Hacker News Reader

Comment by yepthatsreality | Hacker News Reader

Sure but this goes beyond restaurants in my opinion. Look at these states that had mass migration of people during the pandemic. You will find the (big) sky-rocketing cost of living where those who are moving in on a whim are also not seeking jobs in the state. However all these businesses need employees to handle the new increase in customers. The employers aren’t raising their wages either, which is also not attracting people to work. When the lower classes are forced to move elsewhere (Outside the cities) then this problem will get worse.

Return to office might have some reverse effect but online remote employees can be one of the biggest generators of this problem.

View on HN

This is exactly it. This is a second order effect of the pandemic flight, not a "restaurant" thing at all. People facing long term unemployment/underemployment over the past year had huge incentives to "move back home" (or wherever) to places with lower cost of living.

And who feels that pressure the most? Service workers, who had jobs in the cities, sure, but didn't reap any of the economic benefits of all that urban wealth concentration. They're overrepresented in the population who fled, which means their jobs are now underserved.

Long term, this will probably just be viewed as a correction to a few overpopulated urban cores. We'll find equilibrium again, though not at the same state as before.

But regardless, the fix here is the same: pay more for the jobs and you'll find people willing to do them.

> The employers aren’t raising their wages either

They are. It takes time but they are. I work in a business that is having a hard time hiring entry level healthcare workers because Walmart and Amazon warehoueses is now paying $15-20/hr when it was only $12 pre-covid. Walmart and Amazon would only raise wages if they truly had a labor supply issue, which they do, we all do.

Walmart and Amazon raising wages allows them to exercise their huge scale to further crush their competitors.

With their huge efficiencies of scale and deep cash reserves, they are better able to offer higher wages than competitors. During the pandemic, both Walmart and Amazon have seen huge growth. They can continue this growth post-pandemic by squeezing their competitors on wages, and eventually emerging with less competitors.

Being able to be more efficient and pass down savings to low prices and higher worker wages seem like a good thing.

Until there is only Walmart and Amazon left.

It isn't hard to start a new business. There are a ton off niches that Walmart and Amazon don't server well. Find one and serve it, then use profits to expand into the much larger (though lower margin!) areas that Walmart or Amazon serve. Good luck - it is not easy to run a business.

Just wait until either Amazon or Walmart or both block your account for reasons.

No soup for you.

I'm skeptical that you can build a profitable competitor by reselling amazon/walmart.

If Amazon or Walmart is part of your plan you need a better plan. Try selling oil well drilling supplies in oil country (I have family doing this, and they have cornered thus niche, so don't try that exactly, but it is the type of thing. They make it because they have in stock the special parts needes for that niche and Walmart won't)

lol it’s not hard to start in tech with no regulation no capital or overhead. Real businesses are hard to start and live and die by the cost of financing

> Walmart and Amazon raising wages allows them to exercise their huge scale to further crush their competitors.

Sounds like they're in a no win situation.

If they don't raise wages: "boo they're paying their workers slave wages!"

If they do raise wages: "boo they're using their huge scale to further crush their competitors!"

Amazon/Walmart are capable of raising wages to add more/retain employees. Other smaller business aren't able to adjust as quickly, thus the big box stores take on way more workers. If everyone raised wages at the same time (a la minimum wage increase or otherwise), then Amazon nor Walmart would look like that much of a better place to work, eliminating the "boo they're using their huge scale to further crush their competitors."

But what would prevent Amazon/Walmart to raise wages even more? That is what they are doing now, right?

> raise wages even more?

Nothing, good point.

> That is what they are doing now, right?

I haven't seen that near where I live (in the US) though I wouldn't doubt there are a number of locations experiencing that.

I do see a bit of improvement. CVS starts out at $15/hr. I have a feeling that is only in certain zip codes?

Kroger decided to close a store because it didn't want to pay a covid front line temporary increase of $4/hr.

I don't see a big increase in wages, and I work a lot of lousy jobs.

If job conditions were a bit better, a lot of employees will stay at a low paying job because they actually like their fellow employees, and sometimes the job.

I don't know why being nice/respectful is so out of fashion in corporate america?

I grocery shop at Safeway, and The Nugget markets. Safeway employees hate their job. They even have a hard time retaining new immigrants. When I shop at Safeway, I sometimes need to move to another line if I feel the checker is having a bad day. (I overheard an employee state a manager wanted him at a store 70 miles away at 5 am the next day, and he told that manager he didn't have transportation other than the bus. I wanted to grab the phone and lay into that "Manager".)

As opposed to The Nugget, which is notated as one of the best 100 places to work. It's like going back to the fifties. The employees are nice. It might be they hire people whom will have better jobs one day?

Anyways, it's not just about wage. I have had lousy low paid jobs I liked, and well paid union jobs I despise.

> Kroger decided to close a store because it didn't want to pay a covid front line temporary increase of $4/hr.

If you're talking about Seattle, Kroger closed that store because it was underperforming for years, not because of a temporary wage increase that affected every grocery store in the city. Weeks later, they started advertising open positions with wage increases for nearby stores they didn't close...

