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Healthcare and education are both suffering serious staffing shortages, which of course tend to turn into spirals as bad (straight-up bullshit, really) working

Healthcare and education are both suffering serious staffing shortages, which of course tend to turn into spirals as bad (straight-up bullshit, really) working conditions drive more workers out. These have in common that workers are subject to managerial & societal attitudes that they can't say "no" to anything without doing something ethically gross (hurting kids/patients), plus tending to bring more than a little of that attitude to the job all on their own (most of them went into those jobs to help people). In both cases this leads to abuse by management, and suppressed wages. I suspect pandemic inflation has just accelerated an existing trend of both of those fields—both so dependent on lots of hours from educated-and-skilled labor—getting Baumol's-cost-diseased out of affordability to the middle class. We can't (or won't) pay what it takes to do this stuff right anymore, unless you're rich enough to get out of the systems most folks use, and both will tend to get worse even as they get more expensive (but not more-expensive enough to save them) over the next few years. Barring some major and actually effective automation in those two fields, anyway. I'm expecting some targeted and aggressive immigration programs for both fields, over the next couple decades. It'll be how we hold this at bay just a little while longer (though we won't improve it—too expensive—just temporarily stop it from getting worse than it's already gotten)

jancsika 3y ago
> getting Baumol's-cost-diseased out of affordability to the middle class Ok, I looked at the Wikipedia page for your gratuitously-verbed jargon. Wouldn't that phenomenon increase the wages of healthcare and education? In any case, I'd wager that if you had avoided gratuitously-verbed jargon I wouldn't have had to ask a question.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  It's the term for what I was expressing. It's fine if you haven't seen it before. At some point, I hadn't either. That's normal. It means you have to pay more to keep getting the same amount & quality of labor regardless of the financial situation in your own industry, because alternative careers available to the same pool of upcoming workers can pay a lot more than they used to (typically thanks to productivity improvements or technology introducing entirely new types of jobs) while productivity of your own workers hasn't increased much, if any. One expects especially to see it in jobs that can't effectively "scale" labor, despite improvements in technology. It is, of course, also possible to let quality slip instead of increasing pay. For fields with fairly inelastic demand, like healthcare, you might even get away with it. This is what I expect to see happen in these two fields. I don't think we'll increase pay & improve working conditions enough to maintain a similar level of quality (in the case of education, at least, I think it's already been heading that way for years). We've kinda tried to fix this, with things like MOOCs (in education), but results haven't been great even under ideal conditions, and some parts of the field (early childhood education) seem especially naturally-resistant to solutions involving technology. Nurses and such are in a similar position—computers and all that jazz have helped some, but not all that much, while productivity and pay for (say) office workers with a decent head on their shoulders have shot up, often alongside less-demanding work, making those more appealing alternatives for young adults choosing a career, or mid-career folks in these fields who finally get fed up and start looking at their options.
lispisok 3y ago
>Healthcare and education are both suffering serious staffing shortages The people who actually do the work like doctors, nurses, and teachers are understaffed. The administrators are very plump. I have multiple friends in education admin and the stories they tell me about nobody is working ever including themselves is disgusting. It's a bunch of people doing nothing and patting themselves on the back about it.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  I know one district that, as of a few years ago, had a superintendent and two assistant supers. Each had two secretaries. Was this some monster-sized district? Nah, like six or seven total schools. I don’t think it’s possible they had nine people’s worth of work between them. Half that, maybe, in a busy week.

jancsika 3y ago

> getting Baumol's-cost-diseased out of affordability to the middle class Ok, I looked at the Wikipedia page for your gratuitously-verbed jargon. Wouldn't that phenomenon increase the wages of healthcare and education? In any case, I'd wager that if you had avoided gratuitously-verbed jargon I wouldn't have had to ask a question.

hotnfresh 3y ago
It's the term for what I was expressing. It's fine if you haven't seen it before. At some point, I hadn't either. That's normal. It means you have to pay more to keep getting the same amount & quality of labor regardless of the financial situation in your own industry, because alternative careers available to the same pool of upcoming workers can pay a lot more than they used to (typically thanks to productivity improvements or technology introducing entirely new types of jobs) while productivity of your own workers hasn't increased much, if any. One expects especially to see it in jobs that can't effectively "scale" labor, despite improvements in technology. It is, of course, also possible to let quality slip instead of increasing pay. For fields with fairly inelastic demand, like healthcare, you might even get away with it. This is what I expect to see happen in these two fields. I don't think we'll increase pay & improve working conditions enough to maintain a similar level of quality (in the case of education, at least, I think it's already been heading that way for years). We've kinda tried to fix this, with things like MOOCs (in education), but results haven't been great even under ideal conditions, and some parts of the field (early childhood education) seem especially naturally-resistant to solutions involving technology. Nurses and such are in a similar position—computers and all that jazz have helped some, but not all that much, while productivity and pay for (say) office workers with a decent head on their shoulders have shot up, often alongside less-demanding work, making those more appealing alternatives for young adults choosing a career, or mid-career folks in these fields who finally get fed up and start looking at their options.

lispisok 3y ago

>Healthcare and education are both suffering serious staffing shortages The people who actually do the work like doctors, nurses, and teachers are understaffed. The administrators are very plump. I have multiple friends in education admin and the stories they tell me about nobody is working ever including themselves is disgusting. It's a bunch of people doing nothing and patting themselves on the back about it.

hotnfresh 3y ago
I know one district that, as of a few years ago, had a superintendent and two assistant supers. Each had two secretaries. Was this some monster-sized district? Nah, like six or seven total schools. I don’t think it’s possible they had nine people’s worth of work between them. Half that, maybe, in a busy week.