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Comment by apalmer | Hacker News Reader

I am only perplexed by this in regards to how workers are surviving without jobs? Usually many brackets of workers live check to check to the degree they have no choice but to continue working despite all other concerns.

Is it the gig economy setting a bottom line ‘might as well do Uber’ level? I am not so sure but it’s the only major change in the last couple years ago I can think of?

From a straight economic perspective REAL compensation of lower skill workers has been sliding for decades so not really surprising it eventually reached a’might as well quit’ point.

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For a lot of lower wage people, the ~$3k stimulus checks they got last year was the first time in their lives they've had enough financial breathing room to quit abusive jobs and have a break without having another job immediately lined up. To someone who historically made on the order of ~$10/hr, $3k in helicopter money is a significant cushion. And jobs are abundant at every level of the economy, so risk of quitting is minimal when they can probably quickly land a better job than what they had before.

I think the coverage of this is a bit confusing though. The focus on "quitting" makes it sound like these people are all done working which I don't think is true.

Total employment is up so I don't think they're surviving without jobs. Most quit one job to take another.

> From a straight economic perspective REAL compensation of lower skill workers has been sliding for decades

Has it? I’ve seen that claim a lot, but every time I look at the data, it shows growth across all quintiles.

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2021/10/2...

I just looked at this and while there is no sliding, the bottom 3 have been really quite flat

This graph has a weird starting position. If this graph started, maybe 30-40 years before that, you'd see it telling a very different story.

The reason it's sliding for decades is that the purchasing power of that same money has gone down. Why? Housing. Housing is not calculated in inflation rates, annnnd everyone needs a house.

So yeah, the REAL compensation has been sliding down due to no real growth there while housing has skyrocketed. AND that before 1965, we actually did have significant wage growth.

So, this is one of those cases where the data is misleading.

> Housing is not calculated in inflation rates

False. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...

Shelter (the service that a house provides) is included as a consumption item in the CPI figures (and, as any adult would expect, has the largest weight of any of the 211 items that constitute the CPI basket).

You can see the significant changes to the calculation methods detailed here: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/research-series/r-cpi-u-rs-changes.h... The rent equivalent method for owned property has been in use since 1983. (Prior to that, housing was included in CPI, just with a different method.)

I mean, this is assuming the living standards (how many people to one house) has remained the same. That also has changed.

The data you link to shows 3 out of 5 quintiles of incomes have been flat. Meanwhile, the cost of healthcare and child care have increased faster than inflation[1]. It's nice that TVs are cheaper for better quality, but if the essentials are more expensive the people with lower (and middle!) incomes have tighter budgets than ever.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Kxcc

That article contains a "real income growth since 1967" table (about halfway down, on the right).

All quintiles show growth, with the 4th quintile (20-40th percentile) showing the lowest growth at +31.1% and the 5th quintile (lowest 20%) showing a similar +34.2% across that period of multiple decades.

That's indeed "essentially flat, but still slight growth".

Their incomes are growing slower than essential expenses like childcare and healthcare...

"real income growth" does not account for health care and housing costs (except for people who own their home)

Note that this is showing household incomes, not individual incomes. Household used to mean 1 working family member, now it's closer to 2 due in large part by more women joining the workforce. If you had a traditional family with one working spouse, they would definitely be falling behind.

If you look at the source below for men's wages (for example), the real wage has fallen by 3% for the median male since 1979 (and by 10% real decline for the bottom 10%). That's not even accounting for the fact that housing should make up a higher % of the consumption basket for the lowest-paid workers (as compared to CPI).

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45090.pdf

That link appears to be great data (based on reading the summary). Bookmarked to read in more detail later, but saying "thanks!" now.

It appears that the 10th percentile male income has decreased by 7.7% [rather than 10%] in the 40 year period from 1979-2019, if I'm reading the page 4 content correctly.

Figure 1 is facsinating - it shows the 80s were awful for everyone, especially the bottom 10%. Male workers dropped 16.3% from 1979-1990, and Hispanic dropped 20.9%!

2010-2019 was the best real income growth for all groups apart from top 10% hispanics, and the growth is fairly evenly spread across demographics.

Here's a well-researched story on how real workers in Georgia are surviving after quitting:

"In Liberty County, workers who quit feel liberated, but the community discovers a powerful downside"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/12/quitting-...

The solution to many of those employers problems is simple: pay better wages.

Or shut doors because they can't.

Yeah, that's another option, or clean the hotel by themselves like in the linked article. The risks of entrepreneurship.

This is a weird article. It seems to cast the people who live in a place as collectively feeling pain, instead of specifically the owners/workers at a place of business that has lost employees. It sets up a false premise that the workers who are making choices for themselves are then suffering, when they are not part of the group experiencing the downside.

I don't believe they are quitting their jobs without having other jobs. They are just moving jobs.

Some are also quitting to take care of kids, because childcare is expensive, or they can't get consistent hours. I can't imagine working if I didn't know my schedule week over week and I had a kid to take care of.

The headline is extremely misleading. 4.5M workers changed jobs in November.

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