8 ms·

Every single time someone says "there's a shortage of <profession>", you can mentally substitute it for "we can't get <profession> for cheap".

ares623 1y ago
Agreed. It kinda worked for software for a bit since it was such a new field, so there could’ve been some truth to it just as a matter of time to get the systems in place to educate people.
bko 1y ago
While that's true, there is some market clearing price in which the activity just ceases to exist. For instance, take something with a small marginal benefit like a dedicated person at a supermarket to bag groceries. It's a nice to have but the value to the employer is probably less than a $15 minimum wage. So you could say there is a shortage of grocery baggers since there is no one willing to do it at a market clearing price. Doesn't mean we should do anything about it. There will always be some extra activity that would take place at a lower price, but it's worth while to notice that.
- the_real_cher 1y ago
  That doesnt make sense to me. Seems like theres either a demand for something or there isnt. And the amount of demand sets the rate of pay. The invisible hand.
  - frankc 1y ago
    Demand is a function of price. At any given price there is a quantity demanded. To know the price you also need to know the supply function. There is a demand for socks but if no one is will to supply socks for less a million dollars, the quantity demanded of socks at that price could be 0.
    - the_real_cher 1y ago
      In most markets seems like commodity level items and services like baggers and socks would have plenty of supply.
      - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
        In a free market, commodity-level jobs will only happen at commodity-level wages. But it's not a free market, because of minimum wage laws. If you set the minimum wage too high, the number of baggers may go to zero, not because of supply but because of demand - the price is higher than any grocery store is willing to pay. You can argue about the need for the minimum wage laws. You can argue about the morality of paying a living wage. But that's a different argument.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - philipallstar 1y ago
    In some countries there's something called a "minimum wage" that sets the minimum value of a job that is allowed to exist, and any job that isn't worth that amount ceases to exist, or has fewer people doing it, or has partial or full automation doing it.
  - alistairSH 1y ago
    There’s a demand, but the price we want to pay for “grocery baggers” is usually less than minimum wage, so the job usually can’t (legally) exist. The cost (wage) is fixed higher than the value added.
  - WithinReason 1y ago
    The demand curve might not be gradual, there might be demand for e.g. 1 million jobs at $15 but 100 at $16
- vharuck 1y ago
  While reading the article, the now-less-common business of vacuum and TV repair came to mind. I imagine it's easier than ever to repair vacuums, with improved tools and free internet repositories of schematics. But I only know of one store still doing this within 5 miles of my house. I haven't asked former vacuum repairmen, but my guess as to the reasons: 1) Labor costs go up with inflation 2) Rent goes up 3) New vacuum prices go down At some point in the past, the downward line of vacuum price crossed over the upward line of repair cost. That's when this profession cratered. Cars may have a while until that price point hits. But the quoted mechanic's suggestion that engineers optimize for simpler repairs instead of simpler production may be something similar. If simpler production makes the price of a new car $X cheaper, but increases the labor cost of repairs over the car's lifetime by $Y, there could be a time when X > Y.
  - ooloncoloophid 1y ago
    A quick note to say that at our local repair cafe we do a roaring trade in vacuum repairs for peanuts (not literal peanuts; though some of our repairers do get peckish). If you're in Europe, there's chance you have one nearby. https://repaircafe.org/en https://repaircafe.org/en
    - graemep 1y ago
      great idea. I get a "coming soon" type message for my town and search does not say where the next nearest is. I used the map and found the two nearest I quite far. plenty where I used to live, and a lot in other parts of the UK. Good to see.
    - digdugdirk 1y ago
      Could you please go in to a bit more detail on how you set that up, how you handle issues, etc? I'm a member of a makerspace, and there's been discussions about doing something similar. There's just not a consensus about how to go about it.
      - ramses0 1y ago
        Reach out here: https://dallasmakerspace.org/faq/ https://dallasmakerspace.org/faq/ (I'm not finding a good link for https://thelab.ms/ https://thelab.ms/ - another Dallas makerspace), but I'd suggest reaching out. ...generally I've seen weekly/monthly "fix-it" workshops as a kindof open-house / membership drive. Probably best to 1) have people sign safety waivers, especially if they're not members 2) have people sign a "we can offer to help you try, but your widget might end up worse than before" waiver 3) run it as a volunteer outreach event with a focus on getting membership rather than a transactional "fix my ____ for free" outcome
- saghm 1y ago
  It's not clear to me what the difference is between what you're saying and what the parent comment says. Not being willing to pay the wages necessary to hire someone is pretty much exactly what they're saying as well.
  - marcusverus 1y ago
    They agree that corporations don't do things that aren't profitable, their implied disagreement is whether this is greedy/bad or merely rational/amoral.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > It's not clear to me what the difference is between what you're saying and what the parent comment says. The key difference is whether rentism plays a role or not. It's one thing to claim that no one will pay a mechanic if it's too expensive. It's an entirely different thing to claim that some employers are abusing their position to pressure wages to stay low to maximize their profit margin at the expense of their employees. There's a good litmus test: is there a massive wave of car shop bankruptcies due to lack of business? Or are car shop owners complaining they can't get enough employees to keep up with demand?
    - nradov 1y ago
      The auto repair business is still pretty fragmented in most areas so as a practical matter employers can't really pressure wages. Mechanics change jobs all the time to get a raise. The industry has a relatively high annual employee turnover rate.
