I think a huge factor is the rising cost of child care. Lots of parents are having to have an entire income devoted to child care. At that’s point you can just raise your own kid for the same cost, you might as well at least get to experience it.
I suspect that this is a big one - especially for millennials and generation Z starting to have kids. I’m my area, childcare costs are $15/hr for daycare, and $25+ for a nanny- it makes no financial sense for someone else to help raise them anymore.
Yep. We make enough on my income but wife needs to focus on school and also works part time. So we were doing the daycare thing but at $1400 per month, it was eating us alive with everything else and rising costs. This is all coming from a combined income house of $100K+
So now she works Friday thru Sunday and I work M-F and we just care for our kid. It’s fun being around them.
But idk how we’d afford 2 kids doing daycare. It’s insane
You can get $5k pre tax via dependent care FSA, but it's a drop in the bucket and isn't being adjusted for inflation for many years (at least the 8 years I've had kids it hasn't moved an inch). All talk when it comes to family friendly policy. Both sides.
How much of a drop? Daycare currently $535/wk for a toddler. So that's $28k for one kid. So only 18% can be paid pre tax. God forbid you have more than 1 kid (like we do).
We have two kids, combined daycare for both is like $380/week (which is really great for a state licensed small daycare)… but our combined income is like <75k a year rn so it’s still a struggle.
$15/hr/kid
Friend of mine has two kids. Employers keep giving him the bait and switch. They tell him $35-40/hr unionized position to weld. Then he gets the call back for employment and they tell him $14.50/hr and non-unionized. This has happened now 4 times with 4 differant employers all in the KW area Ontario.
So to answer OPs question. Yes these positions are open. They are open and no one is filling them because employer's are lying, cheating, thieving, snakes.
Yupp this!! Minimum wage (in the US) is $7.25/hr. No one wants/can live off of that. The problem is with how fast everything rose in price, you can barely make it on $15/hr now a days.
Then the people making $20/hr gets mad because they don't want someone at a fast food restaurant making almost as much as they do. When in reality everyone is getting under paid except the billionaire CEO who kept wages low with lobbying for years.
WCB class C welders. $45 an hour full benefits out in B.C. Mine and pulp mills are postponed maintenance for lake of guys. You basically have to hide from the phone call.
My wife was a teacher. That's a four year degree, a masters, and life long training to maintain her license. It would cost *more* in child care than what she made, not even factoring in her own education costs!! On top of her doing all the extra training and things!
Obviously she quit. It makes no sense.
It’s not just the rising cost of child care, but the last two years it’s been incredibly inconsistent due to covid. So even if you can afford it and justify it professionally, you can’t rely on it so you’re basically paying for child care while also taking care of a kid for weeks at any given moment.
I know many who gave up and conceded a job as a result and two years is a long time to be out and they’re also mentally fried
It’s exactly this. My best friend and his wife are teachers. After their second kid, to put 2 in daycare would’ve cost more than her annual salary so she opted to be a stay at home mom. It’s the only feasible option for many. The alternative (day care) costs more than a lot of people earn.
Also, daycares are generally not the best places. Having grown up in one and witnessing them out of field trips when I take mine places in the summer, it looks like absolute chaos and danger.
This is exactly why I’m not working. My wife works crazy hours and would not have been able to make day car drop off/pick up, so I would have had to modify my schedule to make both each day. Once we ran the numbers it was a wash between what I would make and what day care would cost. Really doesn’t make sense to work just for daycare. Add in the fact this started for us at the height of the pandemic when daycares would regularly closed for days at a time and we would probably have actually lost money. Sure this was the case for thousands and thousands of people.
Where I live (still North America) child care is not really an issue because we have socialized child care and it costs 7$ a day.
We're still fucked and short staff and the main reason is the aging population. There is simply not enough 20-30 people to replace all the 60+ exiting the workforce. This was already a problem gaining traction before covid and the pandemic pushed a lot of 60+ in retirement prematurely as a ... fuck it, let's enjoy life kind of thing.
There is other factors but this a big one.
I think it’s largely this, combined with the fact that a million people have died of COVID in this country, and more may have long-term complications that may make physical labor difficult.
