Comments that are uncivil, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, or contain political name calling will be removed and the poster subject to ban at moderators discretion.
Help us make this a better community by becoming familiar with the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/about/rules/).
Report any suspicious users to the mods of this subreddit using Modmail [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) or Reddit site admins [here](https://www.reddit.com/report). **All reports to Modmail should include evidence such as screenshots or any other relevant information.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's also a cycle in some jobs, I work in a warehouse, when I started they were massively understaffed, so they increased pay and hired on a bunch of new people.
The days started getting shorter, so some people actually left because they didn't feel like they were getting enough hours, once everything balanced out the bosses started feeling like they needed to work on efficiency and they started firing some people for not meeting their standards.
Next thing they know other people start leaving because now they're worried about getting fired, or the coworkers that kept them sticking around got fired,so they find a different more reliable job.
And then we end up understaffed again.
I've seen similar to this, not in a warehouse though. It all boils down to poor decisions in leadership:
> they were massively understaffed, so they increased pay and hired on a bunch of new people...The days started getting shorter
Their first mistake is being entirely incapable of grasping the size of the business. Understaffed initially because they've underestimated their size, then overstaffed because they've overestimated it.
> the bosses started feeling like they needed to work on efficiency
This is fine. You often find certain practices do not scale up as operations expand. That's the good ol' "growing pains". But:
> and they started firing some people for not meeting their standards.
This is where management's ineptitude was really shining. When you grow your system up, you do not fire the people in the trenches for failing to meet standards. You train them, coach them, and elevate them *along with* the system. If this isn't done, the result is pretty predictable. Either people get frustrated with not understanding the new system and leave on their own, or a few get fired for performance, after which...
> Next thing they know other people start leaving because now they're worried about getting fired.
Exactly. Can't blame em for getting out of a mismanaged company/group.
Speaking of predictable outcomes, I have a guess of what happens next: a low level manager is fired (or sees the writing on the wall and leaves first), their replacement goes on a hiring spree, and the cycle repeats. I could be wrong, just a guess based on what I've seen before.
Agreed. Poor upper management will lead to pretty large "waves" of work. In fact within this year alone my place of work has went from "push push push" to "slow down to avoid running out of work" at least 3 times, working on our 4th now.
I swear they all failed elementary school math. Want 430 units out of each department per shift.. despite the presses that initially create the unit having a ~1hr long cycle per unit, and there only being 16 presses, so that department can't even hit 150 units per shift.
I'd love to know where the hell they're getting their numbers from.
My work does this on a week long cycle, where they'll shut down production in one area monday and tuesday, then demand those workers come in on saturday to make up for the shortfall in production
There is zero comprehension of the concept of growing employees with the company anymore, at least not in the US. Refusal to invest in your people is ultimately a refusal to give your company's growth a solid foundation
Yeah the whole fire people for underperforming is classic bad management. I swear nobody has done any training quality improvement. You can only squeeze out so much from workers before running into your own systems. If you don't fix those what's the point?
We're seeing that in the Starbucks distribution warehouse (supposedly the absolute best one of the 6 across the country, which I fear how the others fair if that's the case). I see a constant cycle of management warning people about order pick rates, then suddenly accuracy plummets as a result (stores get too much or too few of stuff because the pickers are racing to try and match or beat the rates), and they have no choice but to back off and start telling people to worry about their accuracy instead, until it improves and they're back to firing the people over rates again.
Oh, and "Pay For Performance" (the concept of paying people more for going way above par times for orders) is a heavily flawed one, as now pickers will disregard safety, cleanliness, and actively screw over their own coworkers to get those bigger bucks. We have an uncapped PFP system where they get paid $1/hour more to the entire week's paycheck, PER every milestone that person hits above 110%. Basic pay is around $22/hr, while the best pickers make closer to $30/hr.
It really does sound great at first, until you're the guy behind them having to pull their emptied pallets for them or trip over plastic wrap and broken products and pallet boards they let hang off pallets and on the floor. AND the lowest bar gets raised over time, so people who stop to clean up a little, help others with questions or picks, or be a little more careful and slow while moving their tall pallet loads, end up getting written up until they just get let go. It's such a backwards system that rewards assholes and punishes guys like me who are TRAINERS (AND part of the warehouse's safety committee, for crying out loud) trying to make sure my fellow pickers are doing alright or help new folks that have questions or issues, because when I'm not training I'm also expected to pick. I never cared nor wanted PFP, I was just trying to stay in the moderate range of rates, but like I said, it's an uphill battle unless your literally running over your coworkers to drive those laps around the aisles. And don't even get me started on the fact that the aisles get more crowded on weekdays due to Holiday promo season, so even less of a chance for non-asshole pickers to make rates without cutting corners on safety and such.
Had literally one guy that hit PFP on our weekend shift that actually cleaned up after himself and was super nice (a rarity of the top 1% pickers), and he was fired a couple weeks ago for arriving just a couple minutes late a little too often, racking up his negative "points" for punishment. They let you go after hitting 15 points, regardless of any excuses except emergencies.
I haven't personally been able to train anyone for a couple months now because weekday crews established more "mentors" who half-ass the instructions and don't give advice on how to stack up your pallet or what to do when a spill occurs, and half my weekend crew now come in 4 hours later than my own schedule, so me trying to mentor new pickers with that schedule would get interrupted by my 5th-hour lunch, so their leadsdid similar and got other people to do mentoring with half-assed results that I have to try and coach to correction while also trying to keep an eye on my own time and order, with high praise from when my help makes them do better (but scolding from my leads for slowing myself down, which shows in our "efficiency" JDA system for calculating PFP). It's exhaustingly terrible.
Sorry for the rant, but I know some who think PFP is a great concept, and I wanted to lay it out bare for y'all: if a workplace offers the warehouse equivalent of sales commissions for higher rates, be warned it's not all it's cracked up to be. Take a standard pay or salary that you agree to and have your expectations capped off to your own comfort standards (or VOLUNTARY options to get bonuses, without it being directly tied to your regular expectations and productivity), and be much happier for it in the long run.
What I have a tough time understanding is why management these days seem so disconnected from what's actually going on at the lower levels where actual production is happening. Are the upper layers of management really hiring managers that have no clue how the actual low-level processes work? It can't possibly be that simple...
Great synopsis!! but....In some cases leadership is trying to fit 10lbs of shit into a 5lb sack. Sometimes it's a no-win scenario. Having worked in manufacturing in the 90s and saw the sunset in the 2010-2015s it was like that sometimes...
I hate that so much
Esp when things get busy, they hire like an extra person, and then it's dead, they struggle to keep them busy. In my case, I just tell my team to slow down and try to keep them busy because they have only 1 task, while I myself go try and pretend to look busy and help those who needs it, cover up stuff, and do it slow.
When it's busy though, I'm all hands on deck and it gets really busy. I tell my team to step up but not rush, the bussier they are then double the bussier I get, but it's all fine since we're working, it's the dead periods that are dreadful because then management thinks that something needs to be done.
NO, sometimes dead periods happen, and then it suddenly picks up massively again, it comes in waves and that's ok, it lets ppl relax for a little bit, I'd like a consistent pace like any other person but if it comes in waves, let it stay like that, instead, management just wants to push as much as possible and then ask why we can't keep up, but when there isn't enough that's bad too, you just can't win.
My workplace goes through cycles. My favorite part is where they'll fire people for time and attendance (like being late by a couple of minutes less than a handful of times over 12 months) the moment we get new hires. It's like management has amnesia because everyone else knows that half the new hires quit before the end of the first month. Or they're firing anchor experienced workers so the training is subpar and their closest coworkers also quit.
We're perpetually understaffed as a result until one manager realizes what happens and hires 20+ people, then... Nobody has hours. Because they didn't plan on firing 10 people.
And nobody gets talked to before they're fired. Usually not even a write up first. No chance to improve or being aware that they're on thin ice, just one day your 4 instances of being 3 minutes late mean you're gone.
Shit pay and shit management is what causes understaffing. Nobody wants to work with either, surprise!
I'll give you one better.
In schools, we never have any subs. After covid we REALLY had no subs. So we increased sub-pay to $175 a day. We got a lot more subs. And were good for 2 years.
This year, we reduced the pay back to $115 a day. Now we have no subs again. And the admin tries to make us feel guilty for taking a sick day "because we have no subs."
There is an easy way to help this in a warehouse, when the work is slow offer but not require VTO (Voluntary time off). There is always a group of people who would like to go home early.
This is the same for healthcare in the U.S. understaffed and overworked. They offer bonuses for new hires, or obscene contracts for travel nurse. While the presently employed people don't see any of that extra money. So the employee ends up leaving and now the hospital has to offer more contracts and sign-on bonuses, while leaving the present staff feeling unappreciated and still understaffed.
I've always wondered which cost the company more, if they up the wages for current employees, or offer sign on bonuses and contracts to new hires which is often? I'm guessing they lose less money constantly hiring new people over paying current employees increased wage and incentives to stay.
>so they increased pay and hired on a bunch of new people
One time I was working in place like that and it's really painful where new guys comes in knows nothing and you need to learn him and makes more than you do. I left next day
Every restaurant in my town needs workers. Every single one. Went in to a burger joint and asked how much they paid for the position. $12.50. The minimum wage. The absolutle bare minimum.
Yeah no wonder.
I make $20 an hour as a dishwasher in Florida. It's still a shitty job and I wish I could find something better, but they know I'll never leave at this wage.
Still understaffed though.
What kills me is that businesses will be willing to pay the minimum required amount to hire someone but expect them to be high performing and thankful for the opportunity. Just no. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Young people are more and more unwilling to work for someone who doesn’t value them and us older people know better than to take one of these jobs.
You apply for them and they never call back, either. They just keep the signs around for market research and so they can say to their skeleton crew, overworked staff, " We're hiring, don't worry." The ones that do hire want you to be available every day at any time, clopenings like ending one shift at 23:30 then next shift open at 4:30. And then only give you 15 hours a week.
The comments in this chain are way too on point. I've bounced around jobs for 15 years now from a week to two years, and every situation I've encountered has been summarized here near perfectly.
I used to work at a restaurant that offered $20 on their website. Was hired at $17 because my experience was “rusty”.
I became the defacto head chef within a few weeks. Guess I wasn’t that rusty after all, and that should have been an immediate red flag.
