb 5y ago
> In the 14th century, the Black Plague devastated Europe. It's impossible to know but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that as much as HALF the population was killed. If all the variants are to completely overwhelm all the vaccines and treatments (that did not exist then) to render them all ineffective and create this devastation over the next 100 years, time will only tell if half the world will be killed. As of now, we are pretty far from that (but most of the century from the first cases has yet to play out). > wealth will ultimately get redistributed one way or another. I agree with what you are saying. > The ultimate forms of wealth distribution are revolution and war and that's really in nobody's best interests. I don't necessarily disagree, but is there some kind of shared "best interests" concept that everyone agrees on here that would make the "nobody" true? Are we excluding those who enable war (even to varying degrees) without taking on the higher risk of such (higher share of future resources from those who no longer are around to compete for such, by getting others to take on the higher risk of not being around for such future resources instead of one themselves)? > It's actually good for everyone if the masses aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck. This will be largely bounded by whether any given society has enough resources at its disposal to offer an "acceptable" standard of living, the resources to allocate such standard without squandering it between its intended destination, and the choices individual actors make with the current varying resources they have their disposal (not strictly bounded by the physical, but also by those intangible like "knowledge" of cheaper resource allocation in adverse environments).

908B64B197 5y ago

They should stop the whining. Just hire a bunch of Stanford grads and innovate. https://cafexapp.com/ https://cafexapp.com/ https://misorobotics.com/ https://misorobotics.com/

indymike 5y ago

I'm a founder at a company that supplies top of the funnel recruiting automation software that is used mostly in high volume recruiting. We've spend the last year moving people out of restaurant and bad retail jobs (there are still some good players there) to much better paying jobs. Everything from logistics, to tech, to healthcare. This labor shortage is really not a shortage, it's an overabundance of business that were relying on the availability of underpaid labor to make profits. Restaurants and retail are really the poster-children for this. Everything from re-shoring of manufacturing, the rise of the gig economy, to the shift to ecommerce have created a ton of much better paying jobs. This trend started in 2016, and by 2019 was in full force. When COVID hit the extended benefits reduced the supply of labor. I'm really happy to see working-class people start to get paid better. It's really the best for everyone. Now we just need to figure out how to get less money spent on buildings and more on teachers and we might just be on to something.

cudgy 5y ago
“We've spend the last year moving people out of restaurant and bad retail jobs (there are still some good players there) to much better paying jobs. Everything from logistics, to tech, to healthcare.” Does your company provide training for these jobs? The comment implies that your company actively moves people from lower wage to high wage. Or are you filling positions with recent college or vocational school graduates?
- indymike 5y ago
  > Does your company provide training for these jobs? The comment implies that your company actively moves people from lower wage to high wage. Or are you filling positions with recent college or vocational school graduates? No. Employer supplies training, and it's all paid, full wage training. Welcome to what an employee's market looks like.