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>the biggest labour shortages have been in basic service jobs. yes, yes this is true. theyre all either dead or done. we spent decades forcing them to work f

>the biggest labour shortages have been in basic service jobs. yes, yes this is true. theyre all either dead or done. we spent decades forcing them to work for tips and bare minimum wage, fighting dirty to keep them out of unions and spending millions to avoid paying them a living wage, and in the last two years the straw that broke the camels back was demanding they put their lives at risk slinging chili's baby back ribs with no health insurance or paid time off during a pandemic where they also have to play covid police to largely ungrateful customers. when the time came for raises bonuses and benefits, we threw together about three months of service-sector hero porn, televised ads golf clapping the dwindling masses of exhausted underpaid slaves for their "Sacrifice" as we laud them for their heroic efforts to rack up back-pay rent debt theyll have to service the minute the government decides covids over because its too expensive. so yeah we're all out of people willing to do this kind of work because it sucks, and the economist cant seem to figure out why nobody wants this fresh new hell anymore.

dv_dt 4y ago
That and jobs for some people, even min wage jobs can be sticky. If you're just making it, it can be hard to break the routine and give up money from hourly pay to make time to look for a new job - even if its a better job. So with covid, people saw the blatant lack of safety net that they were living with and many got kicked out of work anyway, I think some managed to move up and out of t he worst jobs.
cookie_monsta 4y ago
There definitely seems to be a lack of analysis about this. I flew back into Australia recently and we had to wait ~ 2 hrs for our luggage to come off the plane because there weren't enough baggage handlers to cope with the volume. The representative who came around and explained this to everybody waiting at the conveyor belt seemed genuinely confused by the fact that they were unable to hire people to do this work, despite the fact that this very industry has been in the media for months/years now, with reports of poor conditions, strikes, exploitatative outsourcing, etc
- flandish 4y ago
  Oh there’s plenty of analysis. What you witnessed was marketing .. cognitive dissidence at the corp level pushed down to the lowest as “gee we are trying to hire!” Pay more. Get more. That is the only solution. Strikes also help. Well. Unless you are american and your president makes it illegal to strike. (Railroad workers, most recently.)
nonethewiser 4y ago
While true I dont see these employers as evil. I think the reality is that small businesses are dying. Some industries are labor intensive. If labor prices exceed a certain level, these business go under. It's not some shill for businesses. It's happened to entire industries. There needs to be some happy balance between affordable prices and affordable labor.
- u801e 4y ago
  According to this source[1], the labor cost for a restaurant is 20% to 30% of gross revenue. If a restaurant decided to double the pay for their employees, then their costs would go up by 50% (25% * 2). If they increase their prices by 50% and customers still provide them business, then they won't go under. If for instance, a meal costs around $25 today, then they would have to increase the price to $37 (or a $12 increase). Looking at one regular dish I get at a chain restaurant, I've seen its price increase from $23 to $32 in in the last year. I still eat there about as frequently as I used to. Would I still get it if it was $34.50 assuming the same labor cost? I most likely still would. On the other hand, if the restaurant decides not to increase pay and has trouble with staffing, along with increase wait times, errors in fulfilling the order, food not prepared well, then I most likely won't eat there as often, if at all. [1] https://www.lightspeedhq.com/blog/labor-cost-guidelines-restaurant/ https://www.lightspeedhq.com/blog/labor-cost-guidelines-rest...
  - chongli 4y ago
    Restaurants are notorious for being among the most difficult small businesses to keep afloat. Unless you’re a big fast food franchisee, you were lucky to make it through COVID without going under. I can’t tell you how many local family-owned and operated restaurants disappeared in my area alone during COVID. At the same time, McDonald’s and Starbucks were busier than ever cranking out orders for Uber Eats. The biggest cost for small restaurants is rent. During COVID all of their dine-in traffic disappeared. At the same time, they got zero breaks on their rent so they ended up paying out the nose and getting nothing for their money. They could’ve handled the same orders operating out of a cheap ghost kitchen in some warehouse district. Even outside of the black swan that was COVID, running a restaurant is skating on thin ice. Most don’t make it and those who do tend to be high-end restaurants with longstanding wealthy clientele. These fancy places haven’t had any trouble at all hiring servers because the tips are very generous. But for mom and pop taco shop? That’s a tough one!
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
> we spent decades forcing them to work How exactly were they forced? Do they or their family play zero role in this and they are just “forced”. If people were “forced”, skilled and unskilled immigrants wouldn’t be lining up to enter the US. The only way this can be fixed is acknowledging a tiny minuscule bit of personal responsibility. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education-spending-finland-south-korea https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education... Until we have singularity and order around AI to build stuff out of thin air there is a cost to existence in society.
- orwin 4y ago
  They were forced because employment is sticky, unlike work. I accept that most workers who worked for the same company for more than five years are de facto forced to work, by habitus. Forced do not mean coerced. By making employment less sticky (Hello covid), people who felt forced to work stopped, and chose to do something else. "Personnal responsibility" can exist even if most of our decisions are psychological nudges.
randomdata 4y ago
> so yeah we're all out of people willing to do this kind of work because it sucks That's not the problem, though. The article indicates that there is not much change in the service sector, aside from some increases in sick leave. As it tells, the problem is that the service sector has exploded to want many more workers than ever before. As soon as you fill one position, two more appear out of nowhere. > the economist cant seem to figure out why nobody wants this fresh new hell anymore. If anything, they can't figure out why the service sector is growing by leaps and bounds even amid efforts (e.g. rising interest rates) to crash the economy. As the article tells, once it finally does crash then that rapid explanation will halt and labour issues will start to correct.