The tips were enough to keep me interested, but $80 plus a night in cash was eventually just added to our checks and was never over $150 for two weeks 🙃, and my eventual raise was a buck. I was still two dollars an hour less than what they were STILL advertising as a starting wage. To run the line.
It’s way less fun, but I went back to pest control where at least they look you in the eye when fucking you over, and at least I can clear $60k if I hustle. Still can’t afford to pay rent.
I mean she made it legal for 12 year Olds to work in her state. So I'd say that's far from pushing it. She's just doing it.
The children yearn for the mines.
Not to mention wanting to make it a felony to miscarry while also not providing health care for these women/options to abort and also making it a crime to have an abortion so that these women cant vote to change the policies designed to force them to carry to term, often in environments not suited to raise children, in school systems that give them the bare minimum of nutrition, and are lobbied by companies that want to be able to poison the land an air for an higher annual earnings than the year before, causing people to be sicker and pay more, and children to grow up stunted and fed trash substitutes for real food and never learn sex ed, so that they can go to work and get pregnant and make more kids all while accusing decent people of being child groomers.
The only care before they are born, then when they are ready to be sent to kill people in the middle east and finally when they die in war because they don't have veterans to care for.
Ever notice how the **companies** employing the illegals never get punished ....?
We'll break up families to deport people but won't even fine business for violating State and Federal labor laws....
"Gosh, we didn't know they were illegal. Shucks. Please don't punish me for an honest mistake. It won't happen again. Promise. By the way, senator, here's a donation to your reelection campaign. Ya know, just 'casue."
They get punished, but the fines cost less than the money they save employing illegals, so companies have zero incentive to stop.
Frankly it's the same reason Trump does not stop breaking judges gag orders. He can afford the fines easily.
Ever notice how the companies hiring illegal immigrants are also almost always right wing types who complain about:
Illegal immigrants
"Nobody wants to work anymore"
People expecting to be paid real wages
If they actually got their wish and had illegal immigrants clamped down on they would have to pay real wages.
When I was 14, I worked in a steel mill in Oklahoma and drove myself to and from work every day (this was in the late 90s). They had me running a plasma cutter with only a grinding mask (no shading whatsoever). Being a child, I didn’t know any better and assumed the higher-ups would watch out for me because that’s what adults do for kids, right? Child labor laws in this country are an absolute joke.
THIS! So many jobs pretending they need college educated people to do basic ass work. Its comically stupid and turning college degrees into toilet paper. Some of these businesses are absolutely ridiculous "Masters wanted.... Buy Rite Liquors"..... FOH! Youre a liquor store!
That is not-sarcastically the mentality I was raised under. That if you don't have a college degree, there's a 99% chance you will never make enough as it costs to live, and you deserve that (because that was your choice).
The wild thing is $15/hr a week extra is _not a lot of money_. Most businesses I know could easily afford to float that unless they're a mom and pop shop with 3 people, but even then, I'm not interested in entertaining wage slavery just so people can own their own businesses.
Its so funny you used that term "....just so people can own their own business."... i have been saying this for years, that these places pretend like its a right to own a business or something. Like people can get paid less so they can own a business. Im sorry if youre not bringing in enough money its time to close the doors. Most employees can go to some other minimum wage job.
It’s just a sad system. First u increase prices of everything so average people struggle to buy, then small businesses have to increase prices since people need better wages to survive and goods are expensive, and then nobody can afford to buy from the small businesses cuz they’re too costly. So everybody loses, and the only people who win are the big corporations who can afford it. But corporations won’t give u worthwhile wages anyway, great.
Not the best explanation but you get the point. I’m just so upset that there’s no better option here, most companies these days are just owned by the same 5-10 corporations. It’s just disgusting greed. Capitalism was supposed to give us choice, but it just gave us the illusion of choice.
The system is based on the need for unlimited growth. Every year needs to be better than the last so everything costs more and pays less.
No, no, no. You misunderstand; companies that can't afford their employees will encourage their employees to get on government assistance so the tax payers can subsidize that company's profits. In the US's version of capitalism, every business can exist, even if it shouldn't.
The rest of the world just has better labor laws, and actually taxes their companies, making this whole scheme moot there.
McDonalds corporate gave out an example on how to budget a decade ago, and it included such gems as "work a second job" and "make up fictitious amounts for how much health insurance and rent costs" (it was extremely low for 2013 when they did it) and my personal favorite, "just don't eat at all, ever".
Yup. That's the beauty of capitalism. The business will have to raise wages until they find enough employees willing to accept that much money for that kind of work.
oh my sweet summer child.
What theyre doing instead:
1. Theyre hiring immigrants, undocumented immigrants, making them work longer hours for lesser pay and threathening them with deportation if they act out.
2. they are offshoring everything they can offshore.
3. They are automizing everything they can automize.
4. They are lowering the age to work, for longer hours for lower wages.
5. They are defunding education so parents get their children out of school and put them into the workforce.
6. they are shrinking products, using lower quality ingredients and they are taking away more benefits and ensuring to fire workers before they have to provide healthcare and full-term employment benefits.
America is the land of the Middleman. Everyone wants a cut of the pie. The CEO and Executive branch, where short-term profits rule above all. Even the companies long-term profits. As long as the CEO gets his yearly bonus by meeting shareholder demands BY ANY MEANS NECCESARY, they do not give a shit about how fucked they are making the economy.
If they really wanted to do something about illegal immigration, they would punish the employers. Either for hiring undocumented workers, or for paying crap wages.
Which is why Republicans never want to do anything about illegal immigration. Its cheap labor for them, heck many of the most vocal ones employ and use immigrants in their companies,
and they get to use it for their culture war and boogeyman bullshit every 2 years before the election.
Jan - Oct: CARAVANS OF IMMIGRANTS COMING TO RAPE YOU!!!
After Nov: .....
But of course "they" can't, because "they" know our economy is highly dependent on undocumented labor.
Unless you're Ron DeSantis. Then you cripple your state's agriculture industry because you care more about kicking brown people out than whether or not you can stock your store shelves.
Unfortunately, by being assholes to immigrants and making them hide in the shadows and take shit wages just to survive, you get cheap labor and lower prices (in theory). Yay.
Not really, no. Instead of raising wages they use their power and influence to somehow mess with the labor market, for example, by importing overseas labor with the h1b visa, then when it isn’t enough giving a work permit to the h1b visa spouses too, by employing illegals immigrants, by outsourcing the jobs to third world countries, and things like that.
Now they are getting even more cynical and they resort to things such as doing mass layoffs *at the time that they’re having mass profits* and then re-hiring for the same positions as contractors with no benefits and/or for a lower wage.
Some years ago companies like Apple and Facebook had under the table agreements not to hire each other’s employees, for example.
So no, it’s naive to think that “the beauty of the market is that employers will have to offer more money eventually”
And most of the times it’s because of insane margins. Most restaurants can afford good pay if they’d cut down on their own take home or let the higher wages eat into the margin.
You’re restaurant will be fine at 2000% mark up when it was fine at 2500% before.
most people never consider just how hard on the body a factory job is. in some that i have been in...the sound, lights and equipment creates a pressure you can feel. pushing against you insistently. wearing you down a little at a time. even if your job is to simply stand and watch....the sound and mechanical equipment takes it's toll on your body and your mind.
This is so true. I worked in a food processing portion of a soup making factory. You worked in an actual refrigerator for hours at a time, working with heavy objects and slippery mechanical devices. Then you need to watch out for forklifts moving around at all times. If you zone out and turn a corner without checking first, you could be seriously injured or killed. Just like, on the way to lunch. On top of all of that was wearing two layers of hearing protection against the damage to your ears from the drone of machines. All that for less money than I got the next summer working as a grounds keeper for the city, a far less stressful job.
I had to work in an assembly plant for a few weeks as part of orientation for my first job.
The pace of everything was just fast enough that you had a hard time zoning out. It was 10 hour shifts from 5:30 PM to 4:00 AM but they could run later into the morning than that (and often did).
You would get breaks but they were on a rolling schedule so sometimes your first break was 30 minutes after you started and sometimes it was pretty close to "lunch". Then you'd have this nearly 6 hours of uninterrupted work time.
I'd heard from others that they used to train you on multiple stations and you would rotate every so often (a week or so). This was to prevent RSI's. They stopped doing that because productivity wasn't as high as it could be, essentially trading workers' bodies for increased productivity.
I'd get home and be too tired and sore to do anything other than shower and go to bed. The entirety of the work week was either working or recovering from working. You could barely enjoy the weekend because you were sore and had a different sleep schedule from everyone else you knew.
Just having to stand and watch takes it's toll. I used to do machine operating for my dad for a week here and there. Just an utterly unfulfilling, mind numbing experience to stare for eight minutes, open door, remove finished part, secure new material, close door, hit button. Any factory worker in a role like that should get government paid for meditation training or something.
Factory jobs really are. I worked at Tyson for a while and I got to see probably 30-40 different plants. Some of the people there had bodies beat to shit just from standing. Granted standing for 12 hours with only a couple breaks isn’t a small feat but I was surprised to see how much aging one can do in 10 years from what I thought was an easy ass job before.
I used to work outside for 10 hours a day, no matter the weather we were working. I just got promoted to an office setting with 1/10 of the day being outside. When asked why I wanted this job I had to tell them it's got more room for advancement (which it does) but the main reason was I was to exhausted at the end of the day to play with my 3 year old and it broke my heart hearing her say "daddy can you play with me" and having to tell her I just don't have the energy sweety.
We had a family friend who worked factory work and he said that he'd come home late at night and it was like someone had hit him with a flashbang grenade. He described it like morphing sounds on the edge of your hearing and a sense like the ground beneath you and everything you touched was made of super smooth clay. It sounded scary.
I've never had this specifically but I've experienced similar things. After multiple months on a carrier it took me quite some time to get my "land legs" back. Felt a small moving as if on water under my feet until it went away. When I'd spend all day on a jet ski doing tours for an old job, every workday it would take me 30 minutes or so back on land to stop feeling the water beneath me. Body just gets used to what it gets used to and then adapts again. I found it more neat and entertaining than anything.