  - graeme 1y ago
    The implied criticism in the original comment is that companies should pay more. They ignore that in a lot of cases it doesn't make structural sense for a role to exist above a given price.
- motorest 1y ago
  > While that's true, there is some market clearing price in which the activity just ceases to exist. The article cites a mechanic commenting on Ford CEO's remarks on lack of mechanics by referring to how Ford fails to pay rates for warranty repairs that justify the volume of work required to pull them off. This suggests the root cause is the automaker's refusal to pay for warranty work at a market rate. The article raises some points on how Ford both designed cars that are too expensive to repair and fails to pay mechanics to make their product line attractive for any maintenance business. This doesn't sound like a market efficiency issue.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Not just market rate, but being totally wrong! My read of that article is that it's not gonna take 40 minutes to do the job, but because Ford says it'll take that long, that's what they're getting paid for. It seems like the bigger issue is that Ford gets to say how long it will take and what they say isn't remotely right. There's similar weirdness with flight attendants and how they get paid, because they don't get paid if they're not in the air, or something like that. If you zoom out, it's about not being willing to pay enough money, and at that level you'd be right. But if we zoom in a little, the ways in which they're not getting paid enough is also relevant. If I want to get paid for a honest days worth of work, everyone else all the way to the top better also be honest. It sucks when they're not, but as long as my paycheck cashes, I've got better things on my plate to contend with.
- janalsncm 1y ago
  In other words, the existence of a minimum wage implies there is also a minimum job, a job which if it were any less valuable to the company they wouldn’t pay anyone to do it.
- jayd16 1y ago
  If the demand doesn't reach the minimum wage, is that even a shortage? I'm not going to pay someone to punch me in the face but I wouldn't call that a shortage.
- dooglius 1y ago
  > since there is no one willing to do it at a market clearing price In your example there would still be people willing to do it, but the government doesn't allow it?
mcphage 1y ago
You’re right, although the mechanic’s claim here was more complicated and interesting than just “we’re getting underpaid”.
- stavros 1y ago
  It was a good view into what exactly the car companies are doing, but essentially it was "we're getting underpaid" with extra steps. The car companies have basically set up a monopsony with cartels, squeezed the mechanics out, and are now complaining that they squeezed them out too much.
  - mcphage 1y ago
    > but essentially it was "we're getting underpaid" with extra steps Oh, yeah, it's definitely them getting underpaid—but in a way that I wasn't expecting and was surprised to learn about.
  - Schiendelman 1y ago
    I think part of this may be that some of the market is buying EVs now. The amount of car repair necessary per person is decreasing overtime.
gruez 1y ago
Every single time someone says "there's a shortage of <goods>", you can mentally substitute it for "we can't get <good> for cheap". Try this with: housing, nvidia GPUs, toilet paper (when there's a pandemic)
- kwk1 1y ago
  Is there a difference between people and goods?
  - atomicnumber3 1y ago
    Of course not. That would ruin their analogy! Honestly, between how soft-science macroeconomcis is, combined with the fact that this planet does not contain a single person willing to argue about it in good faith, makes it simply impossible to have real conversations around it, especially on the internet.
  - gruez 1y ago
    Not really, when you consider both the interests of the buyer or the seller. The buyer of course would rather like goods and services be cheaper. It might be tempting to say that "people" deserve special consideration over "goods", it breaks down when you consider that goods are also made by people. Moreover gatekeeping whether you can use the characterization of "we can't get ... for cheap" depending on whether the seller is sympathetic or not (ie. "people" vs "goods") is a blatant way of smuggling in a conclusion via wording, similar to "terrorists" vs "freedom fighters".
    - abakker 1y ago
      I don't think this is correct. The reasons economists separate capital and labor is that they do have different characteristics. Labor has skill, capital can have technology. Assets exist regardless of utilization, labor cannot be stored up in an inventory since labor is time which flows inexorably onwards. A shortage of an asset is a reflection of inventory levels. A shortage of labor reflects a lack of skill or time OR a lack of willingness to pay for that skill and time. They're different for good reasons.
DoneWithAllThat 1y ago
Skilled labor (such as mechanics) require training and apprenticeship pipelines. If those pipelines don’t exist or are starved of people it doesn’t matter how much you’re willing to pay right now. Long term sure you can make that career path more appealing but it can and often is absolutely the case that companies would pay out the nose for employees with particular skills and are unable to find anyone. But sure let’s go with the standard Reddit pablum, why give it more thought than that?
- Ajedi32 1y ago
  That's what a shortage is, a short-term undersupply. Market forces will eventually correct the problem if allowed to operate normally (e.g. prices spike, incentivizing more supply), but like you said that takes time. If it's a shortage of goods it can take a while to ramp up production. If it's a shortage of skilled labor it can take a while for people to learn those skills. Either way it's fundamentally the same type of problem.
  - vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
    The market alone doesn’t work well with things like training that had feedback loops of several years. In German there is the term “Schweinezyklus”. It goes like this: * companies complain about lack of trained workers * more people start training * after a few years companies complain about too many workers and don’t hire them * people stop training * companies complain about lack of trained workers I was part of this in the 90s in mechanical engineering. When I started studying the job market was great. When I finished there were no jobs. Luckily I could jump to programming. I think we are seeing the same with CS now. Too many people jumped into it.