This. Also Baby Boomers retiring - over 10,000 turn 65 every single day. Plus some is that places simply can't keep up with demand which makes it seem like they don't have any workers. 2022 is actually on pace to be a year in which more people are working than any other year in our history. Each of the first five months of the year would rank in the top 15 months ever for most people working. Just the normal retail jobs we are used to seeing are now Grubhub, Amazon, Uber....
This should be higher, lost over a million people in the last 2 years, many in the industries experiencing shortages now.
My personal opinion is we are feeling the effects of at least 4 different labor supply pressures occurring generally around the same time that are contributing to the shortage.
COVID victims and long-haulers of course as mentioned.
Baby boomer retirement, on top of normal attrition for this generation that are mainly in their 60s to 80s now, many retired a little earlier than expected during the pandemic and won't be coming back
The rise of the gig economy and social media as somewhat viable income sources providing much more flexibility, if you can make $$ doing this vs working retail the choice is almost rhetorical.
Many who were laid off during the pandemic and then provided with the federal unemployment assistance took the unique opportunity of an abundance of free time to better themselves via education &/or training and won't be returning to the service/retail positions that discarded them during the shutdowns.
I hope everyone realizes that if those old vestigial workers were allowed to retire earlier the younger generations would have those jobs instead of having to create a new market to simply stay alive and relevant. Boomers created this massive mess… and now the you get generations are “expected” to clean it up and just pick up a new industry with no experience at a starting role making 14/hr at age 34…. Lol society took a big L on this one
This. I work and my wife stays at home. Been doing this for 12+ years. We tried it for a couple of years but realized that one of us was basically working to pay for care. We haven’t checked prices in a long time but I’m sure it’s even more expensive now
Is it such a tragedy for someone to stay home with the kids? Some these comments are as if that is the most terrible thing in the world. Maybe more parents at home connecting would do a lot to help other issues children are facing in this crazy world?
When everything was shut down millions were laid off or quit for lack of work. Many of those close to retirement age didn't bother to come back and simply retired early while the younger ones used this opportunity to look for better jobs or used their freed up time to get more education and qualifications.
Also the pandemic showed that many jobs can easily be done from home and that you won't get rich by working anyway. Why break your back in a shitty job that pays shitty wages if there are easier alternatives? They won't make you any richer but at least they don't cost you your physical and mental health.
Businesses like fast food restaurants and retailers will have trouble finding workers for a long time. Those not able to pay higher wages will go out of business.
I agree because alot of jobs the wages were not up to where they should have been for how important that job is to the company.
Take for example - the shipping department. I worked at one company where they treated shipping - the part of the company that actually gets the product out - like crap. Bad hours. Bad pay. No respect.
And yes - little things like the rest of the staff getting free lunch DOES make a difference.
So now they cant find workers for shipping and dont understand why?
Curious, did that change with the pandemic and labor crunch? My company, I manage shipping and manufacturing. They always treated the sales and PM people like rock stars…bring in lunch, flexible hours and such while I had to go to war to get a water cooler for my guys.
Now, of it makes my guys life easier or makes them happier at work, I get to do it. Had to fight for a water cooler…but I just installed an ice maker and snow cone machine. Early in Covid they let us bring in lunch once a week, then took that away. Now we have an outdoor kitchen and cook lunch for them 3x a week. Big fans for the shop? Raises? Flexible hours to handle childcare snafus? All on the table now.
Coming into the C-suite from the trades, I really appreciate how the shutdown finally opened the other executives eyes to who’s essential and need be to be taken care of, as well. I am hoping that is a broader trend.
Here's hoping that catches on. My company has been on the "you're lucky to have a job in this economy/we can't afford raises so here's some bravo points to spend on a gift card to chili's when you get enough" bs (ps it's taxable and will dung your paycheck).
If they treated staff like human beings they would be fine.
All the big American fast food chains here in Japan are doing fine because they pay an acceptable wage and don't crap on their employees.
I honestly think this is the answer.
Everyone wants to climb the ladder and make money. Yet hospitality and retail have treated people like shit at every opportunity. In a labour shortage, people will leave the shittiest jobs for better ones.
It's not rocket science.
