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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

If you recall a few years ago, Amazon raised wages to a $15 an hour and some said that this wasn't a move made out of altruism like they claimed, but instead due to the work conditions of their warehouses. In the last few months other large firms have offered wages in excess of $15 per hour, the Wal-Mart local to me has huge banners all over the store offering $17.75 for example. It appears that those who doubted the largesse of Amazon have been proven right. Amazon is probably going to need to move to $20-$25 given how demanding they are.

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HEB (Texas grocery chain rated among the top in the country) here is advertising warehouse jobs at 17.50

I think the real loser here ends up being restaurants wondering why they can't get people for 2.15+tips

Good.

That's a bad comparison though. Warehouse work is hard hard work, much harder than being a server. It's also a matter of where these warehouses are.

Back when I was in college I took a job as a stock clerk at Publix, I got paid more than some supervisors ($12/hr in 2015), but my god was that the hardest job I've ever had. You're basically lifting for 6-8hrs straight.

At some restaurants you’d be worse off but those tips add up. Presuming you get 15% all you’d need to do is $100 served in an hour to catch up. Obviously there are fast and slow times but at a reasonably busy place you’re probably coming out ahead. Not to mention servers collect most of that tax free when they shouldn’t.

I heard a report on NPR a few weeks ago where they were lamenting how much servers make and we’re basing their data on reported income to the IRS. Hah.

>Not to mention servers collect most of that tax free when they shouldn’t.

I believe servers get taxed at a certain rate regardless of if they actually make the tip. It's assumed they will make $x in tips so they are taxed for $x regardless of if they made that or not. They get hosed on both sides (employers and government).

I worked in the restaurant industry for a decade. People like to point to waitstaff having it rough but on a typical night they take home considerably more than the back of the house as well as pay little to no tax on cash tips. There is no special tax that I'm aware of to prevent that tax evasion.

In an area where basic retail wages ~$10/hr with some experience, my no wife with no experience was netting $15-20+/hr after tips. This is despite her scumbag employer making her work an hour before and after service prepping and cleaning the dining area.

I was working 2x 20hr/week jobs and making less than her working a Fri/Sat/Sun..

Yup! My family owns a restaurant, and I can confirm this is true in my area (northeast US). My sister worked as a server for a summer (2017, or thereabouts), and averaged about $46 an hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it helped that she was young, attractive, and witty. When I served, I made about $30 per hour (not-unattractive male). Sex sells, as she used to quip- it's true, there's also a gender-based component to it.

Anyway, most of that in principle was cash tips. She was young enough where she was getting all of her tax back anyway, but I do know many people who underreport the tips they receive.

That may be true but things are very very unpredictable right now (and will be for a while).

People are not willing (apparently) to give up a sure-thing like high-paying fulfillment work or enhanced unemployment benefits in exchange for an unstable position like making $2/hr and hoping patrons throw money at them.

Restaurants have to pay $15-$20 an hour to have a consistent and reliable workforce in the current market.

Ultimately, it's inflation. Despite bogus numbers that make it look low (driven by cheap foreign-made consumer goods) the cost of the things people can't avoid paying for (housing, health care) keeps shooting up. People can't continue to work for low wages and keep paying the bills.

Megacorps like Amazon can whine as much as they want that they're "running out" of employees, but the solution is obvious: just raise wages. Once big employers like Amazon start feeling this squeeze enough, they'll start passing the costs on to consumers, and eventually even those Chinese imports will start becoming more expensive. Once that happens, it becomes impossible to pretend that inflation is not real.

Have you heard of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_share though? There is no law that all wage change is accounted for in productivity change and inflation.

Plus, recall Keynesian feedback loops that more wages will unlock more consumption -> more wages. So increasing the wage share can even make the rich better off, unless the rich cruely only care about their power relative to the poor.

I think this upward pressure in wages may also be a reaction to unemployment benefits paying out at a better rate than usual. You can't just pay at parity with unemployment to entice people on unemployment to work for you. It's not a new minimum wage, but if federal unemployment is of the opinion that you should be getting paid around $15 an hour and will put its money where its mouth is, then you as an employer need to accommodate for that. (To clarify I think this is a good thing)

Anecdata: At a McDonalds in an urban center in Colorado they're offering minimum 17.25.

Current unemployment rate is at 5.8% as of last month. Down from nearly 15% during the pandemic. I've read it's because the pandemic forced people to look for other jobs (like call centers) and they are actually better off. I'm sure it's a multitude of things.

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