    - Ajedi32 1y ago
      Predicting the future is indeed famously difficult, which is why even markets have a hard time with forecasting and responding to demand years into the future. I don't think such over corrections are a market failure, just a lack of omniscience.
- 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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seanmcdirmid 1y ago
Ya, and then people wonder why cars are so expensive to repair these days also. The market is at a breaking point, efficiency has to go along with the higher pay or it just won’t work out.
- seemaze 1y ago
  I recently acquired a new (to me) 2017 vehicle and took it to my independent mechanic who has been working on my cars for years. He is registered with the mfg. and has access to many of their proprietary diagnostics and tools, but warned me that there is very little he can do on the latest models. They are basically 'return to dealer' because of 'software'.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    It's always been that way with new stuff though. Between exclusivity agreements and whatnot it takes time for the documentation and supplies to be available outside the dealership service supply chain.
    - Scoundreller 1y ago
      Used to be most dealership software tools would work offline because of the global nature of vehicles. Therefore the software tools would leak to the public. Now it’s moving “to the cloud” and that’s getting more complicated.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
X0nic 1y ago
OMG yes. So many people miss this, and many companies don't understand this.
epistasis 1y ago
Generally true, but not always! There are often very real bottlenecks on education too. We need a ton more electricians but it's nearly impossible to get into schools. Or you need union apprenticeships and their are not enough slots. Pay is part of it, but for most skilled professions there's big bottlenecks on the training for the skills. Or look at police officers in places like San Francisco. The pay is actually fantastic but the process of getting hired is hellish and takes a year or something ridiculous. Or doctors, there's a massive shortage because there aren't enough residency spots, something controlled by the AMA. Pay is amazing (hours suck) and there are people clamoring to do it, but the bottleneck is structural, not because of pay.
- jarjoura 1y ago
  Would you consider the lack of offering apprenticeships to get your trade license or on the job training as more structural or financial? If there is a shortage of something, I would expect these trade companies to backfill with apprentices who will then grow into their roles. If there's too high a risk that someone won't be worth the investment, then that seems entirely financial to me.
  - epistasis 1y ago
    I'm using the term "structural" here without any clear definition, to be honest. By it I mean that it's about the structure of society, the relationships that are in place, the difficulty of setting up a new school, the resistance of the AMA to open up more residency spots, etc. Points in the process where there's high friction for changing the system to a better "structure", whether or not the change requires financial incentives. But I don't know if that meaning is shared by anyone else in the world! Thanks for asking for clarification, I'm interested in how you'd communicate that idea.
- horsawlarway 1y ago
  I'd argue that the "structural" bottleneck is actually just the same "pay" bottleneck. This was the whole issue with allowing guilds in the first place... If you only allow a guild to do a job (legally) and the guild also controls how many members they train and accept... The end result is a labor shortage. Because it's better for the existing members of the guild. If they train a large number of new members... they spend time and money on training, and they've increased their competition during bidding which drives down rates. So instead you train the bare minimum for replacements. This keeps your members' rates high and competition low. --- Any time the "pay is great" but the "process to get it sucks!"... you're seeing this in action. It's not that the process really needs to suck, it's that the process roadblocks are there to maintain high pay for the existing trained members. If there's one thing monopolies don't like... it's competition. And legally enforced certifications are wonderful monopoly creators if you don't manage them carefully.
BirAdam 1y ago
The price will go up as the availability goes down. If you have a shortage of mechanics, each mechanic can raise his/her labor price. So, while you're saying "we can't get <profession> for cheap" this implies a lack of professionals or a structural problem increasing costs in a given industry, or both. In the case of doctors and electricians, you have structural problems in both, but also a true shortage of individuals in electrician work (could be in the medical field too, but I can't speak to that).
deleted 1y ago
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balderdash 1y ago
Sometimes, but I’m intimately familiar with a business that pays people like $20/hr while they’re training them (9mos) - then the pay goes to like $30/hr, and after a few years most of them are making like $90k+/year. No one wants the job because they don’t want to put in the time, and it takes a 2-5 years to for someone to be good at it. My point being is that there are a ton of people that have super short term thinking when it comes to this stuff (like next month not next five year)
sidewndr46 1y ago
Mechanics are one of the few professions in the US where corporate wage suppression is allowed by law. So it actually is a case of having a shortage because they can just move to another industry.
drweevil 1y ago
Very highly paid executive complains because the peasants aren't willing to work for nearly nothing. Where have I heard that before. But Ivanovko brings up a great point: manufacturers are making their products difficult to repair, for a variety of reasons. In this case saving manufacturing costs increases profits, but at the cost to the owner of greater repair costs. Even for simple repairs. (And collision repair costs, ugh!) And that in turn drives up insurance costs. I'm amazed that people can afford today's vehicles.