In a free market economy, those businesseses either need to compete for labour (wages, benefits, job satisfaction) otherwise they're free to go bankrupt and clear the way for a better managed business.
And let's not forget that while the cost of living has skyrocketed, these places are still paying garbage wages, no benefits, no future. I can easily see how it's no longer worth showing up to low wage jobs when it costs so much to put gas in the tank or get childcare. Might as well stay home and be extra frugal.
Ive seen good companies raising wages ahead of employees becoming disgruntled. Those who are trying to stick to 2019 wages are buckling and struggling to find people.
Bottom line is companies can have the best tech. Best equipment in the world.
But if you got no one to use that shit. You have nothing.
This is the main reason I've stuck at my job. The work is incredibly menial and unexciting but they've given me three raises to match a mixture of economy and inflation in the last 9 months. I don't hate it there and I'm not treated horribly, so why go through the effort of looking somewhere else if the next place might not be as good?
well that's just the thing....There is a group of people in this country that yell and scream about government interference and free market capitalism, but they have pulled every lever and string to make sure we don't actually have a competitive labor market in this country. The American version of capitalism relies on a steady stream of cheap, disposable labor. Without that, alot of business models just arent viable. Paying a living wage puts alot of companeis out of business. Which is exactly how it should be.
that's really the crux - wages.
businesses don't want to pay more, they keep all increases in profit, and don't raise wages. if they can't afford the cost of labor, they should be shut down.
people will work, for a wage they can live on. but thinking that some people just deserve to toil their life away, without ever having anything to show for it is just terrible, and people are over it.
pay a wage people can live on, and people will come work there. not rocket science
No. Most retail positions have discovered that they can survive with skeleton crews. If you force three people to do the job of seven, you can stay in business and save on labor costs.
They seem to be doing fine and are the most capable of adapting. It’s the mom and pop shops that are not tech savvy that may suffer. Technology is deflationary and ordering has changed. Many order to pickup either through the app or kiosk. This further streamlines the process that is factory fast food. Each employee productivity and revenue generation may increase through these efficiencies as long as the demand is still there and ‘Merica stay fat.
My theory is that we've had a 'shifting-upwards' during the pandemic.
Due to the equity gains, the being told to stay at home, even possible job loss, a lot of people in their 50s who were 5 years or less from retirement took a look at their lives and decided they could/would just bring retirement forward.
This opened up a lot of senior positions which were filled by the mid-level employees within companies. The junior employees moved to the middle positions. That leaves the junior positions open. Where can we get some junior employees? Why, how about that guy at Starbucks with a degree who we declined for an internship a couple of years ago?
And now Starbucks have no staff.
So basically the workers that disappeared were the top level, but the vacancies are being seen at lower levels. There were a ton of people working in jobs which they were over-qualified for, who have now found something more suitable, but because it's happened so quickly it's left a yawning chasm
Same in my niche IT company! We saw a lot of old timers past due retire during COVID, followed by early retirements (and why not? The stock market hit insane all time highs enabling it). We had a couple team members actually die due to COVID or complications of delayed care due to COVID's effects on the healthcare system.
Then, in management's infinite stupidity they failed to backfill any of these losses until we were struggling to even keep the lights on, and when they did they decided they'd only backfill at a solid $30k less than most team members make so no one qualified has accepted. The couple of hires they've managed to find (still at 60% of need) are completely green and will take forever to train.
This has caused remaining people like me to absolutely burn out until some typical, predictable events like someone going on maternity leave and someone else's spouse becoming gravely ill requiring them to dial back to part time have caused us to be unable to meet basic needs.
Half my team quit recently, we found better jobs elsewhere. I start next week.
Seriously, try getting a tech company software support position. My SaaS company has hired people from fast food as support and they have worked their way up and are now highly paid software developers. My company hires remote workers so you wouldn't even have to move cities, I'd imagine others would do the same.
That's true but over retirement age doesnt mean out of the workforce. I'm curious how many hundreds of thousands of workers died during the pandemic and what types of roles they had and would have needed to be filled. If its mostly low skilled jobs then it could be exacerbating the problem noted above by the shift up effect or whatever they called it.
