5 ms·

> It's not for lack of trying. Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020, and employers are offering greater flexibility in scheduling. Still, wor

> It's not for lack of trying. Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020, and employers are offering greater flexibility in scheduling. Still, workers are nowhere to be seen. 25% of minimum wage isn't much.

missedthecue 4y ago
If they were able to adequately staff two years ago, and now 25% of a pay raise later they can't, there are likely some structural issues going on.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  The structural issue is that Covid allowed for the activation energy for people to find better jobs. And possibly cut down on supply of people willing to work hotel cleaning jobs for low pay. It is probably among the least desirable work. Volatile hours, busiest times are weekends and holidays, literally cleaning up anything from bodily fluids to garbage and dealing with smells. No one outside of large unionized hotels in big cities is offering a decent salary with predictable schedule. The small franchise hotels have less than 50 employees, so they have no employer subsidized benefits either like access to 401k, public transit credits, or other tax advantaged accounts.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    Why has the workforce participation rate cratered? If people simply changed to a better job, that figure would hold steady. Instead it shows us that millions of Americans decided to stop looking for work.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I do not think it has cratered in the US. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... Just 1 percent, 63% to 62%, which could just be aging demographics since a greater and greater proportion of people in America are going to be too old to work, especially for hard labor work like cleaning hotel rooms. Also, hotels (and other low pay to quality of life at work ratio employers) were already struggling before COVID. COVID just accelerated the inevitable.
      - missedthecue 4y ago
        Look how much the workforce participation rate has varied over the last 20 years. Only a few percentage points even through massive global recessions. Small percentage changes in this statistic can easily deceive the layman into thinking it's not a big deal.
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I do not understand why a change from 63% to 62% is a sufficiently big deal to be able to claim “millions of Americans decided to stop looking for work”, especially when we know a greater and greater proportion of the population is elderly who cannot work.
        echelon 4y ago
        I would really love to see these statistics broken down by industry, salary band, age, etc.
        shagie 4y ago
        https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf Table A on page 5 has one breakdown. Table B on page 6 has employment by industry.
        acchow 4y ago
        Working age population is 207M. So 1% actually translates to millions of people (2 million)
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I admit that is technically true, but due to their use of the word “cratered”, I was reading the phrase to mean that relatively large amounts of people have decided to no longer work (outside of those who have decided to no longer work due to aging out). Of course, prices are set at the margin, and so if hotels (and other businesses like restaurants and retail) were used to paying the lowest pay to quality of life at work ratio, then I guess it would be accurate to say their problem is a couple million people decided to no longer work, because presumably a greater proportion of those who decided to no longer work would have been from these least desirable to work in businesses.
    - c4ptnjack 4y ago
      It has actually rebounded to 1 percent less than it was prepandemic, and health risks were legitimate reasons for people to not work for a period. Really it shows since 2002 the rate has gone down fairly consistently, show overtime it's worth less and less to work. The main factor in choosing a job is pay in the end and that's also the main variable when choosing to work or not imo. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
    - shagie 4y ago
      Some portion retired. https://wapo.st/3VgOxf8 https://wapo.st/3VgOxf8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2022/03/03/are-boomers-the-answer-to-the-great-resignation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2022/03/03/are-boom... Another portion is no longer able to work those jobs (especially service sector jobs where one is required to show up for a shift or get fired). New data shows long Covid is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work - https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-data-shows-long-covid-is-keeping-as-many-as-4-million-people-out-of-work/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-data-shows-long-covid... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf > The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job was little changed at 5.6 million in November and remains above its February 2020 level of 5.0 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. > Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of persons marginally attached to the labor force held at 1.5 million in November. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, was 405,000 in November, little changed from the previous month. (See Summary table A.)
    - rurp 4y ago
      Yes several million workers died, retired early, or weren't allowed to immigrate to the US.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        >or weren't allowed to immigrate to the US. Which is exactly as it should be. ~Half the country doesn't want them. If that results in hotel stays being absurdly expensive (or perhaps changing laws so that hotel rooms don't need to be cleaned between guests), then so be it. America is democratic, and the people have spoken, so now let them suffer the consequences.