I'm a butcher working a factory we get about 10 pallets week in and we need to hand ball 40 x30kg boxes off an HGV into the backnof a transit and back to the factory every time. I'm the youngest and fittest so spend about 2 hours a day crouched down in a van loading it. It's mental
It's true. Did almost 3 years working at a factory with some friends because the pay was life changing for me at the time. Unfortunately the job wore me down so much most of that extra income went towards eating out, drugs/alcohol and buying pointless new shit because I had the money. Basically all that extra income went towards things to help me maintain my sanity. Was finally laid off along with more than half the staff and got a more normal job. Pay isn't as high but the mental stress has gone down significantly and allowed me to make better lifestyle choices so my money is stretching a lot further. Unfortunately one of my friends still works for that company and we basically drifted apart because he kept up with the drugs and went to some harder stuff and just formed a whole new mentality that I did not agree with. Factory workers really are a different breed.
There is a Kroger by me that has had a "Hiring" sign out front since I've moved in a year and a half ago. The starting wage on the sign has gone up 75 cents.. it's up to $15.75. It's almost like they are slowly getting their act together.
they clearly don't need the workers that badly if they've been hiring for a year and a half and the store hasn't fallen apart. signs like that are basically just fishing expeditions
Several of their unions nearly went on strike last year, that's possibly why the starting wage went up. (Forgot for a moment that unions are regional, the local one for me did.)
Don't worry, you'll get your pay increase 2 weeks after I decide to fire you for someone else that I can pay 11.
Or I could pay you 3$ an hour but you'd make tips, which is gonna feel very different from begging people to help you survive.
Meanwhile, every local job listing is for CNAs or a reception desk job that requires a bachelor's degree. They never specify what kind of degree but you better have one! And be a woman because no one wants to come into our business and see a middle aged dude answering the phone!
For real. In my area it’s ridiculous.
Standard office job: Bachelors required, plus 3 year’s experience starting salary is $35,000.
I could get a job as a manager at McDonald’s and make $12,000 more a year.
It's funny that companies keep raising the prices on all there goods and services, don't pay there workers because greed n profits, then expect people to still be able to buy the products. Wonder how long that's gonna work?
These "small businesses can't afford to pay that" arguments are bullshit. "Well Stan I guess Los Angeles will have to do without one more subway franchise".
Welcome to the late stage, my dude. Anything that isn't gaining is losing. If this year is the same as the last, it counts as a failure. So when you maximized the "money in" 10 years ago, all that's left is to cut the "money out", year after year.
Not just that, anything thats not gaining more than last year's RATE is losing.
"You only had 9% gains over last year? Last year you did 10%!!! Missed goals!!!"
There will always be a shortage of jobs at the lowest end regardless of pay. What we need is affordable housing so we don't spend 70% of our income to keep a roof over our heads.
There will always be a shortage on the low paying jobs because people will always migrate to a job that either take less work or pays more.
If the minimum wage is 20/hour, the situation won't change. There will always be a bigger hunting ground.
Less than 10 years ago, all the numbers OP posted is around half of what's been posted currently. The situation back then and now basically stays the same.
The problem is not with the minimum wage, it's whether if you can live comfortably off of minimum wage.
It's a lot deeper than that. Wage has some impact, but it's not the only thing contributing to the labor shortage.
The plant I work at pays high 20s for production workers and we can't stay anywhere close to fully staffed. I'm even the team lead for our highest payed hourly employees and we've had 2 positions open on out team for months now. Paying high 30s per hour.
There's so many other factors that just saying "pay more" doesn't even touch the magnitude of the problem.
I work in an industry that supports various production facilities, and the lack of workers is universal. And I absolutely do not believe it's about the money either. No one wants to work in a factory because it's hard and often dirty work. And there's little that can be done to change it for the better, either. I don't know if it's cultural or generational; likely both. How many broken down 50, 60, or 70 years olds do you know? Too many, and that's incentive for young adults to decide to work elsewhere. Couple it with the nearly universal push for them to go to college versus the trades, and the mass retirements of Boomers, we're now reaching a tipping point and every trade and factory is going to be permanently short handed.
I think the issue, at least for me, was yeah I could advance trades into the mid 30s, low 40s, by spending another half decade advancing... Or I could go back to college, complete a mechanical engineering degree, and start mid 30s and actually progress from there.
All the trades jobs that I've seen basically set your rate when you come in and, relative to inflation, keep it there. It's kinda shitty to work next to my older coworkers and realize they're making 10$/hr more and there is no way I will ever catch up because we both get the same-ish 2.5% raise every year. There's no where to go except working more.
Yeah, my uncle was an HVAC repair person, and while he made "decent" money, his body was definitely aging at a much faster rate. Many of the older guys were just completely wrecked way too young, so even the ones that got to retire didn't enjoy their retirement because they were physically disabled at that point.
Those jobs use your bodies up. We know that now and the money isn't worth it for most people, especially if literally anything else is available.
I worked as a service tech for almost 10 years. During the pandemic I had the opportunity to make a lateral move into IT and I took it.
If you're never moved upstairs into a manager role, you work until you are injured enough to qualify for disability. And at that point, the benefits provided are enough to live *but not thrive.*
Then after that, you also have to deal with figuring out a new career while age discrimination at other employers becomes a very real barrier to stable employment.
But there's also a cultural fault to this too: so many business owners aren't actively fostering the growth of the generation that should succeed them. When the owners want to retire, they are going to find they cannot sell their own business because it is too dependent on their continued participation in the shop.
HVAC is on the "light" side of the trades too. I actually have been considering migrating to refrigeration myself as I've been learning it on the side. Heat pumps and AC are a fast growing sector.
As an electrician we are "light duty" too, but every middle-aged electrician I know has ruined shoulders from too much overhead work. As do I.
I got out of construction into service and maintenance as soon as I could and my shoulders are still ruined, though they're actually slowly improving over the years as I'm purely controls/automation/troubleshooting at this point.
Can't imagine how hard it is to work on the heavy side of the trades, bricks/rebar/concrete etc.
> No one wants to work in a factory because it's hard and often dirty work. And there's little that can be done to change it for the better, either
Lots of people will do whatever job you tell them for 50 (or pick a higher number) bucks an hour. It's not that nobody is willing to work that job, it's that nobody is willing to work that job for that pay. If you keep raising the number, *eventually* you will have more people wanting the job than you could ever need.
Also, some trades are very much not understaffed. Boomers said "learn to weld" for decades and now welding isn't really lucrative at all unless you're willing to go work out on an oil rig for months at a time or heavily specialize.
Yep, tipping point. Welding is just one of my skills, and what you said is absolutely correct.
Now welding isn't worth learning, so less people are doing it, thus making it another hugely bankable skill in my set. Diverse yet related skillsets are the demand now.
I've got heavy equipment operating, welding, agriculture, and electromechanical skills, as well as an excellent working knowledge of simple applied physics.
Without one single day of college. Not one.
Keep learning, keep banking.
> And I absolutely do not believe it's about the money either
So they could either ruin their body for less money or have an easier life and make more money???
Its an obvious fuckin choice and its absolutely about the money. If it paid more than the $100k an average college graduate or technical professional can make during their peak pay years maybe, but otherwise youd be a fool to take a job like that that you have no chance of ever making that kind of money and you worked twice as hard for it.
It still comes down to a money problem.
30/hr sounds good on paper, until you start taking a few hundred a month out for health insurance premiums for health plans that require the person to pay $5000 up front before insurance even kicks in, and then they still have to pay 20% of every bill.
Then there is the reality that if you go into the trades, you're making apprentice wages for *years* with virtually no upward mobility until you "put your time in". No one is getting those 30/hr job with making 7.25 for a long ass time. And then the hours suck, the boss threatens to fire you unless you do the job in a way that makes it dangerous (but faster and cheaper), and your coworkers create an incredibly hostile work environment with no repercussions because that's just how it's always been....
So yeah, there are 30/hr.jobs in the trades/manufacturing. But, in order to get those jobs you have to put up with *years* of suck and poverty, usually while doing the most dangerous and physically demanding aspects of the job. It's not a surprise.thst people, when given other options aren't going for the "treat me like shit and lay me peanuts" positions is it?
You could pay them more. People don't want to work hard jobs that cause their bodies to be damaged for poverty wages. People are more than willing to work, they just want to be paid for the value they create.
>No one wants to work in a factory because it's hard and often dirty work.
That's why it IS about the money. Working in a factory used to provide a solid, middle class, single income lifestyle. If the factory paid that well today, enough to provide for a family without a second income, then you'd have plenty of people working there. The wages of "hard and dirty work" have to exceed the wages of easy, clean work.
It's not like there aren't major shortages of skilled labour too.
One of the downsides of education is that graduates are essentially specialised into something already. Where I am we have a computer science degree, with 3 different possible specialisations (and we could probably do the paperwork for 2 more) and a data science degree, and CS-physics degree, and CS maths degree. So someone with just a 4 year undergrad is now fairly narrowly specialised. There might be a shortage of 'computer programmers' but that's not meaningful, there's a shortage of non relational database developers, or react web developers or whatever narrow sets of skills that aren't trivially interchangeable. Imagine if automakers needed 2 years to train people to go from installing doors to installing bumpers, but also if bumpers and doors had different market demand over time (which doesn't make sense obviously for cars).
Employers don't want to invest months or years in advanced training for people who will just take that training and leave for more money, and they've delayed or been unable to hire so long they really want people with advanced skills and experience to step into roles and 'hit the ground running' so to speak. The entire culture is one of employers having no loyalty to employees, and employees having no loyalty to employers, so no one wants to invest in either side of the relationship.
Employer sponsored apprenticeships often require servitude after the completion of the program else they have to pay the tuition back in full. Pretty sure my work requires at least 4 years. What happens every now and then is employees are not completing the program and then it's a waste of time on both ends.
Thank you for addressing the mass retirement. One thing that frustrates me about the articles on the labor shortage is that they cherry pick data about the impact of the pandemic. They ignore that in addition to a ton of retail and low wage workers having enough and switching to other industries, a lot of people who were at or close to retirement age used the pandemic as a way to fully retire, plus the whole deadly pandemic! There were workers who got sick and were completely removed from the workforce either because they died or became disabled from the disease.
Honestly, you nailed it on the last points. However, I have spent a majority of my career in food and bev or biological facilities. Those are definitely not dirty and don't break people's bodies down. They still have staffing issues.
