Offer more money. That’s the entire solution. These people didn’t become ghosts. If there’s no supply of labor at the price you’re offering, then increase the price.
Good Bosses
Stable CAREERS (regular, predictable, hours; real advancement, a career path)
Maybe a strong union that's worth joining. Rail probably has one of these, but a Barista probably doesn't (and should).
Government Engineering has been a giant sucking sound of retirements. The knowledge loss is crazy. Larry even tried to quit so they dropped his targets and increased his pay.
Or am I missing some more sophisticated angle?
Means the same thing.
The percent of the population working a job has dropped 6‰ since a peak in 2000.
If you can't pay people a wage to match how bad the job you want them to do is, your business shouldn't exist
I fully agree that some jobs aren't worth doing at a given price. But this is all relative to someone's next best option. You have take both sides of the decision into account and there are more factors at play.
Of course some business models are unsustainable. That said, I think it is dishonest to claim people are finding better pay elsewhere.
If people think they can have a better life by not working at all, I think it is relevant to discuss why that is the case and if that is problem that needs to be discussed.
But I don't think that's what the "your business should not exist if you can't pay!" people actually mean.
I agree you certainly wouldn't want to lower your expected profits just to have more employees.
"Labor shortage" frames the issue in a way that faults workers, not the business.
I've never thought of that as assigning fault to either engineers or employers. More how non economists describe demand being stronger than supply.
If that is how some people are actually reading it, I understand the confrontational responses more, though!
Even Wal-Mart who is often seen as being in an ultra low profit margin industry, has over 2.3m employees and yet could have paid each one an additional $7,000 just from profit in a given year.
The job itself is not easy and the locations (as mentioned in a different thread) aren't in the most desirable locations. Typically you're working outside, you have to deal with seniority when getting shifts (which eventually does pay off if you stick with it), and you'll be dealing with the NSTB if anything goes wrong.
This is entirely a quality of work/throw cash at it problem. If you can't make the job better ("You'll be on call all week and will have to report within 3 hours notice if we call you at any time of the day to ride around in a port-a-potty in all the weather") then you better pay up.
(See also the labor shortage in the trucking industry if you were considering other modes of shipping)
So I think in this particular case, it's pretty fair to disregard their complaints about "labor shortages". I also doubt they're competing with Silicon Valley for IT talent, for example, so their labor costs shouldn't be anything out of the ordinary.
Your criticism would be more valid when it comes to restaurant business, where margins are slim and companies are small, and less able to weather economic pitfalls.
I do hear it a lot of "your business should not exist!" for working class enterprises like restaurants.
Companies without infinite money should be making up the difference by offering other things, like flexible hours
Not sure the company could pay enough to keep from having a "shortage" and still stay profitable.
I guess that improves margins, but I also wonder how much work/profit they throw away by becoming more hostile to their customers.
It's worked out well for the shareholders anyway.
Unlike a ship, trains get broken up and re-assembled regularly on long journeys, so you might draw the short end of the scheduling stick.
That said… I have also never met a group that complains more ore talks about how much money they make.
That said… I have also never met a group that complains more (about everything) or talks more about how much money they make.
They pay lip service to free market ideals when it's beneficial to do so, but as soon as the free market means they need to pay more for labor, well, they offshore what they can and then complain of a skills gap or a labor gap.
It's actually just a "5 years experience university educated and willing to work for peanuts" shortage.
A lot of these companies are liars masquerading as if they can't find people. There are people who are applying, but HR is choosier than most even in the CS field. I really don't get it. Also, many factories do shady garbage where you go through temp-to-hire agencies, promising getting hired on after 90-120 days, then hold you on the leash for 12 months and not hire you.
All these companies can suck it. They absolutely deserve the "shortage" they've created. Most people end up wanting to go to retail or get a degree because they're sick of being treated like a literal personal labor slave who honestly is more likely to be fired on a whim than the average office worker. General labor working conditions are at rock bottom. We traded excessive safety for being treated like robots. Ever tried talking to someone for fun at a factory full of temp-to-hires? You don't exactly get to know anybody. So the system is devised to treat you as a robot. If robot-38273 does not perform, decommission them and get a new robot.
CS field has been famously short on labour for decades. Wouldn't we expect them to be less choosy?
That is the level of pettiness general labor jobs are at. I've had several interviews and never had a drug addiction, willing to work for damn peanuts and they still wouldn't give me a job. I'm not saying I was a perfect candidate, but for real, getting a general labor was way harder than it was to do white collar jobs. Companies just don't hire anybody at those salaries. Then they complain when they only get people who can't pass a drug test. Yeah cause they quite literally are the only people in the world willing to put up with your BS as an employer right now.
Or the best part, these companies are in garbage cities nobody wants to live in anymore. I'm sorry, but a single walmart and 5 fast food restaurants does not make a desirable place to live.