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        > or perhaps changing laws so that hotel rooms don't need to be cleaned between guests I do not think there are any laws requiring this. It probably just has not been price competitive enough to hand a customer the housekeeping cart at check in.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  The primary structural issue is that low-income wages have completely stagnated if not fallen with the inflation over the last several decades while wages for mid-upper to ultrawealthy have gone up, dramatically. The number of places in the US that you can get a 2BR home, rental or owning, on minimum wage is basically non-existent. We're on the verge of large swaths of the US population effectively becoming serfs. Housing is being snapped up by corporations, banks are jacking their fees and making more and more people "unbankable" forcing them into non-bank situations like payroll-company-run quasi-debit-cards where withdrawing their wages costs money. Consider this: Elon Musk at peak of his wealth had more money than all the residents of Massachusetts (itself quite a wealthy state) combined, by a significant margin. We're at a stage where we have what amounts to feudal lords in all but name, complete with their own private security forces going around roughing up people.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    >Consider this: Elon Musk at peak of his wealth had more money than all the residents of Massachusetts (itself quite a wealthy state) combined, by a significant margin. There is no way this is anywhere near true. The list below alone is probably $100B, and there are 7M people in Massachusetts, including many with net worths in the millions. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/these-are-the-16-richest-people-living-in-massachusetts-forbes-says/2510093/ https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/these-are-the-16-riches...
    - TylerE 4y ago
      Lots of people with zero or even negative net worths too
  - cmdli 4y ago
    > The primary structural issue is that low-income wages have completely stagnated if not fallen with the inflation over the last several decades while wages for mid-upper to ultrawealthy have gone up, dramatically. This is statistically untrue, though a very popular misconception. Median wages have increased slightly after adjusting for inflation over the past few decades [1]. Minimum wage has wavered a bit since then, but most people are not employed at the federal minimum wage [2]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Structural issues are basically the rise of AirBNB - hotels with far less regulation / staff coverage. Now probably 99% of that regulation provided real tangible benefits to the customer and or the staff. I mean if suddenly a competitor arrives in your industry selling the same product, with near zero marginal costs, and half the time they cannot price correctly and are happy to see "any" income there might be issues for your industry. Edit: oh Ok - structural in the supply of labour. In the UK that is hugely labelled Brexit, but it is interesting to see a problem elsewhere - As others say Covid shock is most likely as people re-evaluate what they are willing to tolerate.
Gigachad 4y ago
There are other limits they are pushing against. I haven't used a hotel for a while now because it just costs more than I can afford. They can put their wages up higher but if it starts cutting in to their sales it's an issue.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  Friendly reminder that while businesses are screaming blue-bloody murder about inflation hurting them supposedly because of rising fuel/labor costs, corporate profits have gone up more than forty percent after adjusting for inflation. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/inflation-hasnt-been-bad-for-everyone-companies-are-producing-outsized-profits-11661455321 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/inflation-hasnt-been-bad-f... https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/ https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-... etc The Fed is hard-selling a lie that inflation is due to supposedly skyrocketing labor costs and low unemployment. It's not. It's the ultra-wealthy jacking prices, squeezing the shit out of their workforces, converting everyone they can to "gig" or "contract" workers, and cheapening their services and products like they're trying to get blood out of a stone. The pandemic caused a stunning jump in concentration of wealth. That's why we have historic numbers of open job positions. The jobs are there, but people don't want them because a)the pay and benefits have been squeezed down to the barest minimums b)the conditions suck c)employers are exceedingly demanding in terms of qualifications. A perfect example would be the status quo in IT and development. Everyone and their mother and cousin wants to hire a Senior DevOps engineer with three pages worth of skills and two decades of engineering or development skills. Forget "ground floor" opportunities, companies aren't even interested in offering 2nd or 3rd floor opportunities, like bringing in traditional IT infrastructure folks and training them in the transition to cloud-based stuff and devops methodologies. Go pop open Indeed and surf a bunch of low-level support positions and look at the CVS-receipt-length list of required skills/technologies and the huge list of responsibilities for a position that probably pays $40k in a lower income rural area to $60k if you're lucky in one of the higher COL metropolitan markets.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
If they go higher no one can afford to stay.
nitwit005 4y ago
Particularly as a lot of that is just keeping up with inflation. Many industries seem to prefer going bankrupt than pay their lowest level employees well.
- Aerroon 4y ago
  If entire industries are going bankrupt then it indicates that the service they provide is not economically feasible. The end result is that consumers just have less choice due to reduced services.
  - nitwit005 4y ago
    To be clear, I mean they could make it work, they just won't do it for cultural reasons. Perfectly happy to pay management and consultants well, but unwilling to even consider it for the rank and file. Some studies on minimum wage increases have compared businesses across state lines, where one state has increased the minimum and the other has not. At least some of the time, the increase appears to benefit businesses, as they had high employee turnover, and hiring does cost money.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      The situation is self resolving though. Either they pay more, or they become unable to deliver the service. Since the companies can’t force people to work there, it’s out of their hands.
  - supertrope 4y ago
    Or it’s just a correction following a long boom. Full service, discount pricing, ubiquitous availability, and 10% CAGR in new locations can’t go on forever.
- narrator 4y ago
  The fed by raising rates is trying to clean out these low-margin businesses by making them less attractive to investors. This means they will fire workers and stop buying goods which is supposed to bring down inflation. Think about it, in the current environment, the choice becomes: 1. Invest in a low margin business or 2. just call it a day and buy Treasury bills at historically high interest rates and make a guaranteed state tax free return without having to work.