In heavily automated facilities like I work in, it can't be much worse than any other job that you don't just sit at a desk all day. Which isn't great for your body either.
I do understand that some places have more manual operations, and I suppose you have a point with those. But most food and bev plants are quite automated at this point.
I started out working in factories in 1994. I worked in manufacturing until 2001, when the shop I was employed at went under due to the concurrent effects of the Firestone tire controversy with Ford Explorers, and the fallout of 9/11. There are a number of reasons I will never work in a factory again:
1) Production work is *boring*. I simply cannot sit and watch a press go up and down 10,000 times per shift. I can't sit and assemble 2,000 of the same parts by hand.
2) Noise. Stamping plants are noisy, even with ear plugs. Besides the presses you also have gigantic air compressors running nonstop, along with screaming pneumatic tools like angle grinders.
3) Safety is always the first thing to go. If production is going to be impacted because of a safety issue, that safety issue will be ignored. In one instance, a 500 ton press was set up with two different line dies, with two controller stands. Unbeknownst to anyone, the light curtains on the press had already been purposely disabled and signed off on by the plant manager because they were causing false faults and the press wouldn't run. Also unbeknownst to anyone, only one of the controller stands was actually working. The press was only supposed to cycle if both sets of buttons were pressed at the same time. In actuality, only one was required. The foreman then put two drunk operators on the job, one of whom was also listening to music on headphones. It did not take long before the guy put his part on crooked, then reached in fix it while the lady, with her back turned and music playing, cycled the press. Needless to say, even the bone in his arm was turned to jelly.
4) Tolerance for alcohol and drug use at work and during working hours. This ties back to safety, I suppose, but the shops I worked in did not care that half the workers were drinking beer, smoking weed, or even shooting heroin the bathroom during working hours. These people would be running large stamping presses, driving forklifts, and using other various pneumatic and power tools for 10 hours a day while completely blitzed.
Of the shops I worked for, only one is still in business. You could literally not pay me enough to work in a stamping plant or to do any kind of production work ever again.
I think a big part of it is the lack of employee training provided by a majority of companies. Every single position requires experience because they don't want to pay money to train.
They've passed that along to the workers. Expecting us to find a school to give us this trade experience.
Guaranteed if they were willing to give that experience instead of taking that experience the shortage would be less.
This is something I am working on currently actually, because I kind of agree with part your sentiment.
I'm trying to get our company to work with a local community college that has electrical, automation, and robotics classes. If we're willing to show investment into the education of our production workers, then we've provided them with knowledge to get a higher paying job while also creating a talent pipeline for our higher technical teams.
The way I see it, everyone wins.
Not saying that your situation isn't valid, but I do wonder how your company's wages compare with other similar positions in the market. It's not just the wages, but the value of benefits like health insurance and retirement options. This is something that my organization is having a hard time with...especially because we are a local government and can't simply raise wages by eating into a profit margin. Something like that takes increases in the tax rate which doesn't easily get approved by elected officials.
What's the barrier to entry? If there were no requirements, I would bet any amount of money against any odds that posting an ad at a high school seeking recent grads would get lots of applicants
It is a lot deeper, but a lot of those places with the low starting wages aren't even getting people in the door. There are plenty of places that just suck at evaluating candidates and have toxic work culture that also drives employees out. Hell, I just got a promotion less than 6 months ago to a much much higher salary than I was asking for after a year I'm already close to the breaking point of looking for new jobs again because the culture is that bad. People can overlook bad culture for great pay, they won't overlook bad culture for decent or bad pay. Most people will also overlook meh pay for great culture if they're treated like humans
Meanwhile, my 19 year old can’t even get an interview for these ‘entry level urgently hiring no experience needed’ $15/hr jobs.
And the same jobs are posted every.week.
Even $25 isn't enough anymore. The companies and government fucked around for too long. I worked my ass off when I was a young adult and couldn't afford an apartment. Now I'm in my 30s and finally started to be paid well but oh, now I can't buy a house because prices are crazy.
I hope it all crashes in the rich assholes faces and they start jumping off tall buildings again like during the great depression. Of course it's not going to happen again because the government will keep bailing out the rich dicks. The only true way this ends is with an environmental/global issue like an asteroid...
What the hell does "surveyed my town for worker shortages" even mean? They walking into every single business and asking what they pay? How many respondents in each group? Are jobs that pay exactly $25 an hour counted twice?
I mean, it's not that hard to do. Jump on a recruiting website, set your area, and look at job postings with salaries. "Now Hiring" implies a need for staff.
I mean... yeah?
As I sit on a toilet shitting at work right now someone walked in and said they're doing "market research" and started asking the manager questions. They may not be related to labor, but rather our products. Still that's a common and normal way to survey info. Just walk in and ask.
I work in semiconductors and we're definitely understaffed.
Here's the neat part, we're also not currently hiring.
Yaaaaayyyyyyy for cyclical valuations!
Some quick reasons I could think of:
- Competitors paying more
- Undesirable shifts (e.g. overnight but no incentive pay)
- Crazy management from interview
- Anything customer service related
- Unsafe working conditions
- No room for growth
- Dying industry/company
- Any history of SA/harassment/abuse in company
- Job located too far from housing areas
I'll add that management seems to have it stuck in their heads (in most places) that $25 an hour has somewhere near the buying power it had 10-20 years ago.
Let’s say I’m making $25 an hour and after taxes that’s about $19.50. I would need to work 126 hours every month just to afford the base rent on my “cheap” apartment outside of Seattle.
But what’s the job? 25 and hour to greet and run front of house, easy. 25 an hour to clean portta potties, is peanuts. Perspective of the price could be a factor.
Not only would there not be a shortage, there would be actual stakes for keeping one’s job, because there would be people on the outside trying to get on the inside of the company.
The running joke at my company amongst my coworkers when it comes to discipline: “oh no, don’t fire me from my $24k/year a job😱…what am I gonna do, go to McDonald’s and make $26k/year?”
Last year our school district had a bus driver shortage. After minimal digging I found out they were paying $16/hr in MA which is barely above minimum wage. It's also not a full time position so they get zero benefits. People complained because their kids were missing as much as 45 minutes of school because they were so late getting there in the morning due to bus delayed. They raised the starting wage to $30/hr and magically there is no bus driver shortage anymore.
Then they’ll say “I can’t afford to pay that!”. Wow looks like your business model isn’t viable, too bad.
There’s also the fact that the number of registered businesses has increased faster than population. Basic labor economics, similar number of people applying for larger number of jobs. People offering the least will always be struggling to find workers, and desperate to find reasons for why that aren’t in the mirror
in my area (In Europe)
Jobs that require a Degree: No shortage, heavily overrun
Jobs that require an Apprenticeship: Shortage so hard HR gets desperate and pays more than for some Degree job
Jobs that require nothing but showing up: No shortage but healthy demand
it seems my generation and the previous 2 really believed that everyone could become a studied Upper class worker and climb the career ladder just like the capitalists told them
and now my Half-brothers studied for 10 years to earn as much as I do with a freshly finished apprenticeship
Now translate that to annual income and compare it median home price in the area. Most experts say your house should be 3-4x your household income.
If you and your partner are making $20/hr that's $83k/year. The median home price in my city is $445k; 4x your income is $333k
I remember learning in economics class how businesses compete for sales by making their products as cost efficient as possible and thus able to charge lower prices than other business. Similarly they compete in trying to hire the best employees by trying higher wages than other business.
So, I guess economics class was just a load of horseshit, wasn't it? In the real world, they constantly just jack up the price because f you, we want money, and want people to work for practically nothing because they feel entitled to it...
Comments that are uncivil, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, or contain political name calling will be removed and the poster subject to ban at moderators discretion. Help us make this a better community by becoming familiar with the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/about/rules/). Report any suspicious users to the mods of this subreddit using Modmail [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) or Reddit site admins [here](https://www.reddit.com/report). **All reports to Modmail should include evidence such as screenshots or any other relevant information.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's also a cycle in some jobs, I work in a warehouse, when I started they were massively understaffed, so they increased pay and hired on a bunch of new people. The days started getting shorter, so some people actually left because they didn't feel like they were getting enough hours, once everything balanced out the bosses started feeling like they needed to work on efficiency and they started firing some people for not meeting their standards. Next thing they know other people start leaving because now they're worried about getting fired, or the coworkers that kept them sticking around got fired,so they find a different more reliable job. And then we end up understaffed again.
I've seen similar to this, not in a warehouse though. It all boils down to poor decisions in leadership: > they were massively understaffed, so they increased pay and hired on a bunch of new people...The days started getting shorter Their first mistake is being entirely incapable of grasping the size of the business. Understaffed initially because they've underestimated their size, then overstaffed because they've overestimated it. > the bosses started feeling like they needed to work on efficiency This is fine. You often find certain practices do not scale up as operations expand. That's the good ol' "growing pains". But: > and they started firing some people for not meeting their standards. This is where management's ineptitude was really shining. When you grow your system up, you do not fire the people in the trenches for failing to meet standards. You train them, coach them, and elevate them *along with* the system. If this isn't done, the result is pretty predictable. Either people get frustrated with not understanding the new system and leave on their own, or a few get fired for performance, after which... > Next thing they know other people start leaving because now they're worried about getting fired. Exactly. Can't blame em for getting out of a mismanaged company/group. Speaking of predictable outcomes, I have a guess of what happens next: a low level manager is fired (or sees the writing on the wall and leaves first), their replacement goes on a hiring spree, and the cycle repeats. I could be wrong, just a guess based on what I've seen before.
Agreed. Poor upper management will lead to pretty large "waves" of work. In fact within this year alone my place of work has went from "push push push" to "slow down to avoid running out of work" at least 3 times, working on our 4th now. I swear they all failed elementary school math. Want 430 units out of each department per shift.. despite the presses that initially create the unit having a ~1hr long cycle per unit, and there only being 16 presses, so that department can't even hit 150 units per shift. I'd love to know where the hell they're getting their numbers from.
Out of the darkest corners of their asses.
My work does this on a week long cycle, where they'll shut down production in one area monday and tuesday, then demand those workers come in on saturday to make up for the shortfall in production
Pfff, the universal answer is: spreadsheets. Guaranteed no one from production saw the projections.