dv_dt 4y ago

That and jobs for some people, even min wage jobs can be sticky. If you're just making it, it can be hard to break the routine and give up money from hourly pay to make time to look for a new job - even if its a better job. So with covid, people saw the blatant lack of safety net that they were living with and many got kicked out of work anyway, I think some managed to move up and out of t he worst jobs.

cookie_monsta 4y ago

There definitely seems to be a lack of analysis about this. I flew back into Australia recently and we had to wait ~ 2 hrs for our luggage to come off the plane because there weren't enough baggage handlers to cope with the volume. The representative who came around and explained this to everybody waiting at the conveyor belt seemed genuinely confused by the fact that they were unable to hire people to do this work, despite the fact that this very industry has been in the media for months/years now, with reports of poor conditions, strikes, exploitatative outsourcing, etc

flandish 4y ago
Oh there’s plenty of analysis. What you witnessed was marketing .. cognitive dissidence at the corp level pushed down to the lowest as “gee we are trying to hire!” Pay more. Get more. That is the only solution. Strikes also help. Well. Unless you are american and your president makes it illegal to strike. (Railroad workers, most recently.)

nonethewiser 4y ago

While true I dont see these employers as evil. I think the reality is that small businesses are dying. Some industries are labor intensive. If labor prices exceed a certain level, these business go under. It's not some shill for businesses. It's happened to entire industries. There needs to be some happy balance between affordable prices and affordable labor.

u801e 4y ago
According to this source[1], the labor cost for a restaurant is 20% to 30% of gross revenue. If a restaurant decided to double the pay for their employees, then their costs would go up by 50% (25% * 2). If they increase their prices by 50% and customers still provide them business, then they won't go under. If for instance, a meal costs around $25 today, then they would have to increase the price to $37 (or a $12 increase). Looking at one regular dish I get at a chain restaurant, I've seen its price increase from $23 to $32 in in the last year. I still eat there about as frequently as I used to. Would I still get it if it was $34.50 assuming the same labor cost? I most likely still would. On the other hand, if the restaurant decides not to increase pay and has trouble with staffing, along with increase wait times, errors in fulfilling the order, food not prepared well, then I most likely won't eat there as often, if at all. [1] https://www.lightspeedhq.com/blog/labor-cost-guidelines-restaurant/ https://www.lightspeedhq.com/blog/labor-cost-guidelines-rest...
- chongli 4y ago
  Restaurants are notorious for being among the most difficult small businesses to keep afloat. Unless you’re a big fast food franchisee, you were lucky to make it through COVID without going under. I can’t tell you how many local family-owned and operated restaurants disappeared in my area alone during COVID. At the same time, McDonald’s and Starbucks were busier than ever cranking out orders for Uber Eats. The biggest cost for small restaurants is rent. During COVID all of their dine-in traffic disappeared. At the same time, they got zero breaks on their rent so they ended up paying out the nose and getting nothing for their money. They could’ve handled the same orders operating out of a cheap ghost kitchen in some warehouse district. Even outside of the black swan that was COVID, running a restaurant is skating on thin ice. Most don’t make it and those who do tend to be high-end restaurants with longstanding wealthy clientele. These fancy places haven’t had any trouble at all hiring servers because the tips are very generous. But for mom and pop taco shop? That’s a tough one!

cscurmudgeon 4y ago

> we spent decades forcing them to work How exactly were they forced? Do they or their family play zero role in this and they are just “forced”. If people were “forced”, skilled and unskilled immigrants wouldn’t be lining up to enter the US. The only way this can be fixed is acknowledging a tiny minuscule bit of personal responsibility. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education-spending-finland-south-korea https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education... Until we have singularity and order around AI to build stuff out of thin air there is a cost to existence in society.

orwin 4y ago
They were forced because employment is sticky, unlike work. I accept that most workers who worked for the same company for more than five years are de facto forced to work, by habitus. Forced do not mean coerced. By making employment less sticky (Hello covid), people who felt forced to work stopped, and chose to do something else. "Personnal responsibility" can exist even if most of our decisions are psychological nudges.

randomdata 4y ago

> so yeah we're all out of people willing to do this kind of work because it sucks That's not the problem, though. The article indicates that there is not much change in the service sector, aside from some increases in sick leave. As it tells, the problem is that the service sector has exploded to want many more workers than ever before. As soon as you fill one position, two more appear out of nowhere. > the economist cant seem to figure out why nobody wants this fresh new hell anymore. If anything, they can't figure out why the service sector is growing by leaps and bounds even amid efforts (e.g. rising interest rates) to crash the economy. As the article tells, once it finally does crash then that rapid explanation will halt and labour issues will start to correct.