missedthecue 4y ago

If they were able to adequately staff two years ago, and now 25% of a pay raise later they can't, there are likely some structural issues going on.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
The structural issue is that Covid allowed for the activation energy for people to find better jobs. And possibly cut down on supply of people willing to work hotel cleaning jobs for low pay. It is probably among the least desirable work. Volatile hours, busiest times are weekends and holidays, literally cleaning up anything from bodily fluids to garbage and dealing with smells. No one outside of large unionized hotels in big cities is offering a decent salary with predictable schedule. The small franchise hotels have less than 50 employees, so they have no employer subsidized benefits either like access to 401k, public transit credits, or other tax advantaged accounts.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  Why has the workforce participation rate cratered? If people simply changed to a better job, that figure would hold steady. Instead it shows us that millions of Americans decided to stop looking for work.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I do not think it has cratered in the US. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... Just 1 percent, 63% to 62%, which could just be aging demographics since a greater and greater proportion of people in America are going to be too old to work, especially for hard labor work like cleaning hotel rooms. Also, hotels (and other low pay to quality of life at work ratio employers) were already struggling before COVID. COVID just accelerated the inevitable.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      Look how much the workforce participation rate has varied over the last 20 years. Only a few percentage points even through massive global recessions. Small percentage changes in this statistic can easily deceive the layman into thinking it's not a big deal.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I do not understand why a change from 63% to 62% is a sufficiently big deal to be able to claim “millions of Americans decided to stop looking for work”, especially when we know a greater and greater proportion of the population is elderly who cannot work.
        echelon 4y ago
        I would really love to see these statistics broken down by industry, salary band, age, etc.
        shagie 4y ago
        https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf Table A on page 5 has one breakdown. Table B on page 6 has employment by industry.
        acchow 4y ago
        Working age population is 207M. So 1% actually translates to millions of people (2 million)
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I admit that is technically true, but due to their use of the word “cratered”, I was reading the phrase to mean that relatively large amounts of people have decided to no longer work (outside of those who have decided to no longer work due to aging out). Of course, prices are set at the margin, and so if hotels (and other businesses like restaurants and retail) were used to paying the lowest pay to quality of life at work ratio, then I guess it would be accurate to say their problem is a couple million people decided to no longer work, because presumably a greater proportion of those who decided to no longer work would have been from these least desirable to work in businesses.
  - c4ptnjack 4y ago
    It has actually rebounded to 1 percent less than it was prepandemic, and health risks were legitimate reasons for people to not work for a period. Really it shows since 2002 the rate has gone down fairly consistently, show overtime it's worth less and less to work. The main factor in choosing a job is pay in the end and that's also the main variable when choosing to work or not imo. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
  - shagie 4y ago
    Some portion retired. https://wapo.st/3VgOxf8 https://wapo.st/3VgOxf8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2022/03/03/are-boomers-the-answer-to-the-great-resignation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2022/03/03/are-boom... Another portion is no longer able to work those jobs (especially service sector jobs where one is required to show up for a shift or get fired). New data shows long Covid is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work - https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-data-shows-long-covid-is-keeping-as-many-as-4-million-people-out-of-work/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-data-shows-long-covid... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf > The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job was little changed at 5.6 million in November and remains above its February 2020 level of 5.0 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. > Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of persons marginally attached to the labor force held at 1.5 million in November. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, was 405,000 in November, little changed from the previous month. (See Summary table A.)
  - rurp 4y ago
    Yes several million workers died, retired early, or weren't allowed to immigrate to the US.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >or weren't allowed to immigrate to the US. Which is exactly as it should be. ~Half the country doesn't want them. If that results in hotel stays being absurdly expensive (or perhaps changing laws so that hotel rooms don't need to be cleaned between guests), then so be it. America is democratic, and the people have spoken, so now let them suffer the consequences.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        > or perhaps changing laws so that hotel rooms don't need to be cleaned between guests I do not think there are any laws requiring this. It probably just has not been price competitive enough to hand a customer the housekeeping cart at check in.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
The primary structural issue is that low-income wages have completely stagnated if not fallen with the inflation over the last several decades while wages for mid-upper to ultrawealthy have gone up, dramatically. The number of places in the US that you can get a 2BR home, rental or owning, on minimum wage is basically non-existent. We're on the verge of large swaths of the US population effectively becoming serfs. Housing is being snapped up by corporations, banks are jacking their fees and making more and more people "unbankable" forcing them into non-bank situations like payroll-company-run quasi-debit-cards where withdrawing their wages costs money. Consider this: Elon Musk at peak of his wealth had more money than all the residents of Massachusetts (itself quite a wealthy state) combined, by a significant margin. We're at a stage where we have what amounts to feudal lords in all but name, complete with their own private security forces going around roughing up people.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >Consider this: Elon Musk at peak of his wealth had more money than all the residents of Massachusetts (itself quite a wealthy state) combined, by a significant margin. There is no way this is anywhere near true. The list below alone is probably $100B, and there are 7M people in Massachusetts, including many with net worths in the millions. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/these-are-the-16-richest-people-living-in-massachusetts-forbes-says/2510093/ https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/these-are-the-16-riches...
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Lots of people with zero or even negative net worths too
- cmdli 4y ago
  > The primary structural issue is that low-income wages have completely stagnated if not fallen with the inflation over the last several decades while wages for mid-upper to ultrawealthy have gone up, dramatically. This is statistically untrue, though a very popular misconception. Median wages have increased slightly after adjusting for inflation over the past few decades [1]. Minimum wage has wavered a bit since then, but most people are not employed at the federal minimum wage [2]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
Structural issues are basically the rise of AirBNB - hotels with far less regulation / staff coverage. Now probably 99% of that regulation provided real tangible benefits to the customer and or the staff. I mean if suddenly a competitor arrives in your industry selling the same product, with near zero marginal costs, and half the time they cannot price correctly and are happy to see "any" income there might be issues for your industry. Edit: oh Ok - structural in the supply of labour. In the UK that is hugely labelled Brexit, but it is interesting to see a problem elsewhere - As others say Covid shock is most likely as people re-evaluate what they are willing to tolerate.