ares623 1y ago

Agreed. It kinda worked for software for a bit since it was such a new field, so there could’ve been some truth to it just as a matter of time to get the systems in place to educate people.

bko 1y ago

While that's true, there is some market clearing price in which the activity just ceases to exist. For instance, take something with a small marginal benefit like a dedicated person at a supermarket to bag groceries. It's a nice to have but the value to the employer is probably less than a $15 minimum wage. So you could say there is a shortage of grocery baggers since there is no one willing to do it at a market clearing price. Doesn't mean we should do anything about it. There will always be some extra activity that would take place at a lower price, but it's worth while to notice that.

the_real_cher 1y ago
That doesnt make sense to me. Seems like theres either a demand for something or there isnt. And the amount of demand sets the rate of pay. The invisible hand.
- frankc 1y ago
  Demand is a function of price. At any given price there is a quantity demanded. To know the price you also need to know the supply function. There is a demand for socks but if no one is will to supply socks for less a million dollars, the quantity demanded of socks at that price could be 0.
  - the_real_cher 1y ago
    In most markets seems like commodity level items and services like baggers and socks would have plenty of supply.
    - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
      In a free market, commodity-level jobs will only happen at commodity-level wages. But it's not a free market, because of minimum wage laws. If you set the minimum wage too high, the number of baggers may go to zero, not because of supply but because of demand - the price is higher than any grocery store is willing to pay. You can argue about the need for the minimum wage laws. You can argue about the morality of paying a living wage. But that's a different argument.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- philipallstar 1y ago
  In some countries there's something called a "minimum wage" that sets the minimum value of a job that is allowed to exist, and any job that isn't worth that amount ceases to exist, or has fewer people doing it, or has partial or full automation doing it.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  There’s a demand, but the price we want to pay for “grocery baggers” is usually less than minimum wage, so the job usually can’t (legally) exist. The cost (wage) is fixed higher than the value added.
- WithinReason 1y ago
  The demand curve might not be gradual, there might be demand for e.g. 1 million jobs at $15 but 100 at $16
vharuck 1y ago
While reading the article, the now-less-common business of vacuum and TV repair came to mind. I imagine it's easier than ever to repair vacuums, with improved tools and free internet repositories of schematics. But I only know of one store still doing this within 5 miles of my house. I haven't asked former vacuum repairmen, but my guess as to the reasons: 1) Labor costs go up with inflation 2) Rent goes up 3) New vacuum prices go down At some point in the past, the downward line of vacuum price crossed over the upward line of repair cost. That's when this profession cratered. Cars may have a while until that price point hits. But the quoted mechanic's suggestion that engineers optimize for simpler repairs instead of simpler production may be something similar. If simpler production makes the price of a new car $X cheaper, but increases the labor cost of repairs over the car's lifetime by $Y, there could be a time when X > Y.
- ooloncoloophid 1y ago
  A quick note to say that at our local repair cafe we do a roaring trade in vacuum repairs for peanuts (not literal peanuts; though some of our repairers do get peckish). If you're in Europe, there's chance you have one nearby. https://repaircafe.org/en https://repaircafe.org/en
  - graemep 1y ago
    great idea. I get a "coming soon" type message for my town and search does not say where the next nearest is. I used the map and found the two nearest I quite far. plenty where I used to live, and a lot in other parts of the UK. Good to see.
  - digdugdirk 1y ago
    Could you please go in to a bit more detail on how you set that up, how you handle issues, etc? I'm a member of a makerspace, and there's been discussions about doing something similar. There's just not a consensus about how to go about it.