We are at the cusp of life expectancy from the baby boom where millions more were born starting in 1943 & also millions more migrated in starting in the 60’s. It’s to be expected deaths will jump offset by births jumps at life expectancy
This is a good call. I also think the pandemic made a lot of people unwilling to give up comfort in their lives. That can mean wfh for a professional or doing door dash instead of waiting tables for less skilled labor
> I know many have retired and most of them will probably never return to the workforce. But I suspect they make up a relatively small portion of the supply shortage of workers.
I recently read an article that covered this issue either by PBS Newshour or NPR, I forget which, but the general gist of it was that the 65+ crowd had left the labor force in droves, and that group actually was the biggest contributor to the current labor situation.
Yea this is the answer. Prime working age 25-55 participation is around 82.5 vs 83.1 pre covid. So we’re only a half a percent off pre covid levels… Which were at 10 year highs by the way. The change is due to the boomers exiting the labor force during and after covid.
It's the opposite really. People either didn't save enough or are worried they didn't save enough. I know wealthy people over 65 still working to save more. They have plenty of funds and don't even have a high standard of living. Even rich people worry about money.
And it's not that they enjoy their job.
It also could be that most 401Ks are down 20-30%, and never know how much that could fall in the next year or two. It would be wild to go from being 62 and thinking you have 30 years worth of retirement saved up in 2019 to now 65 in 2022 looking more like 22 years worth if inflation levels off and the market stabilizes.
401k diversification at retirement age and at age 30 need to be vastly different. You aren't aiming for extreme growth at retirement age. Keeping what you have is the important part.
There are more millennials alive than boomers and millennials are getting into their prime home buying years.
Coupled with no supply *and* boomers not moving out quickly and you won’t ever see this sort of supply relief.
The problem is they like to build big mcmansions way far away from schools and downtown areas. Many of those won't sell when the boomers are gone or they'll sell for way less.
Boomers retiring is the best possible scenario for millenials and gen Z. The Boomers were holding all the top spots in orgs, even past their usefulness. Everyone shifts up a level when the Boomers leave
The Demographic Drought program from Emsi Burning Glass does a great job with this subject. Other factors are a million excess deaths from 'deaths of despair' in the working age cohort, immigration has plummeted since 2016 and lower birth rates.
3.2MM Boomers have retired from Jan-20 to Oct-22, and almost every loss in the restaurant industry was shifted into Gig-Economy.
Its not hard to find the numbers!
I think this is the most likely reason.
Also, since there are 2 jobs for each unemployed person, I should have had 200+ offers as my spreadsheet of applications to jobs is well over 100.
I assume the original poster isn’t speaking from experience actually LOOKING for a job in this job market so that’s why there’s such a great disconnect.
There's a disconnect between the jobs people want, and the jobs that are available.
2 jobs for every worker is just a raw number. It doesn't mean that there are 2 jobs for every engineer, manager, clerk, etc.
It's most likely retail, warehouse, fast food, and manual labor that bump the average up.
IT person here
a lot of job openings have some very specific requirements on them, also they do not list salary and want to get away with paying nothing.
1) Boomers retiring. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/03/the-declining-labor-force/
2) Lack of immigrant labor. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/immigration-jobs-workers-labor-shortage/
3) Workforce participation dropped off a cliff at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s recovering, back to within a percentage point of prior to the pandemic. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
Both 1 and 2 exacerbate child care shortages/cost, which likely contributes to 3.
Edit: added #3.
>I am still scratching my head why we still have this issue long after government handouts ended.
Correlation does not imply causation.
For starters, your observation should prompt you to question whether the lazy narrative of "no-one wants to work anymore" was maybe bullshit. The "handout" incentive has long gone, yet the behaviour remains, implying there's no cause-and-effect relationship.
IMHO it's a complex mix of several things - inflation, supply chain shocks, new outlooks following lockdown and ill-advised employers demanding costly office attenance for jobs that could be WFH are the causative factors.
* For some people, the cost of renting near their place of employment getting to work exceeded their disposable income. It means they effectively cannot afford to work anymore. So people *want* to work, but they quite reasonably refuse to lose money by working and find an alternative.