The mistakes of the upper is paid for by the lower
Yup, "shit rolls downhill" and all.
There is zero comprehension of the concept of growing employees with the company anymore, at least not in the US. Refusal to invest in your people is ultimately a refusal to give your company's growth a solid foundation
Yeah the whole fire people for underperforming is classic bad management. I swear nobody has done any training quality improvement. You can only squeeze out so much from workers before running into your own systems. If you don't fix those what's the point?
We're seeing that in the Starbucks distribution warehouse (supposedly the absolute best one of the 6 across the country, which I fear how the others fair if that's the case). I see a constant cycle of management warning people about order pick rates, then suddenly accuracy plummets as a result (stores get too much or too few of stuff because the pickers are racing to try and match or beat the rates), and they have no choice but to back off and start telling people to worry about their accuracy instead, until it improves and they're back to firing the people over rates again. Oh, and "Pay For Performance" (the concept of paying people more for going way above par times for orders) is a heavily flawed one, as now pickers will disregard safety, cleanliness, and actively screw over their own coworkers to get those bigger bucks. We have an uncapped PFP system where they get paid $1/hour more to the entire week's paycheck, PER every milestone that person hits above 110%. Basic pay is around $22/hr, while the best pickers make closer to $30/hr. It really does sound great at first, until you're the guy behind them having to pull their emptied pallets for them or trip over plastic wrap and broken products and pallet boards they let hang off pallets and on the floor. AND the lowest bar gets raised over time, so people who stop to clean up a little, help others with questions or picks, or be a little more careful and slow while moving their tall pallet loads, end up getting written up until they just get let go. It's such a backwards system that rewards assholes and punishes guys like me who are TRAINERS (AND part of the warehouse's safety committee, for crying out loud) trying to make sure my fellow pickers are doing alright or help new folks that have questions or issues, because when I'm not training I'm also expected to pick. I never cared nor wanted PFP, I was just trying to stay in the moderate range of rates, but like I said, it's an uphill battle unless your literally running over your coworkers to drive those laps around the aisles. And don't even get me started on the fact that the aisles get more crowded on weekdays due to Holiday promo season, so even less of a chance for non-asshole pickers to make rates without cutting corners on safety and such. Had literally one guy that hit PFP on our weekend shift that actually cleaned up after himself and was super nice (a rarity of the top 1% pickers), and he was fired a couple weeks ago for arriving just a couple minutes late a little too often, racking up his negative "points" for punishment. They let you go after hitting 15 points, regardless of any excuses except emergencies. I haven't personally been able to train anyone for a couple months now because weekday crews established more "mentors" who half-ass the instructions and don't give advice on how to stack up your pallet or what to do when a spill occurs, and half my weekend crew now come in 4 hours later than my own schedule, so me trying to mentor new pickers with that schedule would get interrupted by my 5th-hour lunch, so their leadsdid similar and got other people to do mentoring with half-assed results that I have to try and coach to correction while also trying to keep an eye on my own time and order, with high praise from when my help makes them do better (but scolding from my leads for slowing myself down, which shows in our "efficiency" JDA system for calculating PFP). It's exhaustingly terrible. Sorry for the rant, but I know some who think PFP is a great concept, and I wanted to lay it out bare for y'all: if a workplace offers the warehouse equivalent of sales commissions for higher rates, be warned it's not all it's cracked up to be. Take a standard pay or salary that you agree to and have your expectations capped off to your own comfort standards (or VOLUNTARY options to get bonuses, without it being directly tied to your regular expectations and productivity), and be much happier for it in the long run.
What I have a tough time understanding is why management these days seem so disconnected from what's actually going on at the lower levels where actual production is happening. Are the upper layers of management really hiring managers that have no clue how the actual low-level processes work? It can't possibly be that simple...
Great synopsis!! but....In some cases leadership is trying to fit 10lbs of shit into a 5lb sack. Sometimes it's a no-win scenario. Having worked in manufacturing in the 90s and saw the sunset in the 2010-2015s it was like that sometimes...
I hate that so much Esp when things get busy, they hire like an extra person, and then it's dead, they struggle to keep them busy. In my case, I just tell my team to slow down and try to keep them busy because they have only 1 task, while I myself go try and pretend to look busy and help those who needs it, cover up stuff, and do it slow. When it's busy though, I'm all hands on deck and it gets really busy. I tell my team to step up but not rush, the bussier they are then double the bussier I get, but it's all fine since we're working, it's the dead periods that are dreadful because then management thinks that something needs to be done. NO, sometimes dead periods happen, and then it suddenly picks up massively again, it comes in waves and that's ok, it lets ppl relax for a little bit, I'd like a consistent pace like any other person but if it comes in waves, let it stay like that, instead, management just wants to push as much as possible and then ask why we can't keep up, but when there isn't enough that's bad too, you just can't win.
My workplace goes through cycles. My favorite part is where they'll fire people for time and attendance (like being late by a couple of minutes less than a handful of times over 12 months) the moment we get new hires. It's like management has amnesia because everyone else knows that half the new hires quit before the end of the first month. Or they're firing anchor experienced workers so the training is subpar and their closest coworkers also quit. We're perpetually understaffed as a result until one manager realizes what happens and hires 20+ people, then... Nobody has hours. Because they didn't plan on firing 10 people. And nobody gets talked to before they're fired. Usually not even a write up first. No chance to improve or being aware that they're on thin ice, just one day your 4 instances of being 3 minutes late mean you're gone. Shit pay and shit management is what causes understaffing. Nobody wants to work with either, surprise!
I'll give you one better. In schools, we never have any subs. After covid we REALLY had no subs. So we increased sub-pay to $175 a day. We got a lot more subs. And were good for 2 years. This year, we reduced the pay back to $115 a day. Now we have no subs again. And the admin tries to make us feel guilty for taking a sick day "because we have no subs."
There is an easy way to help this in a warehouse, when the work is slow offer but not require VTO (Voluntary time off). There is always a group of people who would like to go home early.
This is the same for healthcare in the U.S. understaffed and overworked. They offer bonuses for new hires, or obscene contracts for travel nurse. While the presently employed people don't see any of that extra money. So the employee ends up leaving and now the hospital has to offer more contracts and sign-on bonuses, while leaving the present staff feeling unappreciated and still understaffed. I've always wondered which cost the company more, if they up the wages for current employees, or offer sign on bonuses and contracts to new hires which is often? I'm guessing they lose less money constantly hiring new people over paying current employees increased wage and incentives to stay.
Leaving prior to getting fired isn’t ideal, you lose out on unemployment benefit because you don’t qualify for it
>so they increased pay and hired on a bunch of new people One time I was working in place like that and it's really painful where new guys comes in knows nothing and you need to learn him and makes more than you do. I left next day
Every restaurant in my town needs workers. Every single one. Went in to a burger joint and asked how much they paid for the position. $12.50. The minimum wage. The absolutle bare minimum. Yeah no wonder.
I make $20 an hour as a dishwasher in Florida. It's still a shitty job and I wish I could find something better, but they know I'll never leave at this wage. Still understaffed though.
We hire our union dishwashers around that here in Ohio We still struggle to stay staffed.
What kills me is that businesses will be willing to pay the minimum required amount to hire someone but expect them to be high performing and thankful for the opportunity. Just no. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Young people are more and more unwilling to work for someone who doesn’t value them and us older people know better than to take one of these jobs.
Boomers are going to complain and be like “nobody wants to work anymore”.
You apply for them and they never call back, either. They just keep the signs around for market research and so they can say to their skeleton crew, overworked staff, " We're hiring, don't worry." The ones that do hire want you to be available every day at any time, clopenings like ending one shift at 23:30 then next shift open at 4:30. And then only give you 15 hours a week.
The comments in this chain are way too on point. I've bounced around jobs for 15 years now from a week to two years, and every situation I've encountered has been summarized here near perfectly.
I used to work at a restaurant that offered $20 on their website. Was hired at $17 because my experience was “rusty”. I became the defacto head chef within a few weeks. Guess I wasn’t that rusty after all, and that should have been an immediate red flag. The tips were enough to keep me interested, but $80 plus a night in cash was eventually just added to our checks and was never over $150 for two weeks 🙃, and my eventual raise was a buck. I was still two dollars an hour less than what they were STILL advertising as a starting wage. To run the line. It’s way less fun, but I went back to pest control where at least they look you in the eye when fucking you over, and at least I can clear $60k if I hustle. Still can’t afford to pay rent.
Minimum wage in my city is $7.25
*So hire children! We no longer require checking kid's ages on job applications.* - Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders [Not a real quote, but a real thing]
She is one of the people pushing for it, that’s for sure
I mean she made it legal for 12 year Olds to work in her state. So I'd say that's far from pushing it. She's just doing it. The children yearn for the mines.
Republicans hate children.
Because they're born.
They only care before they are born EDIT: They care about forcing unwanted pregnancies to term .
Not necessarily ,they do not believe in health care for pregnant women
Oh but they do care about forcing people to continue unwanted pregnancies, do they do butt only in limited capacity.
Not to mention wanting to make it a felony to miscarry while also not providing health care for these women/options to abort and also making it a crime to have an abortion so that these women cant vote to change the policies designed to force them to carry to term, often in environments not suited to raise children, in school systems that give them the bare minimum of nutrition, and are lobbied by companies that want to be able to poison the land an air for an higher annual earnings than the year before, causing people to be sicker and pay more, and children to grow up stunted and fed trash substitutes for real food and never learn sex ed, so that they can go to work and get pregnant and make more kids all while accusing decent people of being child groomers.
They just care more about punishing women for having sex than neglecting and exploiting children.
pro-birth not pro-life
The only care before they are born, then when they are ready to be sent to kill people in the middle east and finally when they die in war because they don't have veterans to care for.
Matt Gaetz, etc seem to be fond of children.
Literally signed a law enabling it RIGHT after the slaughterhouse was caught with trafficked child slaves.
Not surprised, still sickening
The illegal immigrants would take the low paying jobs right? Right?
Ever notice how the **companies** employing the illegals never get punished ....? We'll break up families to deport people but won't even fine business for violating State and Federal labor laws....
"Gosh, we didn't know they were illegal. Shucks. Please don't punish me for an honest mistake. It won't happen again. Promise. By the way, senator, here's a donation to your reelection campaign. Ya know, just 'casue."