    - ramses0 1y ago
      Reach out here: https://dallasmakerspace.org/faq/ https://dallasmakerspace.org/faq/ (I'm not finding a good link for https://thelab.ms/ https://thelab.ms/ - another Dallas makerspace), but I'd suggest reaching out. ...generally I've seen weekly/monthly "fix-it" workshops as a kindof open-house / membership drive. Probably best to 1) have people sign safety waivers, especially if they're not members 2) have people sign a "we can offer to help you try, but your widget might end up worse than before" waiver 3) run it as a volunteer outreach event with a focus on getting membership rather than a transactional "fix my ____ for free" outcome
saghm 1y ago
It's not clear to me what the difference is between what you're saying and what the parent comment says. Not being willing to pay the wages necessary to hire someone is pretty much exactly what they're saying as well.
- marcusverus 1y ago
  They agree that corporations don't do things that aren't profitable, their implied disagreement is whether this is greedy/bad or merely rational/amoral.
- motorest 1y ago
  > It's not clear to me what the difference is between what you're saying and what the parent comment says. The key difference is whether rentism plays a role or not. It's one thing to claim that no one will pay a mechanic if it's too expensive. It's an entirely different thing to claim that some employers are abusing their position to pressure wages to stay low to maximize their profit margin at the expense of their employees. There's a good litmus test: is there a massive wave of car shop bankruptcies due to lack of business? Or are car shop owners complaining they can't get enough employees to keep up with demand?
  - nradov 1y ago
    The auto repair business is still pretty fragmented in most areas so as a practical matter employers can't really pressure wages. Mechanics change jobs all the time to get a raise. The industry has a relatively high annual employee turnover rate.
- graeme 1y ago
  The implied criticism in the original comment is that companies should pay more. They ignore that in a lot of cases it doesn't make structural sense for a role to exist above a given price.
motorest 1y ago
> While that's true, there is some market clearing price in which the activity just ceases to exist. The article cites a mechanic commenting on Ford CEO's remarks on lack of mechanics by referring to how Ford fails to pay rates for warranty repairs that justify the volume of work required to pull them off. This suggests the root cause is the automaker's refusal to pay for warranty work at a market rate. The article raises some points on how Ford both designed cars that are too expensive to repair and fails to pay mechanics to make their product line attractive for any maintenance business. This doesn't sound like a market efficiency issue.
- fragmede 1y ago
  Not just market rate, but being totally wrong! My read of that article is that it's not gonna take 40 minutes to do the job, but because Ford says it'll take that long, that's what they're getting paid for. It seems like the bigger issue is that Ford gets to say how long it will take and what they say isn't remotely right. There's similar weirdness with flight attendants and how they get paid, because they don't get paid if they're not in the air, or something like that. If you zoom out, it's about not being willing to pay enough money, and at that level you'd be right. But if we zoom in a little, the ways in which they're not getting paid enough is also relevant. If I want to get paid for a honest days worth of work, everyone else all the way to the top better also be honest. It sucks when they're not, but as long as my paycheck cashes, I've got better things on my plate to contend with.
janalsncm 1y ago
In other words, the existence of a minimum wage implies there is also a minimum job, a job which if it were any less valuable to the company they wouldn’t pay anyone to do it.
jayd16 1y ago
If the demand doesn't reach the minimum wage, is that even a shortage? I'm not going to pay someone to punch me in the face but I wouldn't call that a shortage.
dooglius 1y ago
> since there is no one willing to do it at a market clearing price In your example there would still be people willing to do it, but the government doesn't allow it?

