Labor “shortage”

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Also "this economy is killing me" after they raise their fucking prices 40% in a year...
I've completely abandoned some of my favourite restaurants at this point.
- I feel like it's this rubber band effect where everyone just overshoot everything and now refuses to bring prices down.
- I went from eating out every single day to making everything at home for the last 4 months. Cut back on my food spending by 66%
  
  Fucking grocery prices are up big time too. I like to grill Ribeyes, and the price has almost doubled. Everything has gone up, but like you said, the restaurants are even crazier. $14 at a McDonalds for a skinny guy like me? Fuck that
  
  You too? Door dash was the first to go, now I'd rather make something and know I'm not going to end up throwing out half of a greasy meal. When I broke down my spending several months ago, food was easily one of the biggest expenses that I had control over.

Even at $22, it's not enough to ever buy a house or even rent.
- I know it differs pretty wildly, but in King County Washington (Seattle and Bellevue are here) the median home price (condos included) is $830k. That means you have to earn $184k or $88/hour to afford a home, which is insane.
  
  I got a little inflation story for you ....
  My father bought a house inSan Francisco in 1959 for about $60,000.
  Now it's worth around $4 million.
  And no, I did not benefit from this. He embezzled client money and lost everything, which he richly deserved.
  
  Financial inequality is well documented in the Seattle area and it's sickening. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/in-seattle-were-seeing-the-splitting-of-a-city/ linked census data showing the top 20% made 18 times what the bottom 20% made. I'm not tuned in enough to know what the right path is for Seattle but something needs to be fixed.
  
  That's not how mortgages work...
- Shoot I make roughly 60% more than that and still couldn't buy a house or rent by myself unless I found a house in another state in a town with a population of 200.
  
  Seriously, I finally bought a house, but in a horrible place.
  I couldn't even rent where I used to live.
- I make rent on $20!
  ... in the middle of Nowhere, Iowa
- Depends. In central Europe you can even build/ buy a house with this amount of money with an 20 year loan.
  
  Buying these things is insane for most people.
  In the U.S., the average cost of a house is close to $400,000. This like driving your down payment.

Here in Texas you'll see job posts from one clearly triggered right-wing small business owner paying $7.25 an hour, talking about how if you're working there you're WORKING there followed by a list of like 400 things you'll be doing.
This will be next to a job post from an actually sane individual that's paying more than twice as much for 1/4th of the effort, and you're still being overworked.
They don't want employees, they want indentured servants.
- Wage slavery. It should be illegal to pay a full time employee less than the minimum required amount to live a healthy, fulfilling, dignified life.

Nobody wants to work anymore
- Did anybody ever "want" to work?
  If we lived in a Star Trek style utopia with replicators I wouldn't sit around eating burgers all day and watching TV, but at the same time I wouldn't do the job I currently have.
  
  I mean there is a small percentage of people who genuinely enjoy the rewarding work they do and look forward to waking up every morning to embrace the day.
  But I do agree - sitting around getting drunk and high watching television all day long gets old REAL quick.
  
  I’d do my current job if I could work for like 4 hours a day, 3-4 days per week, and do 1/3 less work per hour.
  
  If I had a say and was doing my career in a rewarding way I’d probably do 5-10 hours a week on average. Just making shit, trying to figure stuff out. And I’d be making everything I design publicly available
  
  I love my job and my work, I just wish doing it for 40 hours per week was enough to live on.
- I always just mentally add a “for me” after “work.”
  
  Or I add "for that wage" sometimes as well! Often interchangeable!
- I do. I like doing my part to help people out with their needs.

The idea of a "labor shortage" is just idiotic. The demand for goods and services is a function of the size of the population, and guess what else is? The size of the labor pool. Really just reinforces proof of how much economic illiteracy is out there.
- No, no, it must be that young people these days are lazy, not that I lack a basic understanding of economics.
- I mean, that assumes all people are equally qualified for all positions doesn't it? If the market demands 500 plumbers but there's only 400 licensed plumbers, I'd call that a labor shortage. Now, hopefully this leads to pay increases for that trade which in turn increases the number of people pursuing it, but the problem does exist for some period of time. I feel like pretending it doesn't belittles the pro worker argument

Something something damn millennials... I mean zoomers no one wants to work. Back in my day we had to walk 10miles up hill both ways to get to work for a dollar an hour and you didn't see me complaining.
- meanwhile they paid $1000 for college and rent was $200
  
  My inlaws paid for their entire university education working a summer job. Madness.
  
  Yeah, I’m hitting them at reality now - paying more for my kid at a small State University, than I paid for Ivy League
  At the time, I could take care of it partly by myself and partly through loans that were easily affordable given my expected pay after graduation. My kid, not so much

The $15.50 guy would have some people lined up. It'd be appealing for people who needed a job short term, quickly, and wanted the decreased competition for it.
Not a bunch of people would be lined up there, but it wouldn't be no one.
- Depends on the job. We have labor positions that pay $18, but demand a little bit of physical labor. It's hard to fill those positions.
  10 years ago, people would line up for that job for less than $10/hr and the work was much, much harder. Something has definitely changed
  When I started with the company in 09, people were coming in during outages and trying to outperform each other so they'd be hired on full-time. But the economy was ass back then and it was hard to find a full-time job at my age
  
  Expenses have changed.
  My apartment I paid $700/month for in 2011 is now over $2000/month.
  When ex to expenses outpace wages more than 2:1, eventually it catches up and people can't afford to live where the work is.
  
  Something has definitely changed
  Ya, the cost of living. If you're offering a wage below the poverty line AND the labour is back breaking, you can't possibly expect positive results.

None of the businesses in my town are offering anything higher than $12 USD an hour and then the managers will try to talk you down from that figure.
- Probably depends on your position and academic background. What are you applying for?
  
  I'm disabled and can't work.

The reality is that the guy on the left is $15.51/hr, then they put "competitive salary!" in the job description

The twist is that that line of people turn down the $22/hr because they found out they can't work from home full time
- I'm having a laugh at the people in our company that are mad about having to come in an extra day per week. During COVID, they'd say, "Suck it up, it's your job," or, "be thankful you have a job," if we complained about all of the OT we were working. We were working 70-80 hours a week during the first few months of COVID.
  Now, we're throwing it back in their faces
  Honestly, I think the company is trying to push out some office workers, and making this new rule is enough to get some people to quit. This way the company doesn't have to give them any compensation when they're laid off
  
  I work in the office 3 days a week voluntarily. A lot of people in my company grunted about coming in 3 days per week starting in Q4 like it's the end of the world. As if their memory pre-covid was somehow erased on how the office life is. I understand the whole WFH thing but you have to give a little back to the company and find some balance. I'd rather be 3 days per week than 5.

60 comments