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Comment by listless | Hacker News Reader

I have at least 3 friends who were working retail jobs who were on unemployment for over a year. 1 has gone back to work. 2 still milk it. They just figured out how to live VERY modestly. It’s mostly trailers and video games.

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Trailers and video games sounds preferable to any type of "customer is always right" retail job. Retail jobs are abusive and cause depression. They are not viable careers. I too would live on the poverty line before returning to that life.

Easy solution: pay more. Easy to get people to go back if they get paid well enough! At some point, the employer will find enough people to go back to work - and that point is what (economically) the job is worth. A lot of people realized their number is higher than they thought because their alternative was not as bad as they thought.

It's still a dead end job though. Even if it pays $100k/yr, if that's all it'll ever be, it's just not worth if the alternative is something with an actual career path.

If retail paid well, even if it was still a dead end unto itself, would allow people to save money. They would have options. Retail is a dead end job and barely pays above poverty level. They usually don't get any healthcare coverage either. Unless a retail worker is lucky or lives like a monk it's hard to make enough money to ever get ahead. One bad illness or injury can ruin them financially.

Retail could be a starting point for someone. It doesn't have to be a career. But with low wages and no benefits it's usually just enough to keep someone barely living.

Considering the median wage in the US is around 35k, a 100k "dead end" job sounds pretty good.

It also doesn't remotely sound "dead end" to me at all. That leaves you set for life; you're better off than most people. And if your partner also works ...!!

Any job making $100k/yr isn't "dead end". You don't need a career path because you've already reached the end of it. You can live quite comfortably almost anywhere in the US at that salary and thus need no further advancement. If $100k counts as "dead end" by your definition, then your definition is useless. What number would you put as the threshold if not $100k, or even something below it?

Spoken like a true tech elite. Most of the country would kill to get a “100k a year dead end job”.

I agree, but on the flip side, these guys aren’t doing anything to better themselves. They can’t hold down relationships and they wouldn’t be able to support a family anyway.

I don’t think this is the kind of behavior we want to incentivize. But you are right - we have GOT to bring some jobs back that pay a decent wage.

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