When it comes to political decisions, firms lie all the time about their motivations. I don't understand how anyone can take what they say at face value, without any means to verify their claims.

The reality is that nobody closes their grocery business because labour costs went up for them and their competitors. Customers still need groceries to live, and you and your competitors just pass the costs directly to them, without any change to profit margins or market share. Closing your grocery over this is as nonsensical as closing your grocery because the spot price of milk went up to $15/gallon.

> When it comes to political decisions, firms lie all the time about their motivations

Of course they're not going to say "we're closing because we don't want to pay our employees a decent wage", that would be bad optics. You can be pretty sure that if you ask employees at the store, they'll say that whatever the stated reason, the intended message from the parent company is "we ain't gonna pay you more".

No, every employee was offered transfers to nearby stores, which were all paying the higher rate.

Kroger also elected to close three locations in Los Angeles rather than hike their employees' pay $5/hr in accordance with a new (temporary) hazard pay during covid.

It gets argued again and again that the profit incentive is necessary for cutting inefficiencies, and looking at it from Kroger's perspective, this appears to be another such example. Yet this is only the case for Kroger - when considered in its full context, as a supplier of necessities for working class folks, it's the total opposite. It's the composition fallacy at work: just because companies with a profit motive evolve to cut inefficiencies wherever possible (such as by externalizing costs) does not mean that society as a whole reaps the same benefits.

I'm curious where in the US are healthcare workers getting less than $15/hr and what kind of work it is. Even the sort of jobs that require no certification, no degree, and no experience seem to pay quite a bit more than that.

EMTs make a pittance. Last time I looked it was something like $12-15/hr.

Possibly home-care workers, people who look after invalids with the type of arrangement where they drive to several different houses and provide a couple of hours of care at each. It doesn't require any particular qualification, but it's difficult and draining work that is not usually well-paid.

https://work.chron.com/much-hospital-orderlies-make-per-hour...

> Salary and Years of Experience

> Based on the May 2017 salary information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), orderlies make a median wage of $13.07 an hour or $27,180 a year. Half of orderlies receive more, and half make less. The lowest-paid 10 percent make less than $9.73 an hour or $20,240 a year, while the highest-earning 10 percent get over $19.52 an hour or $40,610 a year. Orderlies employed in psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals are paid the highest average wage of $17.21 an hour or $35,800 a year. Nursing care facilities pay one of the lowest average wages of $12.00 an hour or $24,950 a year.

> Wages often start out low for entry-level orderlies and grow with experience. Some orderlies complete additional training and state requirements to advance to higher paid nursing assistant or registered nursing roles. In July 2018, PayScale.com showed this hourly pay progression by experience for nurse aides, orderlies and attendants:

> 0 to 5 years: $8.19 - $15.24

> 5 to 10 years: $8.28 - $15.83

> 10 to 20 years: $8.84 - $17.16

> 20 or more years: $8.73 - $20.00

EMTs and paramedics.

Often working 24, 36 or even 48 hour shifts.

Often for $15/hr or less (many places will pay EMTs literally minimum wage, and tell their employees, "you can have as much OT as you want").

Part of it is supply and demand. Private EMS is often an in-road or holding pattern to a more "cushy" unionized fire department EMS position (where firefighter paramedics can make into the six digits). So private EMS has little motivation to be competitive - "there's a line of 21 year olds who will happily take your job".

We pay CNA's $12/hr in some markets. Their job is like daycare but geriatrics instead of toddlers. It's a lot of hands on service on both ends of the gastrointestinal tract. There are RN's around in fewer numbers that earn more and do the actual clinical parts.

everything about that analysis of the situation is backwards.

the problem is the restaurants are seeing fewer customers due to the pandemic so they can't raise wages, while the upper 1/4 or so of the population hasn't been financially impacted by the pandemic and housing and rents have continued to climb. restaurants can't raise prices in this situation and they can't raise wage, which squeezes the workers who are now not putting up with it any more.

return to work means continued increase in housing prices and if restaurants fully open they're going to have to pay more and that means that those wage and rent increases for the businesses will have to get passed on as rising prices.

if there's a switch to remote work then that will make cities more livable again at current wage costs and menu pricing. you lose some disposable income from the seriously high wage earners that have left the city, but they'll mostly take the distortion of the housing market with them while the bulk of the population that makes less than $150k will have more left out of salaries to eat out at the restaurants.

short term the effect of popping housing bubbles would be recessionary, of course, but it'd act more like Volker's popping of the 70s stagflation bubble, give it 5 years and the "new normal" of consistent housing prices would take over.

With the SV housing prices what they are, seems like a hourly worker can't possibly afford a reasonable place to raise a family. Maybe they will end up paying restaurant workers a "hazard" wage and treat it like working on an oil rig. Do a tour of duty for a month at a time, go back to family in a not-insane location.

This was already happening with gig workers. I've met several drivers who were sharing a hotel room with a bunch of friends in SF for a week or two to try to earn as much as possible before returning home.

Long story short, Covid lock downs were the most idiotic, short sighted policy of the last 100 years.

The local DQ sign says $16/hr all positions, so yeah I think they are.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com