mcphage 1y ago

You’re right, although the mechanic’s claim here was more complicated and interesting than just “we’re getting underpaid”.

stavros 1y ago
It was a good view into what exactly the car companies are doing, but essentially it was "we're getting underpaid" with extra steps. The car companies have basically set up a monopsony with cartels, squeezed the mechanics out, and are now complaining that they squeezed them out too much.
- mcphage 1y ago
  > but essentially it was "we're getting underpaid" with extra steps Oh, yeah, it's definitely them getting underpaid—but in a way that I wasn't expecting and was surprised to learn about.
- Schiendelman 1y ago
  I think part of this may be that some of the market is buying EVs now. The amount of car repair necessary per person is decreasing overtime.

gruez 1y ago

Every single time someone says "there's a shortage of <goods>", you can mentally substitute it for "we can't get <good> for cheap". Try this with: housing, nvidia GPUs, toilet paper (when there's a pandemic)

kwk1 1y ago
Is there a difference between people and goods?
- atomicnumber3 1y ago
  Of course not. That would ruin their analogy! Honestly, between how soft-science macroeconomcis is, combined with the fact that this planet does not contain a single person willing to argue about it in good faith, makes it simply impossible to have real conversations around it, especially on the internet.
- gruez 1y ago
  Not really, when you consider both the interests of the buyer or the seller. The buyer of course would rather like goods and services be cheaper. It might be tempting to say that "people" deserve special consideration over "goods", it breaks down when you consider that goods are also made by people. Moreover gatekeeping whether you can use the characterization of "we can't get ... for cheap" depending on whether the seller is sympathetic or not (ie. "people" vs "goods") is a blatant way of smuggling in a conclusion via wording, similar to "terrorists" vs "freedom fighters".
  - abakker 1y ago
    I don't think this is correct. The reasons economists separate capital and labor is that they do have different characteristics. Labor has skill, capital can have technology. Assets exist regardless of utilization, labor cannot be stored up in an inventory since labor is time which flows inexorably onwards. A shortage of an asset is a reflection of inventory levels. A shortage of labor reflects a lack of skill or time OR a lack of willingness to pay for that skill and time. They're different for good reasons.

DoneWithAllThat 1y ago

Skilled labor (such as mechanics) require training and apprenticeship pipelines. If those pipelines don’t exist or are starved of people it doesn’t matter how much you’re willing to pay right now. Long term sure you can make that career path more appealing but it can and often is absolutely the case that companies would pay out the nose for employees with particular skills and are unable to find anyone. But sure let’s go with the standard Reddit pablum, why give it more thought than that?

Ajedi32 1y ago
That's what a shortage is, a short-term undersupply. Market forces will eventually correct the problem if allowed to operate normally (e.g. prices spike, incentivizing more supply), but like you said that takes time. If it's a shortage of goods it can take a while to ramp up production. If it's a shortage of skilled labor it can take a while for people to learn those skills. Either way it's fundamentally the same type of problem.
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
  The market alone doesn’t work well with things like training that had feedback loops of several years. In German there is the term “Schweinezyklus”. It goes like this: * companies complain about lack of trained workers * more people start training * after a few years companies complain about too many workers and don’t hire them * people stop training * companies complain about lack of trained workers I was part of this in the 90s in mechanical engineering. When I started studying the job market was great. When I finished there were no jobs. Luckily I could jump to programming. I think we are seeing the same with CS now. Too many people jumped into it.
  - Ajedi32 1y ago
    Predicting the future is indeed famously difficult, which is why even markets have a hard time with forecasting and responding to demand years into the future. I don't think such over corrections are a market failure, just a lack of omniscience.
1y ago

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seanmcdirmid 1y ago

Ya, and then people wonder why cars are so expensive to repair these days also. The market is at a breaking point, efficiency has to go along with the higher pay or it just won’t work out.