Gigachad 4y ago

There are other limits they are pushing against. I haven't used a hotel for a while now because it just costs more than I can afford. They can put their wages up higher but if it starts cutting in to their sales it's an issue.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
Friendly reminder that while businesses are screaming blue-bloody murder about inflation hurting them supposedly because of rising fuel/labor costs, corporate profits have gone up more than forty percent after adjusting for inflation. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/inflation-hasnt-been-bad-for-everyone-companies-are-producing-outsized-profits-11661455321 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/inflation-hasnt-been-bad-f... https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/ https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-... etc The Fed is hard-selling a lie that inflation is due to supposedly skyrocketing labor costs and low unemployment. It's not. It's the ultra-wealthy jacking prices, squeezing the shit out of their workforces, converting everyone they can to "gig" or "contract" workers, and cheapening their services and products like they're trying to get blood out of a stone. The pandemic caused a stunning jump in concentration of wealth. That's why we have historic numbers of open job positions. The jobs are there, but people don't want them because a)the pay and benefits have been squeezed down to the barest minimums b)the conditions suck c)employers are exceedingly demanding in terms of qualifications. A perfect example would be the status quo in IT and development. Everyone and their mother and cousin wants to hire a Senior DevOps engineer with three pages worth of skills and two decades of engineering or development skills. Forget "ground floor" opportunities, companies aren't even interested in offering 2nd or 3rd floor opportunities, like bringing in traditional IT infrastructure folks and training them in the transition to cloud-based stuff and devops methodologies. Go pop open Indeed and surf a bunch of low-level support positions and look at the CVS-receipt-length list of required skills/technologies and the huge list of responsibilities for a position that probably pays $40k in a lower income rural area to $60k if you're lucky in one of the higher COL metropolitan markets.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

If they go higher no one can afford to stay.

nitwit005 4y ago

Particularly as a lot of that is just keeping up with inflation. Many industries seem to prefer going bankrupt than pay their lowest level employees well.

Aerroon 4y ago
If entire industries are going bankrupt then it indicates that the service they provide is not economically feasible. The end result is that consumers just have less choice due to reduced services.
- nitwit005 4y ago
  To be clear, I mean they could make it work, they just won't do it for cultural reasons. Perfectly happy to pay management and consultants well, but unwilling to even consider it for the rank and file. Some studies on minimum wage increases have compared businesses across state lines, where one state has increased the minimum and the other has not. At least some of the time, the increase appears to benefit businesses, as they had high employee turnover, and hiring does cost money.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The situation is self resolving though. Either they pay more, or they become unable to deliver the service. Since the companies can’t force people to work there, it’s out of their hands.
- supertrope 4y ago
  Or it’s just a correction following a long boom. Full service, discount pricing, ubiquitous availability, and 10% CAGR in new locations can’t go on forever.
narrator 4y ago
The fed by raising rates is trying to clean out these low-margin businesses by making them less attractive to investors. This means they will fire workers and stop buying goods which is supposed to bring down inflation. Think about it, in the current environment, the choice becomes: 1. Invest in a low margin business or 2. just call it a day and buy Treasury bills at historically high interest rates and make a guaranteed state tax free return without having to work.