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Why is this a surprise, Q4 of 2022 was the largest group of Boomers retiring and if you look at the demo graphics we're not going to have a labor surplus till 2

Why is this a surprise, Q4 of 2022 was the largest group of Boomers retiring and if you look at the demo graphics we're not going to have a labor surplus till 2040. The working world needs to kick back and enjoy because instead of the Boomers and their massive workforce driving down wages there's going to be a demand for workers and wages will have to go up, there aren't any other choices. Lastly, if you look at the open jobs 5MM of the are in food service and retail, two categories that were traditionally filled by the young and the uneducated and that demo is dwindling so don't be surprised if that number just gets bigger. Immigration could help us but Congress can govern so we can't count on it.

lizzardbraind 4y ago
What happens if a wage/price spiral hits right as Boomers are moving their retirement savings into less volatile, more liquid investments to live off of? Could they see the real value of their retirements evaporate en masse?
bombcar 4y ago
"We have unfilled shit jobs so let's import poor people from other countries and force them to work in these shit jobs."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Ahh yes, we should really stop sending trucks and grabbing people with a big cartoon net and dragging them here against their will to do menial jobs they would never choose to take of their own volition. I'm criticizing your use of the words "import" and "force", because economic migrants are people and not things to be imported. There are also so many people desperate to come here to do literally any job that it's laughable to talk about them being coerced to do so. Have you ever talked to an economic migrant?
  - esotericimpl 4y ago
    [dead]
- medellin 4y ago
  No one is forcing anyone to do anything in that situation so i really don’t see how your comment makes sense.
- el_benhameen 4y ago
  I don’t think anyone is proposing forcing anyone to work a shit job. I do think that working in food service compares favorably to working in subsistence farming, shipbreaking, or being unemployed with no job prospects. Why not give people the chance to make that call for themselves? And what’s the alternative? If you automate it all away, they’re still going to be farming and breaking ships.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    > And what’s the alternative? Perhaps that office with 50 programmers paid $75/hour could stretch to paying their 2 cleaners $20/hour instead of $15/hour?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - el_benhameen 4y ago
      Sure. But you’re not going to make up the difference just by increasing wages. Unemployment is at 3.4%—there’s not some huge glut of unemployed people waiting in the wings to clean offices at $20 an hour.
      - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        > "there’s not some huge glut of unemployed people waiting in the wings to clean offices at $20 an hour." 16 - 18 year olds. They can do the job after school.
        el_benhameen 4y ago
        I guess I would rather my kids use that extra time for, I dunno, learning extracurriculars or rest. But sure. Now what about all of the retail, foodservice, manufacturing etc. jobs that can’t be done during after school hours?
        4y ago
- keneda7 4y ago
  I would wage a hefty sum the vast majority (>90%) are beyond thrilled to be coming to the US. They are willing and WANT to come. You make it sounds like they are being captured and transported on slave ships.
  - screwturner68 4y ago
    Given the choice most would rather go to Canada than the US, better worker rights, better social safety net and better health care. Further we need certain demographic, we need young workers -post school, that will work and pay into the system for the next 30-40 years. We don't want people we'll have to support, bringing in workers for Walmart where the first thing they do is move into subsidized housing and sing up for Medicaid and SNAP is not the type of immigration that will help this country.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Exactly. A vast majority of the world would love to be able to choose to be in a shit job without healthcare in the US - does that mean we should remove all wage protections and deny healthcare to anyone making less than $250k a year?
    - keneda7 4y ago
      Do you happen to any stats to support that? I took a quick look. Canada seems to accept around 430k legal immigrants and had another 30-40k illegal crossing in 2022. The US seems to have admitted 1 million between July 2021 and July 2022 so lets say somewhere around 1 million legal immigrants were accepted in 2022. Illegal crossing were around 2.7 million for 2022. I take a look at these numbers I scratch my head at your statement. The US has orders of magnitude more illegal crossings. In fact the US average for 1 month is 225k which is almost 6 times as high as the YEARLY average for Canada. The numbers are pretty clear about where they are going. Nothing is stopping those entering the US illegally from entering Canada illegally too. Yet I can't seem to find any numbers that support that idea that even a fraction of the ones entering the US want/try to go to Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2022/12/canada-welcomes-historic-number-of-newcomers-in-2022.html https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne... https://irb.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/Irregular-border-crosser-statistics.aspx https://irb.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/Irregular-border-cross... https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/net-international-migration-returns-to-pre-pandemic-levels.html#:~:text=According%20to%20Vintage%202022%20population,2021%20and%20July%201%2C%202022 https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/net-internati.... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/migrant-border-crossings-fiscal-year-2022-topped-276-million-breaking-rcna53517 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/migrant-border-...
- theRealMe 4y ago
  I can’t believe I’m about to use this stupid term, but this is such a “woke” take. “My political bubble doesn’t think highly of this job, and so we shouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to do it.” And yes, it IS an opportunity for some people. Just because you’re a dev that makes $150k/year doesn’t mean everyone can do that.
  - josho 4y ago
    It may not be so far from the truth. As an example Canada has a temporary foreign worker program that has been abused by employers to keep wages low, work conditions abysmal, and threaten the workers with sending them back home to ensure compliance under these conditions. The US, I believe, similarly uses its ample illegal labor supply in similar ways.
    - gymbeaux 4y ago
      A similar argument can be made about the H1-B program. I don’t know if this is still the case, but a few years ago the stats on all H1-B visa-holders showed they were paid on average around $80K despite mostly being in technical roles at F500 companies. The stats are openly available from the relevant US gov website. I don’t doubt that companies have abused H1-B as a means of spending less on specifically SWE talent.

lizzardbraind 4y ago

What happens if a wage/price spiral hits right as Boomers are moving their retirement savings into less volatile, more liquid investments to live off of? Could they see the real value of their retirements evaporate en masse?

bombcar 4y ago

"We have unfilled shit jobs so let's import poor people from other countries and force them to work in these shit jobs."

