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Comment by exmadscientist | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: if these jobs are so awful, and they do sound awful, why are people taking them?

I can think of several possible answers, but I haven't the faintest clue which ones are (most) right.

Because the American middle class has been eviscerated by globalization, pandemic, etc and these are the best, er least bad, jobs available to many of them. They don’t have any leverage or bargaining power, collective or individual.

+1 I have long been saying that part of why American jobs are so bad is because people keep taking them. Of course, this does ignore the realities of why they keep taking them.

Getting people to a place where they can say "No" to a bad deal should be a major goal for progressives and conservatives alike because it fits their model of how the world works -- progressives want people to have the stability of life and "good jobs" and conservatives like it when market forces are reasonably at play (enough workers are saying "no" to bad jobs and "yes" to good jobs)

im not sure how minimum wage workers are being branded middle class here. These are minimum wage workers. unfortunately they will have less choices through lack of education and opportunity.

Many of these minimum wage workers used to be blue collar workers making more than minimum wage and solidly middle-class. Then, en-masse their jobs got exchange-rate arbitraged (outsourced) to slave labor overseas making pennies an hour.

Keep in mind only 30% of the US population has a college degree, much less a graduate degree. More and more of that 70% are falling out of the middle class and struggling to survive.

Not everyone can be a professional. Companies like Amazon, Walmart and Monsanto squeeze out “mom and pop stores” so they can no longer compete and end up working for the man.

The prospects of low-skill American workers have been devastated by globalization, mass immigration from countries with lower standards of living, the destruction of unions, and the centralization of business into huge corporations.

They have extremely low bargaining power against their bosses when ten people are scrambling to happily take their job after they're fired. Most other jobs are equally bad, so while they can leave it's often trading one bad job for another.

...because most people don't get to be picky about their jobs. They take whatever they can get. Especially during a pandemic / economic crisis.

Even before the pandemic there were lines worth of people entering on these low quality jobs, this is not a consequence of the pandemic itself, it has just further highlighted the issue of service based economies and poorer wages/standard of living for working class people in higher income countries

Because both parties -- whatever their outward platform is -- have sold out the working class over time. This leaves the working class with few options, especially in geographies w/o a deep pool of jobs.

People are taking these jobs because it is the least worst job.

The vast majority of people need to work whatever job pays best. Gotta step out of that overpaid web dev bubble.

Because people have bills to pay.

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