3 ms·

I'm not sure there's much of a phenomenon begging for explanation. As the article itself says, this is a more of a great reshuffling than people just deciding n

I'm not sure there's much of a phenomenon begging for explanation. As the article itself says, this is a more of a great reshuffling than people just deciding not to work any more and mysteriously managing to not go broke. US labor force participation was 63.4% immediately before the pandemic shut down and it's 62.1% right now. That isn't a drastic difference and roughly in line with long-term downward trends. Whatever excess drop that truly represents is likely explained by some combination of excess deaths, early retirements, and second income-earners that didn't really "need" to work but either did so anyway because it was sufficiently worth it or they had nothing else worth doing, and they changed their minds. You're not going to find out the exact breakdown with a self-selected sample of a few hundred Hacker News readers. As for an explanation of why churn rates went up so much (that is, people are quitting jobs at a much higher rate even if they largely are not completely leaving the workforce), that seems pretty easily explained by the move to remote work. I'm not meeting your criteria here because I didn't change industries, but as soon as it became possible to work for a Silicon Valley software company paying much higher rates than any local company without being required to relocate, I absolutely did that. Labor has far more options now that they aren't limited to only working for companies with an office within commuting distance.

bluedino 4y ago
> labor force participation was 63.4% immediately before the pandemic shut down and it's 62.1% right now. How is that possible when it seems like every place is hiring? It's obvious that retail/restaurants are short-handed, but every manufacturing company in town is hiring. Every week there are articles in the news talking with business owners about how hard it is to find people, people accept the job and don't start, they quit after two days...
- clusterhacks 4y ago
  In my area of the US, I have a suspicion that undocumented workers left the area during the pandemic. But it is just anecdotal observation - I don't have an special source of data to support that. Lots of "heard a story from a friend" and just noticing how easy it is for high school students to get jobs almost immediately versus 2018-2019. Around here, 16-year olds are walking into food service/retail and working the next day . . . A few years prior to the pandemic, my brother shared a story from the medium-sized manufacturing company he worked at. A rumor started that an "ICE raid" was going to occur sometime during the week. Something like 1/2 to 2/3 of the factory workers didn't show for work over the next couple of days. Even assuming it was less impact than that, it seems to say that a significant number of factory floor workers were in some kind of position that caused them to fear ICE. I am . . . bearish . . . on trusting news articles about this topic. There are just so many incentives to shape articles to get clicks . . .

bluedino 4y ago

> labor force participation was 63.4% immediately before the pandemic shut down and it's 62.1% right now. How is that possible when it seems like every place is hiring? It's obvious that retail/restaurants are short-handed, but every manufacturing company in town is hiring. Every week there are articles in the news talking with business owners about how hard it is to find people, people accept the job and don't start, they quit after two days...

clusterhacks 4y ago
In my area of the US, I have a suspicion that undocumented workers left the area during the pandemic. But it is just anecdotal observation - I don't have an special source of data to support that. Lots of "heard a story from a friend" and just noticing how easy it is for high school students to get jobs almost immediately versus 2018-2019. Around here, 16-year olds are walking into food service/retail and working the next day . . . A few years prior to the pandemic, my brother shared a story from the medium-sized manufacturing company he worked at. A rumor started that an "ICE raid" was going to occur sometime during the week. Something like 1/2 to 2/3 of the factory workers didn't show for work over the next couple of days. Even assuming it was less impact than that, it seems to say that a significant number of factory floor workers were in some kind of position that caused them to fear ICE. I am . . . bearish . . . on trusting news articles about this topic. There are just so many incentives to shape articles to get clicks . . .