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ch4s3 4y ago
Ahh yes, we should really stop sending trucks and grabbing people with a big cartoon net and dragging them here against their will to do menial jobs they would never choose to take of their own volition. I'm criticizing your use of the words "import" and "force", because economic migrants are people and not things to be imported. There are also so many people desperate to come here to do literally any job that it's laughable to talk about them being coerced to do so. Have you ever talked to an economic migrant?
- esotericimpl 4y ago
  [dead]
medellin 4y ago
No one is forcing anyone to do anything in that situation so i really don’t see how your comment makes sense.
el_benhameen 4y ago
I don’t think anyone is proposing forcing anyone to work a shit job. I do think that working in food service compares favorably to working in subsistence farming, shipbreaking, or being unemployed with no job prospects. Why not give people the chance to make that call for themselves? And what’s the alternative? If you automate it all away, they’re still going to be farming and breaking ships.
- michaelt 4y ago
  > And what’s the alternative? Perhaps that office with 50 programmers paid $75/hour could stretch to paying their 2 cleaners $20/hour instead of $15/hour?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - el_benhameen 4y ago
    Sure. But you’re not going to make up the difference just by increasing wages. Unemployment is at 3.4%—there’s not some huge glut of unemployed people waiting in the wings to clean offices at $20 an hour.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      > "there’s not some huge glut of unemployed people waiting in the wings to clean offices at $20 an hour." 16 - 18 year olds. They can do the job after school.
      - el_benhameen 4y ago
        I guess I would rather my kids use that extra time for, I dunno, learning extracurriculars or rest. But sure. Now what about all of the retail, foodservice, manufacturing etc. jobs that can’t be done during after school hours?
        4y ago
keneda7 4y ago
I would wage a hefty sum the vast majority (>90%) are beyond thrilled to be coming to the US. They are willing and WANT to come. You make it sounds like they are being captured and transported on slave ships.
- screwturner68 4y ago
  Given the choice most would rather go to Canada than the US, better worker rights, better social safety net and better health care. Further we need certain demographic, we need young workers -post school, that will work and pay into the system for the next 30-40 years. We don't want people we'll have to support, bringing in workers for Walmart where the first thing they do is move into subsidized housing and sing up for Medicaid and SNAP is not the type of immigration that will help this country.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Exactly. A vast majority of the world would love to be able to choose to be in a shit job without healthcare in the US - does that mean we should remove all wage protections and deny healthcare to anyone making less than $250k a year?
  - keneda7 4y ago
    Do you happen to any stats to support that? I took a quick look. Canada seems to accept around 430k legal immigrants and had another 30-40k illegal crossing in 2022. The US seems to have admitted 1 million between July 2021 and July 2022 so lets say somewhere around 1 million legal immigrants were accepted in 2022. Illegal crossing were around 2.7 million for 2022. I take a look at these numbers I scratch my head at your statement. The US has orders of magnitude more illegal crossings. In fact the US average for 1 month is 225k which is almost 6 times as high as the YEARLY average for Canada. The numbers are pretty clear about where they are going. Nothing is stopping those entering the US illegally from entering Canada illegally too. Yet I can't seem to find any numbers that support that idea that even a fraction of the ones entering the US want/try to go to Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2022/12/canada-welcomes-historic-number-of-newcomers-in-2022.html https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne... https://irb.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/Irregular-border-crosser-statistics.aspx https://irb.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/Irregular-border-cross... https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/net-international-migration-returns-to-pre-pandemic-levels.html#:~:text=According%20to%20Vintage%202022%20population,2021%20and%20July%201%2C%202022 https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/net-internati.... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/migrant-border-crossings-fiscal-year-2022-topped-276-million-breaking-rcna53517 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/migrant-border-...
theRealMe 4y ago
I can’t believe I’m about to use this stupid term, but this is such a “woke” take. “My political bubble doesn’t think highly of this job, and so we shouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to do it.” And yes, it IS an opportunity for some people. Just because you’re a dev that makes $150k/year doesn’t mean everyone can do that.
- josho 4y ago
  It may not be so far from the truth. As an example Canada has a temporary foreign worker program that has been abused by employers to keep wages low, work conditions abysmal, and threaten the workers with sending them back home to ensure compliance under these conditions. The US, I believe, similarly uses its ample illegal labor supply in similar ways.
  - gymbeaux 4y ago
    A similar argument can be made about the H1-B program. I don’t know if this is still the case, but a few years ago the stats on all H1-B visa-holders showed they were paid on average around $80K despite mostly being in technical roles at F500 companies. The stats are openly available from the relevant US gov website. I don’t doubt that companies have abused H1-B as a means of spending less on specifically SWE talent.