And my point was that companies hiring programmers put up with much more bullshit from the likes of me, because they have to, if they want to hire enough people.
Programmers are coddled.
I have never had to do a drug test for work (though I never worked in the US). And most of people in software that I know would avoid places where they would have to take a drug test, just out of general principle. (Unless the money was really good, of course.)
Workers in most other industries have it much, much harder. Just as you describe!
An economy in which there are a large number of job openings, with fair pay, that are in such legitimate demand that they offer training and other incentives, AND receive a sufficient number of capable applicants, yet never end up being filled.
It’s not that the positions aren’t really needed, or that the job listings are an excuse to hire cheaper, less qualified labor. The jobs just go unfulfilled, and actual business opportunities get left behind.
I don’t get it, but it’s a real phenomenon that doesn’t get enough attention.
The companies advertising the job then use those as leverage to hire an overseas candidate (immigration backdoor). The company always cry labour shortage and dismiss local candidates.
In the scam, the company brings a foreigner on a special visa (usually highly skilled visa, candidate may not have those skills but no matter). The company pays they foreigner the high salary with the condition that the immigrant pay the money back under the table (and don't talk).
In some cases the jobs advertised are not real. They are a front, once the foreign candidate arrives, they are assigned work in a completely different low skilled job for their employer (but have a fancy job title) and are happy to do that for a long game shot at residency.
That's the beauty of a free market: it works even if the participants don't support it. Competition forces people to do the Right Thing.
Alas, enough people need to support free markets politically, otherwise it gets eroded over time.
Actually, that's the beauty of a well-regulated market.
Entrenched monopolies don't compete; they collude. See for example the Canadian telecom market which is under-regulated and thoroughly corrupt.
It's really hard to keep up a monopoly without legal protection.
If you are concerned, there's a relatively simple key-hole solution for migration: just auction off visas to the highest bidders, and distribute the proceeds amongst existing voters.
Nearly 90% of farm workers are immigrants[1]. That has, at most, "a minor effect on wages"? I'm extremely skeptical of that.
1 - https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/about-farmworker-justice/w...
Farmers would switch to less labour intensive crops, eg wheat instead of fruit, and make slightly less money.
Migrant's basically 'create' their own farmworker jobs. Those jobs wouldn't exist without them.
Researchers have looked at the effect of migration on wages. Just ask your favourite search engine for 'migration and wages' (or similar terms), and see many papers.
Eg https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2017/does-immigration... or https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/th... or https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-th... or https://www.oecd.org/els/42365109.pdf (just to give the top results I get from Google).
Basically, the papers say that the effect is probably zero, or at most very small.
So something you could relatively easily compensate existing workers (or voters) for, by laying a fee or tax on the migrants.
https://www.aar.org/article/mexican-crew-interchange/
Trucking doesn't work like this at all. A Canadian can drive a load down them self (or as a team of two) from Montreal to Houston, and pick up a return load in Memphis to drop off in Toronto.
Evidently you have not visited a lumberyard in 2021...
Yes, lumber has shot up, but that is a function of supply and demand, not inflation. Demand went through the roof, supply was constrained, prices rose, and are now falling, although there is still backlog and so prices remain high.
Supply and demand pricing is not inflation, it is the Free Market in action in all of its glory.
But lots of things are going up in price [1]. Lumber makes the best anecdote because it's a tangible commodity that everybody has bought at some point (and many buy semi-regularly), and it can't be blamed on semiconductor shortages. Not even with Deere's silly LTE-enabled feller-bunchers.
Also, unlike so many other industries, it makes no sense for forestland owners to take a hit to their profits in order to not "lose customers". Firstly, it's a commodity. But more importantly, they need to use those dollars they earn at the sawmill today to plant, manage, and maintain roads (expensive!) to a crop that won't come to market for another fifty years. This is especially true when they decide (always with trepidation) to accelerate the cycling of a few years' worth of land, as Rayonier has just done during the past month. Accelerating X years of harvest means making a bet that you know what the next X years of inflation look like. The futures markets' liquidity depth is nowhere near sufficient to hedge the amount of harvest acceleration that homebuilders are clamoring for.
That's why they are a canary in the coalmine for sudden and non-transient inflation.
I'm sure Janet Yellen will downvote this comment.
[1] https://nyts.link/https:/www.wsj.com/articles/whirlpool-cons...
The guy that predicted the 2008 housing crash (the guy from the movie) rang alarm bells earlier in the year on twitter that the US is headed for hyper inflation. That was until the SEC paid him a visit and he deleted his twitter.
If you want, go on youtube, type 'inflation 2021', adjust your portfolio.
August 11 is the date this will all hit the fan as July's numbers will be out.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/what-is-inflation/
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111314/what-causes-...
(Just to be clear, by inflation I mean an increase in the general price level. Not the enlargement of the stock of money itself.)