Comment by aerosmile | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aerosmile | Hacker News Reader

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As a European, I was also surprised to find out that the US has a very low unemployment rate compared to what I am used to. Then I moved to the US, and on a few occasions found myself in a position to be able to consider hiring a lot of people very quickly (and hence taking on a substantial amount of risk, both for the company and those employees). I can definitely tell you that if the US had the same workers rights as Europe, I wouldn't have hired nearly as many people - not even close, less than half for sure. In one instance it was the wrong call to hire so quickly, and all other instances it was the right call and generated value for both sides.

I know that in Europe you can let people go if the company is experiencing financial difficulties and all that, but there's no question that the commitment to any new European employee you hire is higher than in the case of their US counterpart. And it would be foolish to assume that by increasing the decisioning barrier there wouldn't be some kind of an action-reaction happening in the market. As an employer, you never have 100% certainty that a new initiative will pay off - there's always this doubt in the back of your mind. Well, if the cost of failure is higher in one case than another, you are simply going to initiate fewer bets and will also give fewer people an opportunity to benefit from them (and those bets that you do initiate, you will approach more carefully and with fewer people).

Does this explain the entire gap in unemployment? Of course not. But I really do think it is a factor. So what's better - a bulletproof job that fewer people have, or a more risky proposition that more people can get access to? I don't think I have an answer to this, but I certainly don't think that the answer is always in increasing the decisioning barriers.

This perceived gap in unemployment needs some actual sources.

Unemployment in northern Europe is lower than in comparable places in the US with the same labour rights.

I can imagine unemployment in Southern Europe to be higher, but I am curious what you think you are comparing.

Here is something else to think about: it's safer to hire Americans because they will work 60 hours a week, never take a sick day, won't get pregnant and even if you give them vacation days they won't use them. So they are about 3/5 of the price of your typical European employee. A much better value proposition.

In return some of this will burn them out and put them on edge. This will likely have cultural, political and social consequences. If only we could give our American friends the sleep, reflection and family time they so much deserve.

You talk about sources, and then you immediately dwelve into myths about how much US workers work. They do work more than the western Europe, on par with more hardworking EU: Poland, Romania, Greece etc. It's not 50% more https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

You should also cosider wages and disposable income. The US worker will have a substantially higher wage, and because of lower taxes and living costs, a higher disposable income.

If you think its reasonable to use Poland, Romania or Greece as your benchmark for Europe, i think its reasonable to use Puerto Rico, Missisipi and Lousiana as the benchmark for the United States.

>You should also cosider wages and disposable income.

As one would consider purcasing power, healthcare costs, student debts, good public infrastructure, public spaces, physical safety, quality of water, quality of air, amount of people owining firearms, amount of conspiracy nuts, reliability of things like heat and electricity, the level of institutational racism, human rights, freedom of speech, etc. Lets not even dive in the fact that healthy high quality food is so much more expensive in the US.

In the end, the list of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_livable_cities does not contain many US cities at all.

This notion that you are rewarded better for the same work in the US is just not true. You have to work more, you have to put up with more abuse, you have to spend more time travelling to work, your roads are shit, your public transit is none existing. If you get into a small car crash, you have to worry for a bit if the other person will drive on (stucking you with a bill), or bring a gun (because they might just be angry and armed!). Your kids live in a cage in suburbia and after working all those hours, you will have to drive them around for them to go anywhere except their own house.

It is part of the reasoning. Another part is that Europe generally has better unemployment benefits and health care not tied to employment. This drives people to take worse jobs in the U.S.

In addition you have to ensure you look at comparable statistics on who is counted as unemployed. This is toften tied to receiving unemployment benefits or being able to work etc. so different statistics might count based on different criteria.

Do these countries all count unemployment the same way? There are a lot of games that can be played with unemployment classification.

I’ve found most private English firms have no difficulty letting people go if they need to.

It seems a different story for public orgs like schools and government positions. But private companies have a lot more freedom than some in here have been suggesting.

It’s likely a different story elsewhere in Europe though. There’s a lot of countries with their own laws in Europe

This fits my perception as well having worked in Europe.

I think the other thing is that the US can hire people for very cheap (like 2$/hour) with the idea that maybe the actual customers can contribute to the worker's salary to make it up. Often you need to get another job to reach a living wage. It's a great way to enslave people and get good unemployment numbers.

You're describing so-called "server wages," which only apply to businesses with tipped employees (and do not apply in the seven "equal treatment" states, including California and Washington). I don't think it makes a huge difference in total unemployment numbers, because tipped workers represent something like 2-3% of all US workers.

(I agree that the concept of server wage is pretty awful and should be eliminated as a matter of policy.)

Why do people tip in California if that's not a thing then?

You would have to ask them. But one plausible reason would be that they might think service is worth more than the state minimum wage.

Servers prefer being tipped rather than getting a higher minimum wage. They can make 20-30 an hour from tips, good location ones even more. https://upserve.com/restaurant-insider/impact-minimum-wage-i...

This is an interesting take: with the idea that maybe the actual customers can contribute to the worker's salary

The customer always contributes to worker's salary

Some portion of servers also prefer cash tips because it enables illegal tax evasion, which increases their effective take-home income.

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