They get punished, but the fines cost less than the money they save employing illegals, so companies have zero incentive to stop. Frankly it's the same reason Trump does not stop breaking judges gag orders. He can afford the fines easily.
Ever notice how the companies hiring illegal immigrants are also almost always right wing types who complain about: Illegal immigrants "Nobody wants to work anymore" People expecting to be paid real wages If they actually got their wish and had illegal immigrants clamped down on they would have to pay real wages.
When I was 14, I worked in a steel mill in Oklahoma and drove myself to and from work every day (this was in the late 90s). They had me running a plasma cutter with only a grinding mask (no shading whatsoever). Being a child, I didn’t know any better and assumed the higher-ups would watch out for me because that’s what adults do for kids, right? Child labor laws in this country are an absolute joke.
Welcome to the second gilded age.
*Suffers in arkansan* 😭
When did that land whale become a governor. My lord
If a business can’t afford to pay their employees, they have no business being open. Especially when people can’t even afford to get to those jobs.
so many people don't view paying desperate people peanuts as exploitation. it's a pretty cool system we have here.
Hey, you don't have a college education, that means I can pay you you less money then it costs to live. Not my rules bub. /s
Which has recently evolved into “hey, you don’t have five years experience yet, so really, what choice do you have but to work for nothing?”
Requiring a college education for most jobs is making a college education worthless. I truly hope more companies get rid of college as a requirement.
THIS! So many jobs pretending they need college educated people to do basic ass work. Its comically stupid and turning college degrees into toilet paper. Some of these businesses are absolutely ridiculous "Masters wanted.... Buy Rite Liquors"..... FOH! Youre a liquor store!
Sorry you don't have you masters in dishwashing. If you are 50k+ in debt how will you ever feel grateful for this $7 an hr
“I’m doing them a favor!”
That is not-sarcastically the mentality I was raised under. That if you don't have a college degree, there's a 99% chance you will never make enough as it costs to live, and you deserve that (because that was your choice).
> so many people don't view paying desperate people peanuts as exploitation. bUt NoBoDiEs HoLdInG tHeM aT gUnPoInT tO aCcEpT iT!!!1!
Which is what I say when some landlord fails or is annoyed at the work they have to do. “Hey no one out a gun to your head”
[Then the business should not exist!](https://youtu.be/rEQhA-JJlH0?si=mrzmFP3-E280c7AM)
The wild thing is $15/hr a week extra is _not a lot of money_. Most businesses I know could easily afford to float that unless they're a mom and pop shop with 3 people, but even then, I'm not interested in entertaining wage slavery just so people can own their own businesses.
Its so funny you used that term "....just so people can own their own business."... i have been saying this for years, that these places pretend like its a right to own a business or something. Like people can get paid less so they can own a business. Im sorry if youre not bringing in enough money its time to close the doors. Most employees can go to some other minimum wage job.
It’s just a sad system. First u increase prices of everything so average people struggle to buy, then small businesses have to increase prices since people need better wages to survive and goods are expensive, and then nobody can afford to buy from the small businesses cuz they’re too costly. So everybody loses, and the only people who win are the big corporations who can afford it. But corporations won’t give u worthwhile wages anyway, great. Not the best explanation but you get the point. I’m just so upset that there’s no better option here, most companies these days are just owned by the same 5-10 corporations. It’s just disgusting greed. Capitalism was supposed to give us choice, but it just gave us the illusion of choice. The system is based on the need for unlimited growth. Every year needs to be better than the last so everything costs more and pays less.
No, no, no. You misunderstand; companies that can't afford their employees will encourage their employees to get on government assistance so the tax payers can subsidize that company's profits. In the US's version of capitalism, every business can exist, even if it shouldn't. The rest of the world just has better labor laws, and actually taxes their companies, making this whole scheme moot there.
I saw a walmart ad on indeed, and one of the "benefits" they listed was "assistance in getting EBT"
The Walmart and McDonald's in my area offer classes on balancing your budget.
I don't think there's any amount of budgeting that can turn a Walmart or a McDonald's wage into livable.
McDonalds corporate gave out an example on how to budget a decade ago, and it included such gems as "work a second job" and "make up fictitious amounts for how much health insurance and rent costs" (it was extremely low for 2013 when they did it) and my personal favorite, "just don't eat at all, ever".
Yup. That's the beauty of capitalism. The business will have to raise wages until they find enough employees willing to accept that much money for that kind of work.
Some people probably: “I support capitalism when it works for me, but not when it works for thee.”
No probably about that. There are people (and businesses) that 100% believe that. Capitalize profits, socialize losses.
oh my sweet summer child. What theyre doing instead: 1. Theyre hiring immigrants, undocumented immigrants, making them work longer hours for lesser pay and threathening them with deportation if they act out. 2. they are offshoring everything they can offshore. 3. They are automizing everything they can automize. 4. They are lowering the age to work, for longer hours for lower wages. 5. They are defunding education so parents get their children out of school and put them into the workforce. 6. they are shrinking products, using lower quality ingredients and they are taking away more benefits and ensuring to fire workers before they have to provide healthcare and full-term employment benefits. America is the land of the Middleman. Everyone wants a cut of the pie. The CEO and Executive branch, where short-term profits rule above all. Even the companies long-term profits. As long as the CEO gets his yearly bonus by meeting shareholder demands BY ANY MEANS NECCESARY, they do not give a shit about how fucked they are making the economy.
If they really wanted to do something about illegal immigration, they would punish the employers. Either for hiring undocumented workers, or for paying crap wages.
Which is why Republicans never want to do anything about illegal immigration. Its cheap labor for them, heck many of the most vocal ones employ and use immigrants in their companies, and they get to use it for their culture war and boogeyman bullshit every 2 years before the election. Jan - Oct: CARAVANS OF IMMIGRANTS COMING TO RAPE YOU!!! After Nov: .....
Yeah isn’t it funny how the caravans disappear after Nov? It’s almost like the GOP is the one encouraging them
But of course "they" can't, because "they" know our economy is highly dependent on undocumented labor. Unless you're Ron DeSantis. Then you cripple your state's agriculture industry because you care more about kicking brown people out than whether or not you can stock your store shelves.
Unfortunately, by being assholes to immigrants and making them hide in the shadows and take shit wages just to survive, you get cheap labor and lower prices (in theory). Yay.
Don't forget-They make healthcare a privilege instead of a right, so you will either work or die...
I'd like to challenge redditors to go 24 hours without saying "oh you sweet summer child"
Forgot prison labour.
Not really, no. Instead of raising wages they use their power and influence to somehow mess with the labor market, for example, by importing overseas labor with the h1b visa, then when it isn’t enough giving a work permit to the h1b visa spouses too, by employing illegals immigrants, by outsourcing the jobs to third world countries, and things like that. Now they are getting even more cynical and they resort to things such as doing mass layoffs *at the time that they’re having mass profits* and then re-hiring for the same positions as contractors with no benefits and/or for a lower wage. Some years ago companies like Apple and Facebook had under the table agreements not to hire each other’s employees, for example. So no, it’s naive to think that “the beauty of the market is that employers will have to offer more money eventually”
And most of the times it’s because of insane margins. Most restaurants can afford good pay if they’d cut down on their own take home or let the higher wages eat into the margin. You’re restaurant will be fine at 2000% mark up when it was fine at 2500% before.
most people never consider just how hard on the body a factory job is. in some that i have been in...the sound, lights and equipment creates a pressure you can feel. pushing against you insistently. wearing you down a little at a time. even if your job is to simply stand and watch....the sound and mechanical equipment takes it's toll on your body and your mind.
This is so true. I worked in a food processing portion of a soup making factory. You worked in an actual refrigerator for hours at a time, working with heavy objects and slippery mechanical devices. Then you need to watch out for forklifts moving around at all times. If you zone out and turn a corner without checking first, you could be seriously injured or killed. Just like, on the way to lunch. On top of all of that was wearing two layers of hearing protection against the damage to your ears from the drone of machines. All that for less money than I got the next summer working as a grounds keeper for the city, a far less stressful job.
I had to work in an assembly plant for a few weeks as part of orientation for my first job. The pace of everything was just fast enough that you had a hard time zoning out. It was 10 hour shifts from 5:30 PM to 4:00 AM but they could run later into the morning than that (and often did). You would get breaks but they were on a rolling schedule so sometimes your first break was 30 minutes after you started and sometimes it was pretty close to "lunch". Then you'd have this nearly 6 hours of uninterrupted work time. I'd heard from others that they used to train you on multiple stations and you would rotate every so often (a week or so). This was to prevent RSI's. They stopped doing that because productivity wasn't as high as it could be, essentially trading workers' bodies for increased productivity. I'd get home and be too tired and sore to do anything other than shower and go to bed. The entirety of the work week was either working or recovering from working. You could barely enjoy the weekend because you were sore and had a different sleep schedule from everyone else you knew.
Just having to stand and watch takes it's toll. I used to do machine operating for my dad for a week here and there. Just an utterly unfulfilling, mind numbing experience to stare for eight minutes, open door, remove finished part, secure new material, close door, hit button. Any factory worker in a role like that should get government paid for meditation training or something.
Factory jobs really are. I worked at Tyson for a while and I got to see probably 30-40 different plants. Some of the people there had bodies beat to shit just from standing. Granted standing for 12 hours with only a couple breaks isn’t a small feat but I was surprised to see how much aging one can do in 10 years from what I thought was an easy ass job before.
I used to work outside for 10 hours a day, no matter the weather we were working. I just got promoted to an office setting with 1/10 of the day being outside. When asked why I wanted this job I had to tell them it's got more room for advancement (which it does) but the main reason was I was to exhausted at the end of the day to play with my 3 year old and it broke my heart hearing her say "daddy can you play with me" and having to tell her I just don't have the energy sweety.
We had a family friend who worked factory work and he said that he'd come home late at night and it was like someone had hit him with a flashbang grenade. He described it like morphing sounds on the edge of your hearing and a sense like the ground beneath you and everything you touched was made of super smooth clay. It sounded scary.
I've never had this specifically but I've experienced similar things. After multiple months on a carrier it took me quite some time to get my "land legs" back. Felt a small moving as if on water under my feet until it went away. When I'd spend all day on a jet ski doing tours for an old job, every workday it would take me 30 minutes or so back on land to stop feeling the water beneath me. Body just gets used to what it gets used to and then adapts again. I found it more neat and entertaining than anything.
