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ipaddr

People get forced to work in jobs they don't want to all of the time.

The array of possible jobs could be one or none.

If a basic income existed your point could be true. That's not reality today.

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The array of possible unskilled jobs in almost every populated place is almost always >1.

It turns out that Amazon actually competes for labor in a vast market for same. So many people work there because they have to be a better option than most unskilled labor jobs because they have so many packages to deliver.

I’d you don’t have a lot of financial resources, and work a low paid job, you also tend not to have the time resources to explore the option. It comes at a high transaction cost.

My experience with wage workers that are struggling to make ends meet is different. They spend a lot of time looking for better jobs and side gigs. Like, it is their primary focus.

My unwanted opinion on that is their "lot of time" would be better invested in upgrading their skills so they can get a higher paying job.

I believe that in the USA you would have a much harder time finding an able-bodied person who cannot find an available job vs. someone with multiple options. My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor. We are very far away from a jobs crisis.

You can take a job that pays a penny an hour, but you can't live on a job that pays a penny an hour.

No you can’t. That would be illegal.

You can. I will glady pay you 0.01 an hour. I won't hire you as an employee but we'll sign a contract for a fix amount.

> My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor.

If someone said this about employment in software dev there'd be a thousand comments about how there isn't a shortage of labor, just of labor at the price point businesses want to pay.

There's a difference though. The news stories you're reading are about employees that are offering pay that's at a similar rate as unemployment benefits.

Workers are not OK working on slave wages that these employees want to pay them.

This is true for almost all labor "shortages" when there is anything less than full employment. If you struggle to find workers at a given wage, you're not paying enough. It's not like the world is out of people.

A true labor shortage could exist without full employment with ramp up time issues with skilled labor. That also means a shortage across the whole scope not just a single employer. As in "even if you paid a million a year salary you couldn't suddenly get 100 people capable of proficently reading and writing a long dead language when there are only seventeen professors world wide who can". The issues would correct themselves eventually longer term with sustained demand and training though.

> My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor.

Yeah, they can't find enough labor because they want to pay people $15 an hour in an area where the median home price is $572,000. I work in logistics. I occasionally overhear some of executive staff down the hall from my office complain about being unable to keep workers in a non-climate controlled warehouse, lifting enormously heavy things, for 8 hours a day, in one of the richest areas of Texas that isn't Houston or Dallas.

Gee, I can't imagine why people wouldn't want to work in a warehouse in 100 degree F weather, lifting 30-80 lbs. boxes for 8 hours.

So I pulled data on that warehouse and it's location. In-N-Out is hiring just 10 miles away for $16 an hour. Yeah, it's not a great job either, but it's air conditioned. And you won't be lifting anything heavier than a box of fries. Furthermore, the cheapest rent within a 10 mile radius of that warehouse is $1700. Good luck paying that on $15 an hour.

So yeah, I can understand why employers can't find workers...

The market is always a negotiation between buyers and sellers, naturally.

I have for years always gotten emails from recruiters trying to hire me as an FTE for SWE jobs in nothing towns in flyover states at 6x less than what I charge, too. Those positions are similarly unfilled.

People pick their best options available, usually.

If they can't find/keep labor for $15/hour, that means the price for labor in their market is greater than $15/hour. That's a good thing, as that's not true most places on this planet.

Surely it makes no sense to compare the median home price to the lowest paying jobs? We don’t really expect people who earn the least to be buying the median house. (And it’s silly to think that 100% home ownership is some kind of ideal, it has a lot of negative consequences so we’re better off with many people renting).

This claim would be stronger if you compared to the bottom 10% of housing, say.

Not sure what the housing market is where you live, but you can't get a house here, unless you make an offer 35% over asking and have cash on hand. Could you get a house for < million? Perhaps but it'll be "a fixer upper" to put it humorously. You're more likely looking at a trailer, and those have 5 year waiting period.