seemaze 1y ago
I recently acquired a new (to me) 2017 vehicle and took it to my independent mechanic who has been working on my cars for years. He is registered with the mfg. and has access to many of their proprietary diagnostics and tools, but warned me that there is very little he can do on the latest models. They are basically 'return to dealer' because of 'software'.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  It's always been that way with new stuff though. Between exclusivity agreements and whatnot it takes time for the documentation and supplies to be available outside the dealership service supply chain.
  - Scoundreller 1y ago
    Used to be most dealership software tools would work offline because of the global nature of vehicles. Therefore the software tools would leak to the public. Now it’s moving “to the cloud” and that’s getting more complicated.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

X0nic 1y ago

OMG yes. So many people miss this, and many companies don't understand this.

epistasis 1y ago

Generally true, but not always! There are often very real bottlenecks on education too. We need a ton more electricians but it's nearly impossible to get into schools. Or you need union apprenticeships and their are not enough slots. Pay is part of it, but for most skilled professions there's big bottlenecks on the training for the skills. Or look at police officers in places like San Francisco. The pay is actually fantastic but the process of getting hired is hellish and takes a year or something ridiculous. Or doctors, there's a massive shortage because there aren't enough residency spots, something controlled by the AMA. Pay is amazing (hours suck) and there are people clamoring to do it, but the bottleneck is structural, not because of pay.

jarjoura 1y ago
Would you consider the lack of offering apprenticeships to get your trade license or on the job training as more structural or financial? If there is a shortage of something, I would expect these trade companies to backfill with apprentices who will then grow into their roles. If there's too high a risk that someone won't be worth the investment, then that seems entirely financial to me.
- epistasis 1y ago
  I'm using the term "structural" here without any clear definition, to be honest. By it I mean that it's about the structure of society, the relationships that are in place, the difficulty of setting up a new school, the resistance of the AMA to open up more residency spots, etc. Points in the process where there's high friction for changing the system to a better "structure", whether or not the change requires financial incentives. But I don't know if that meaning is shared by anyone else in the world! Thanks for asking for clarification, I'm interested in how you'd communicate that idea.
horsawlarway 1y ago
I'd argue that the "structural" bottleneck is actually just the same "pay" bottleneck. This was the whole issue with allowing guilds in the first place... If you only allow a guild to do a job (legally) and the guild also controls how many members they train and accept... The end result is a labor shortage. Because it's better for the existing members of the guild. If they train a large number of new members... they spend time and money on training, and they've increased their competition during bidding which drives down rates. So instead you train the bare minimum for replacements. This keeps your members' rates high and competition low. --- Any time the "pay is great" but the "process to get it sucks!"... you're seeing this in action. It's not that the process really needs to suck, it's that the process roadblocks are there to maintain high pay for the existing trained members. If there's one thing monopolies don't like... it's competition. And legally enforced certifications are wonderful monopoly creators if you don't manage them carefully.

BirAdam 1y ago

The price will go up as the availability goes down. If you have a shortage of mechanics, each mechanic can raise his/her labor price. So, while you're saying "we can't get <profession> for cheap" this implies a lack of professionals or a structural problem increasing costs in a given industry, or both. In the case of doctors and electricians, you have structural problems in both, but also a true shortage of individuals in electrician work (could be in the medical field too, but I can't speak to that).

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balderdash 1y ago

Sometimes, but I’m intimately familiar with a business that pays people like $20/hr while they’re training them (9mos) - then the pay goes to like $30/hr, and after a few years most of them are making like $90k+/year. No one wants the job because they don’t want to put in the time, and it takes a 2-5 years to for someone to be good at it. My point being is that there are a ton of people that have super short term thinking when it comes to this stuff (like next month not next five year)

sidewndr46 1y ago

Mechanics are one of the few professions in the US where corporate wage suppression is allowed by law. So it actually is a case of having a shortage because they can just move to another industry.

drweevil 1y ago

Very highly paid executive complains because the peasants aren't willing to work for nearly nothing. Where have I heard that before. But Ivanovko brings up a great point: manufacturers are making their products difficult to repair, for a variety of reasons. In this case saving manufacturing costs increases profits, but at the cost to the owner of greater repair costs. Even for simple repairs. (And collision repair costs, ugh!) And that in turn drives up insurance costs. I'm amazed that people can afford today's vehicles.