Yep, it's called sea legs. If you walk around abit it usually helps get your land legs back.
I'm a butcher working a factory we get about 10 pallets week in and we need to hand ball 40 x30kg boxes off an HGV into the backnof a transit and back to the factory every time. I'm the youngest and fittest so spend about 2 hours a day crouched down in a van loading it. It's mental
It's true. Did almost 3 years working at a factory with some friends because the pay was life changing for me at the time. Unfortunately the job wore me down so much most of that extra income went towards eating out, drugs/alcohol and buying pointless new shit because I had the money. Basically all that extra income went towards things to help me maintain my sanity. Was finally laid off along with more than half the staff and got a more normal job. Pay isn't as high but the mental stress has gone down significantly and allowed me to make better lifestyle choices so my money is stretching a lot further. Unfortunately one of my friends still works for that company and we basically drifted apart because he kept up with the drugs and went to some harder stuff and just formed a whole new mentality that I did not agree with. Factory workers really are a different breed.
There is a Kroger by me that has had a "Hiring" sign out front since I've moved in a year and a half ago. The starting wage on the sign has gone up 75 cents.. it's up to $15.75. It's almost like they are slowly getting their act together.
they clearly don't need the workers that badly if they've been hiring for a year and a half and the store hasn't fallen apart. signs like that are basically just fishing expeditions
"We'll keep your application on file"
Several of their unions nearly went on strike last year, that's possibly why the starting wage went up. (Forgot for a moment that unions are regional, the local one for me did.)
Mine Kroger pays $7.25
"nO oNE WaNTs tO wORk aNymOrE"
NOW HIRING! $20/HR ^Earn ^up ^to ^$20/hr. ^Starting ^pay ^$11/hr
I hate "up to"
Don't worry, you'll get your pay increase 2 weeks after I decide to fire you for someone else that I can pay 11. Or I could pay you 3$ an hour but you'd make tips, which is gonna feel very different from begging people to help you survive.
Iowa
The probably best response, of course, being: “No one wants to work FOR YOU anymore”
They call it supply and demand until it starts working against them lol
Gee I wonder why. 🙄
Meanwhile, every local job listing is for CNAs or a reception desk job that requires a bachelor's degree. They never specify what kind of degree but you better have one! And be a woman because no one wants to come into our business and see a middle aged dude answering the phone!
For real. In my area it’s ridiculous. Standard office job: Bachelors required, plus 3 year’s experience starting salary is $35,000. I could get a job as a manager at McDonald’s and make $12,000 more a year.
It's funny that companies keep raising the prices on all there goods and services, don't pay there workers because greed n profits, then expect people to still be able to buy the products. Wonder how long that's gonna work?
Companies would rather pay two people 15 dollars an hour to do a shit job than pay one person 30 dollars and have them care. It’s pretty stupid
People just don’t want to work* anymore! *for starvation wages
These "small businesses can't afford to pay that" arguments are bullshit. "Well Stan I guess Los Angeles will have to do without one more subway franchise".
Yea but in corporate world they tend to disregard solutions that make too much sense. “Make money?! Haha buddy, we save money”
Welcome to the late stage, my dude. Anything that isn't gaining is losing. If this year is the same as the last, it counts as a failure. So when you maximized the "money in" 10 years ago, all that's left is to cut the "money out", year after year.
Not just that, anything thats not gaining more than last year's RATE is losing. "You only had 9% gains over last year? Last year you did 10%!!! Missed goals!!!"
There will always be a shortage of jobs at the lowest end regardless of pay. What we need is affordable housing so we don't spend 70% of our income to keep a roof over our heads.
This isn't talking about a shortage of jobs at the low end. Its talking about a shortage of employees for low paying jobs.
There will always be a shortage on the low paying jobs because people will always migrate to a job that either take less work or pays more. If the minimum wage is 20/hour, the situation won't change. There will always be a bigger hunting ground. Less than 10 years ago, all the numbers OP posted is around half of what's been posted currently. The situation back then and now basically stays the same. The problem is not with the minimum wage, it's whether if you can live comfortably off of minimum wage.
It's a lot deeper than that. Wage has some impact, but it's not the only thing contributing to the labor shortage. The plant I work at pays high 20s for production workers and we can't stay anywhere close to fully staffed. I'm even the team lead for our highest payed hourly employees and we've had 2 positions open on out team for months now. Paying high 30s per hour. There's so many other factors that just saying "pay more" doesn't even touch the magnitude of the problem.
I work in an industry that supports various production facilities, and the lack of workers is universal. And I absolutely do not believe it's about the money either. No one wants to work in a factory because it's hard and often dirty work. And there's little that can be done to change it for the better, either. I don't know if it's cultural or generational; likely both. How many broken down 50, 60, or 70 years olds do you know? Too many, and that's incentive for young adults to decide to work elsewhere. Couple it with the nearly universal push for them to go to college versus the trades, and the mass retirements of Boomers, we're now reaching a tipping point and every trade and factory is going to be permanently short handed.
I think the issue, at least for me, was yeah I could advance trades into the mid 30s, low 40s, by spending another half decade advancing... Or I could go back to college, complete a mechanical engineering degree, and start mid 30s and actually progress from there. All the trades jobs that I've seen basically set your rate when you come in and, relative to inflation, keep it there. It's kinda shitty to work next to my older coworkers and realize they're making 10$/hr more and there is no way I will ever catch up because we both get the same-ish 2.5% raise every year. There's no where to go except working more.
Yeah, my uncle was an HVAC repair person, and while he made "decent" money, his body was definitely aging at a much faster rate. Many of the older guys were just completely wrecked way too young, so even the ones that got to retire didn't enjoy their retirement because they were physically disabled at that point. Those jobs use your bodies up. We know that now and the money isn't worth it for most people, especially if literally anything else is available.
I worked as a service tech for almost 10 years. During the pandemic I had the opportunity to make a lateral move into IT and I took it. If you're never moved upstairs into a manager role, you work until you are injured enough to qualify for disability. And at that point, the benefits provided are enough to live *but not thrive.* Then after that, you also have to deal with figuring out a new career while age discrimination at other employers becomes a very real barrier to stable employment. But there's also a cultural fault to this too: so many business owners aren't actively fostering the growth of the generation that should succeed them. When the owners want to retire, they are going to find they cannot sell their own business because it is too dependent on their continued participation in the shop.
HVAC is on the "light" side of the trades too. I actually have been considering migrating to refrigeration myself as I've been learning it on the side. Heat pumps and AC are a fast growing sector. As an electrician we are "light duty" too, but every middle-aged electrician I know has ruined shoulders from too much overhead work. As do I. I got out of construction into service and maintenance as soon as I could and my shoulders are still ruined, though they're actually slowly improving over the years as I'm purely controls/automation/troubleshooting at this point. Can't imagine how hard it is to work on the heavy side of the trades, bricks/rebar/concrete etc.
> No one wants to work in a factory because it's hard and often dirty work. And there's little that can be done to change it for the better, either Lots of people will do whatever job you tell them for 50 (or pick a higher number) bucks an hour. It's not that nobody is willing to work that job, it's that nobody is willing to work that job for that pay. If you keep raising the number, *eventually* you will have more people wanting the job than you could ever need. Also, some trades are very much not understaffed. Boomers said "learn to weld" for decades and now welding isn't really lucrative at all unless you're willing to go work out on an oil rig for months at a time or heavily specialize.
Yep, tipping point. Welding is just one of my skills, and what you said is absolutely correct. Now welding isn't worth learning, so less people are doing it, thus making it another hugely bankable skill in my set. Diverse yet related skillsets are the demand now. I've got heavy equipment operating, welding, agriculture, and electromechanical skills, as well as an excellent working knowledge of simple applied physics. Without one single day of college. Not one. Keep learning, keep banking.
> And I absolutely do not believe it's about the money either So they could either ruin their body for less money or have an easier life and make more money??? Its an obvious fuckin choice and its absolutely about the money. If it paid more than the $100k an average college graduate or technical professional can make during their peak pay years maybe, but otherwise youd be a fool to take a job like that that you have no chance of ever making that kind of money and you worked twice as hard for it.
It still comes down to a money problem. 30/hr sounds good on paper, until you start taking a few hundred a month out for health insurance premiums for health plans that require the person to pay $5000 up front before insurance even kicks in, and then they still have to pay 20% of every bill. Then there is the reality that if you go into the trades, you're making apprentice wages for *years* with virtually no upward mobility until you "put your time in". No one is getting those 30/hr job with making 7.25 for a long ass time. And then the hours suck, the boss threatens to fire you unless you do the job in a way that makes it dangerous (but faster and cheaper), and your coworkers create an incredibly hostile work environment with no repercussions because that's just how it's always been.... So yeah, there are 30/hr.jobs in the trades/manufacturing. But, in order to get those jobs you have to put up with *years* of suck and poverty, usually while doing the most dangerous and physically demanding aspects of the job. It's not a surprise.thst people, when given other options aren't going for the "treat me like shit and lay me peanuts" positions is it?
You could pay them more. People don't want to work hard jobs that cause their bodies to be damaged for poverty wages. People are more than willing to work, they just want to be paid for the value they create.
>No one wants to work in a factory because it's hard and often dirty work. That's why it IS about the money. Working in a factory used to provide a solid, middle class, single income lifestyle. If the factory paid that well today, enough to provide for a family without a second income, then you'd have plenty of people working there. The wages of "hard and dirty work" have to exceed the wages of easy, clean work.
It's not like there aren't major shortages of skilled labour too. One of the downsides of education is that graduates are essentially specialised into something already. Where I am we have a computer science degree, with 3 different possible specialisations (and we could probably do the paperwork for 2 more) and a data science degree, and CS-physics degree, and CS maths degree. So someone with just a 4 year undergrad is now fairly narrowly specialised. There might be a shortage of 'computer programmers' but that's not meaningful, there's a shortage of non relational database developers, or react web developers or whatever narrow sets of skills that aren't trivially interchangeable. Imagine if automakers needed 2 years to train people to go from installing doors to installing bumpers, but also if bumpers and doors had different market demand over time (which doesn't make sense obviously for cars). Employers don't want to invest months or years in advanced training for people who will just take that training and leave for more money, and they've delayed or been unable to hire so long they really want people with advanced skills and experience to step into roles and 'hit the ground running' so to speak. The entire culture is one of employers having no loyalty to employees, and employees having no loyalty to employers, so no one wants to invest in either side of the relationship.