You understand that this is very unusual right? I mean, mere seconds of googling can show you that the average house price in the U.S. is about 270K, not 570K, and the average purchase price is not 35% over-asking unless there is a sudden epidemic of people under-asking and misvaluing their own homes.

> where the median home price is $572,000

Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to inflate the prices to this insanity.

So asset inflation is eventually going to make impact on labor prices and cause inflation. Then is why FED so cocksure that inflation is no big deal.

>So yeah, I can understand why employers can't find workers...

I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more and pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping them.

> Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to inflate the prices to this insanity.

We've been printing trillions over the past 15 years or so. And we've disproportionately accumulated it at the top (including the audience here, although the top 1% and 0.1% are doing even better than that). That money has to go somewhere. Traditional conservative investments have low rates of return right now - think low interest rates - and housing has historically been seen as "safe". And it's providing fantastic returns.

Take COVID - nobody wants to move, so housing supply is low. Tight supply is just exacerbating an existing issue, especially sharply over the past year.

Totally anecdotal: I just moved from SF to Seattle, somewhat related to my job. We were outbid half a dozen times, often by cash offers. I remember one of them in particular, because we got beat way over asking by a cash buyer, and it was rented on Zillow the week after closing. Housing is an asset class, not a place we live.

> I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more and pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping them.

Passing costs onto consumers is a bit of a lie used to scare consumers into opposing wage increases. You can only pass on so much cost, and it depends in part on the elasticity of demand for your product.

Anyhow, employers generally can pay more, but they are optimizing for their shareholders and return on equity. That's going pretty well if you look at the market. But that's why the market isn't reflective of the economy as a whole.

100% this. Quantitative easing basically caused epic asset inflation- great for the capital owning class, but royally fucking over the poors and young workers.

In Seattle back in the day a teacher could own a house in the city and pay it off without a sweat. Nowadays, unless you are a doctor or software engineer or patent lawyer it's kind of ludicrous idea.

"Take COVID - nobody wants to move, so housing supply is low."

I was under the impression that lots of people wanted to move out of the cities both because the high population of cities made living in them much riskier than living in more rural/suburban areas in terms of infection risk for COVID, and because with the economy hurting from COVID-related lockdowns living in cities (especially expensive ones like SF) was much less affordable.

Maybe, but I suspect those are mostly renters moving out. SF single family housing supply was also fairly tight - didn’t seem like that was who was leaving. We were renters so it wasn’t too hard to bail.

> > where the median home price is $572,000

> Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to inflate the prices to this insanity.

This area of Texas is not well-known to most people. It's a bit of a well-kept secret. While Austin is new money and trendy, and Dallas is cosmopolitan, this area of Texas is old... old money.

> I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more and pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping them.

Our company not only has two nationwide competitors, we have significant regional competitors across America, and on top of that, we're having to fight Amazon as well.

I get CC'ed and BCC'ed on most shifts in company policies because it can directly affect logistics and I need to be able to actively work around or with these policies, and things are getting so crazy that Directors of Operations at each warehouse are being tasked with asking low-level warehouse employees to clock out 15 minutes early each day just to avoid any possibility of overtime.

Obviously this creates logistics problems because when a warehouse fills up, you can't send any more stock from suppliers there. So I've had to fold COVID-19 absentee reports into our data analysis, because the loss of productivity from workers can directly affect storage space. For instance, one warehouse currently has three people out with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, but we contact traced another seven people between those three, so that's 10 workers out, 3 of which for at least a few weeks, possibly months. The other 7 until they're cleared by medical doctors. That could mean roughly a 30% reduction in ability to process merchandise at that location for up to a week or two, and around an 8% decline for several weeks or months.

So we can't pass the cost on to consumers because why would you buy a headlamp assembly for your Audi A6 from us for $479 when you can get it from Amazon for $382?

I think the question "why employers cant simply pay more and pass on the costs to their consumers" was rhetorical. Of course most employers cannot do this because their competitors will undercut them. They can only do it for costs that are imposed on all players, like government mandated minimum wage.