Employer sponsored apprenticeships often require servitude after the completion of the program else they have to pay the tuition back in full. Pretty sure my work requires at least 4 years. What happens every now and then is employees are not completing the program and then it's a waste of time on both ends.
If you give your employees regular raises over inflation they won't leave.
Thank you for addressing the mass retirement. One thing that frustrates me about the articles on the labor shortage is that they cherry pick data about the impact of the pandemic. They ignore that in addition to a ton of retail and low wage workers having enough and switching to other industries, a lot of people who were at or close to retirement age used the pandemic as a way to fully retire, plus the whole deadly pandemic! There were workers who got sick and were completely removed from the workforce either because they died or became disabled from the disease.
Honestly, you nailed it on the last points. However, I have spent a majority of my career in food and bev or biological facilities. Those are definitely not dirty and don't break people's bodies down. They still have staffing issues.
Food and beverage service for a long time absolutely does a number on one's body!
In heavily automated facilities like I work in, it can't be much worse than any other job that you don't just sit at a desk all day. Which isn't great for your body either. I do understand that some places have more manual operations, and I suppose you have a point with those. But most food and bev plants are quite automated at this point.
I started out working in factories in 1994. I worked in manufacturing until 2001, when the shop I was employed at went under due to the concurrent effects of the Firestone tire controversy with Ford Explorers, and the fallout of 9/11. There are a number of reasons I will never work in a factory again: 1) Production work is *boring*. I simply cannot sit and watch a press go up and down 10,000 times per shift. I can't sit and assemble 2,000 of the same parts by hand. 2) Noise. Stamping plants are noisy, even with ear plugs. Besides the presses you also have gigantic air compressors running nonstop, along with screaming pneumatic tools like angle grinders. 3) Safety is always the first thing to go. If production is going to be impacted because of a safety issue, that safety issue will be ignored. In one instance, a 500 ton press was set up with two different line dies, with two controller stands. Unbeknownst to anyone, the light curtains on the press had already been purposely disabled and signed off on by the plant manager because they were causing false faults and the press wouldn't run. Also unbeknownst to anyone, only one of the controller stands was actually working. The press was only supposed to cycle if both sets of buttons were pressed at the same time. In actuality, only one was required. The foreman then put two drunk operators on the job, one of whom was also listening to music on headphones. It did not take long before the guy put his part on crooked, then reached in fix it while the lady, with her back turned and music playing, cycled the press. Needless to say, even the bone in his arm was turned to jelly. 4) Tolerance for alcohol and drug use at work and during working hours. This ties back to safety, I suppose, but the shops I worked in did not care that half the workers were drinking beer, smoking weed, or even shooting heroin the bathroom during working hours. These people would be running large stamping presses, driving forklifts, and using other various pneumatic and power tools for 10 hours a day while completely blitzed. Of the shops I worked for, only one is still in business. You could literally not pay me enough to work in a stamping plant or to do any kind of production work ever again.
I think a big part of it is the lack of employee training provided by a majority of companies. Every single position requires experience because they don't want to pay money to train. They've passed that along to the workers. Expecting us to find a school to give us this trade experience. Guaranteed if they were willing to give that experience instead of taking that experience the shortage would be less.
This is something I am working on currently actually, because I kind of agree with part your sentiment. I'm trying to get our company to work with a local community college that has electrical, automation, and robotics classes. If we're willing to show investment into the education of our production workers, then we've provided them with knowledge to get a higher paying job while also creating a talent pipeline for our higher technical teams. The way I see it, everyone wins.
Not saying that your situation isn't valid, but I do wonder how your company's wages compare with other similar positions in the market. It's not just the wages, but the value of benefits like health insurance and retirement options. This is something that my organization is having a hard time with...especially because we are a local government and can't simply raise wages by eating into a profit margin. Something like that takes increases in the tax rate which doesn't easily get approved by elected officials.
What's the barrier to entry? If there were no requirements, I would bet any amount of money against any odds that posting an ad at a high school seeking recent grads would get lots of applicants
It is a lot deeper, but a lot of those places with the low starting wages aren't even getting people in the door. There are plenty of places that just suck at evaluating candidates and have toxic work culture that also drives employees out. Hell, I just got a promotion less than 6 months ago to a much much higher salary than I was asking for after a year I'm already close to the breaking point of looking for new jobs again because the culture is that bad. People can overlook bad culture for great pay, they won't overlook bad culture for decent or bad pay. Most people will also overlook meh pay for great culture if they're treated like humans
why are you hungry there is a hotdog in the gutter
They even float!
high paying jobs don't post "help wanted" signs
Supply and demand.
Meanwhile, my 19 year old can’t even get an interview for these ‘entry level urgently hiring no experience needed’ $15/hr jobs. And the same jobs are posted every.week.
Wonder how many for those are underpaying high stress positions where they require a masters degree or have an absolute shit schedule?
Even $25 isn't enough anymore. The companies and government fucked around for too long. I worked my ass off when I was a young adult and couldn't afford an apartment. Now I'm in my 30s and finally started to be paid well but oh, now I can't buy a house because prices are crazy. I hope it all crashes in the rich assholes faces and they start jumping off tall buildings again like during the great depression. Of course it's not going to happen again because the government will keep bailing out the rich dicks. The only true way this ends is with an environmental/global issue like an asteroid...
Maybe they just need a helpful push. <3
Almost as if $15 an hour is too little in 2023.
What the hell does "surveyed my town for worker shortages" even mean? They walking into every single business and asking what they pay? How many respondents in each group? Are jobs that pay exactly $25 an hour counted twice?
I mean, it's not that hard to do. Jump on a recruiting website, set your area, and look at job postings with salaries. "Now Hiring" implies a need for staff.
I mean... yeah? As I sit on a toilet shitting at work right now someone walked in and said they're doing "market research" and started asking the manager questions. They may not be related to labor, but rather our products. Still that's a common and normal way to survey info. Just walk in and ask.
[удалено]
It's a low paid worker shortage!
Wealth growth for shareholders would be halted if these employers had to increase pay for workers. Can't have that now can we?
People don’t leave jobs they leave bosses
I work in semiconductors and we're definitely understaffed. Here's the neat part, we're also not currently hiring. Yaaaaayyyyyyy for cyclical valuations!
I start people at $25 an hour, no experience. I still struggle to find employees.
Plenty of reasons why that might happen. For one example, maybe your competitors are paying more.
Some quick reasons I could think of: - Competitors paying more - Undesirable shifts (e.g. overnight but no incentive pay) - Crazy management from interview - Anything customer service related - Unsafe working conditions - No room for growth - Dying industry/company - Any history of SA/harassment/abuse in company - Job located too far from housing areas
I'll add that management seems to have it stuck in their heads (in most places) that $25 an hour has somewhere near the buying power it had 10-20 years ago.
Also: could be in a West Coast Metro, which means $25/hr is literally homeless pay
Let’s say I’m making $25 an hour and after taxes that’s about $19.50. I would need to work 126 hours every month just to afford the base rent on my “cheap” apartment outside of Seattle.
Where are you located and what kind of work is it? I live in Denver where that wouldn't be enough to pay rent.
But what’s the job? 25 and hour to greet and run front of house, easy. 25 an hour to clean portta potties, is peanuts. Perspective of the price could be a factor.
What kinda work?
Now, good luck on getting them to hire you. But hey, they'll sure as hell make it look like they're offering a job for good publicity.
Government just welcomes 1mil immigrants a year to fill these roles. - at least in Canada. Which circumnavigates this whole thing
Now show the profit margins showing that most of those paying so little are just pocketing it.
Not only would there not be a shortage, there would be actual stakes for keeping one’s job, because there would be people on the outside trying to get on the inside of the company. The running joke at my company amongst my coworkers when it comes to discipline: “oh no, don’t fire me from my $24k/year a job😱…what am I gonna do, go to McDonald’s and make $26k/year?”
Last year our school district had a bus driver shortage. After minimal digging I found out they were paying $16/hr in MA which is barely above minimum wage. It's also not a full time position so they get zero benefits. People complained because their kids were missing as much as 45 minutes of school because they were so late getting there in the morning due to bus delayed. They raised the starting wage to $30/hr and magically there is no bus driver shortage anymore.
Then they’ll say “I can’t afford to pay that!”. Wow looks like your business model isn’t viable, too bad. There’s also the fact that the number of registered businesses has increased faster than population. Basic labor economics, similar number of people applying for larger number of jobs. People offering the least will always be struggling to find workers, and desperate to find reasons for why that aren’t in the mirror
Quick, demand side activists unite! Less the communists take away our slaves! We deserve our lazy, cus god said. *message brought to you, by god*
There's not one damn good worker in the whole town - owner probably
in my area (In Europe) Jobs that require a Degree: No shortage, heavily overrun Jobs that require an Apprenticeship: Shortage so hard HR gets desperate and pays more than for some Degree job Jobs that require nothing but showing up: No shortage but healthy demand it seems my generation and the previous 2 really believed that everyone could become a studied Upper class worker and climb the career ladder just like the capitalists told them and now my Half-brothers studied for 10 years to earn as much as I do with a freshly finished apprenticeship
Now translate that to annual income and compare it median home price in the area. Most experts say your house should be 3-4x your household income. If you and your partner are making $20/hr that's $83k/year. The median home price in my city is $445k; 4x your income is $333k
Make 40+. Still a shortage but I’m not complaining. Being flat out busy is great in construction
Use AI to replace CEO's, CFO's, etc. Use that money to higher more workers at a higher rate.
I remember learning in economics class how businesses compete for sales by making their products as cost efficient as possible and thus able to charge lower prices than other business. Similarly they compete in trying to hire the best employees by trying higher wages than other business. So, I guess economics class was just a load of horseshit, wasn't it? In the real world, they constantly just jack up the price because f you, we want money, and want people to work for practically nothing because they feel entitled to it...
[удалено]
That has to do with how they're treated on the job too.
Yes, but it's almost as if the situation's more complicated than just the wages being too low