And I would bet you a week's pay the "job creators" who are complaining they can't find people willing to work for peanuts doing backbreaking miserable labor are the first to claim "we're full, no more immigrants!" to the US when there are plenty of folks in neighboring countries willing to work these jobs and pay taxes...

> are the first to claim "we're full, no more immigrants!"

You are wrong. businesses are primary drivers of illegal immigration into the country they want more immigrants not less.

They want more immigrants, and yet they support Republicans which massively slashed legal immigration the last time they controlled the government?

The type of jobs GP is referring to are dependent on illegal immigrants which was not reduced under last admin.

I'm not sure how that refutes my point that there are millions of people south of the border willing to work these backbreaking jobs for low pay if only our government could come up with some sensible immigration bill.

That these same people also exploit undocumented people is a separate issue. Give them papers and you'll have no problem finding jobs!

> I'm not sure how that refutes my point

I am refuting your point that people complaining about labor shortages shouldn't be voting republican. Which doesn't make sense because these ppl want

1. low regulation, taxes and lax labor laws.

2. availability of immigrants.

GOP provides both of these. Why would they care if ppl working for them are illegal or on h2 visa.

> Give them papers and you'll have no problem finding jobs!

Trump admin increased h2 visas despite what you are claiming. We had the highest number of h2 visas allocated under Trump and Bush and lowest under Obama admin. Obama slashed these visas by half from bush era. Most of the resistance to seasonal visas comes from democrat voting unions who lobby against these visas. They lobbied obama govt to slash those visas under the guise of protecting their local union memebers.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/biden-agenc...

Check these numbers for yourself here

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/FY08-A...

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual...

Trump increased h2 and then banned them after Covid so he could demagogue about brown people spreading disease.

Seems an important fact that's left out here!

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/president-trump-extends-ba...

But yes your larger point that Republicans are fine with migrants they can exploit for a few years as long as they can make sure they "go back to their country" is well taken!

Relatively few people object to sensible immigration policies. What they object to is undocumented hoards of people flooding across the borders.

You are confused by the fact that both parties SAY one thing about immigration and DO another.

This "both sides" nonsense is complete fiction.

There was a BIPARTISAN senate immigration reform bill that passed the senate in 2013. THIRTEEN Republicans voted for it and every Democrat and independent did.

It went to the house and died there because the Republican majority leader Boehner knew it would pass and refused to let it be voted on. He was beholden to the most xenophobic, bigoted Republicans in his caucus and thought they would vote him out of leadership if he let it pass. He ended up losing his job anyways shortly thereafter for other reasons.

Now the entire Republican party is beholden to the xenophobic bigots and I guarantee you the exact same bill wouldn't find more than 2 votes from a Republican in the senate.

So no, there is no "both sides" here. Democrats have been remarkably consistent about what an immigration compromise looks like, and even were able to pass it in the senate 7-8 years ago, only to be blown up by the Tea Party ur-Trumpists. The GOP has only moved further to the right and will never support anything close to that.

> Yeah, they can't find enough labor because they want to pay people $15 an hour in an area where the median home price is $572,000.

No, as in, can't find skilled labor for a good salary. The notion that only unskilled labor is sought after is incorrect. Good people are always hard to find. Smart people are always hard to find. But most workers are average, and it is hard to find a job that can support a half million mortgage for the worker who is average.

What is also true is that there is skilled labor in shrinking industries and that labor is not easy to transfer to other skilled industries. You can take a smart person in logistics and convert them into a highly sought after programmer with enough time and the right attitude, but if you already have a family then you can't handle the dip. Skill mismatch is a real problem, particularly given our penchant for outsourcing. But I don't see why meeting the mortgage needs of half million dollar homes should be the yardstick by which you judge a labor market.

Do they mention that pay will be rising to attract more able-bodied people?

Let us know if it's still an issue after the pay increases and work condition perks increased?

What they are not raising wages? Was the article looking at justifying some political point of view?

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