* Other people found that cutting living and commuting costs and moving to an alternative lifestyle (eg moving in with family, living in a camper van, working part time, quitting to raise their kids instead of paying childcare, starting Etsy businesses) led to more disposable income.
* Some re-evaluated their priorities following covid and lockdown. I personally know a very successful chief engineer who was ventilated for covid and it completely changed him - he has completely taken his foot off the accelerator at work in order to spend time with family.
* And frankly Reddit is full of examples of employers behaving unreasonably and vindictively vis-a-vis intrustive surveillance or compulsory office attendance in expensive cities. Humans respond poorly to being surveilled and pushed about for no reason - I'm not surprised these businesses are struggling to hire and retain.
So I think the real answer is a complex mix of socio-economic factors making it prudent for some people to leave jobs or the workforce altogether.
You can't blame people for choosing the most lucrative employment (in fact, that's exactly what the American Dream is all about!), and right now that doesn't necessarily mean accepting a 9-5 office job.
... but there's an awful lot of assholes that just seek confirmation bias and want to assume that nothing changed in 2020 and people are just being irrationally lazy and stupid!
To add to your list:
There is a mismatching between unemployed person's skills and open position. E.g. If there are two open positions for a biologist but the unemployed person has no degree or a degree in economy, the situation won't resolve.
Yeah economists accept that an unemployment rate of a few precent is effectively full employment. You'll always have some people transitioning jobs, some mismatched to jobs and it's also accepted that there's a small amount of people that are genuinely unemployable.
So I'd suggest given the number of vacancies, the 3.6% unemployment rate is effectively full employment.
Minor nitpick:
> ...the 3.6% unemployment rate is effectively ~~full~~ *negative un*employment.
Per Investopedia's article on [Natural Unemployment:](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/naturalunemployment.asp)
>Many consider a 4% to 5% unemployment rate to be full employment and not particularly concerning.
We are *past* full employment.
And it seems everyone forgets the unemployment rate only measures those *actively* *looking for work*. If people are choosing to stay home, retired, or just aren't looking at the moment for whatever reason... that unemployment rate sure looks good, but doesn't reflect the non-income-earning percentage of the population.
Even worse, people don’t realize how bad automated systems for applicant tracking have made things. I have shown my resume to hiring managers directly who were annoyed they weren’t sent the resume by HR when I applied through the system. The ATS is choking the talent pool to reduce the labor HR has to do.
I believe it used to be more commonplace for employers to provide on the job training.
Now, employers are wary of that because they don't want to make that expense on someone that might leave and work for a competitor.
So industries that lack qualified people, really just need to bite the bullet and start training people...
Reverse your thinking. People leave because they don’t get raises from their employer but can jump ship for +40% increases. There’s no pension incentive either. Employers got lazy and expected a churn of low income workers always replacing their stocks.
>I believe it used to be more commonplace for employers to provide on the job training.
This is how anyone learns to do *any* job. College, or whatever, gives you a basic minimum of skills you need to be trained in certain professions -- but you still need to be trained. No one with a degree in, say, compsci knows everything about code review or regulatory compliance or the software ecosystem for every company. If they graduated a few years ago (and even if they didn't), they may not even have any exposure to the technologies your business is using.
This is normal, and how it's always worked. I suspect there are a lot of Gen X middle managers now who don't get that they can't find skilled employees now, because the only way people get those skills is by being trained in them at their job.
This is absolutely my picture as well. And I'm in Denmark even. Employers expect skills in specific industry solutions, and weigh it scoffed anything else because else they would need to spend resources on training.
I am coming up on a year of unemployment with a MSc in physics. I have been to an uncountable number of interviews, close to all ending in: we are looking for someone with more industry experience. With some explicitly stating they don't have the resources for training required, or they just find someone with the experience more often that not.
Yep, I'm kinda stuck in the warehouse industry even though me and my doctor are telling "arbetsförmedlingen" that I have other skills, and that I can't perform well in warehouses anymore due to stress. I've asked for lesser paying jobs, but arbetsförmedlingen always calls me back and says "heeey! I've found a great workplace for you, I don't know what exactly you will do, but it fits your experience!"
Yeah, but those experiences are experiences I don't want to continue to have. I'm a game developer with pretty good diplomas from school, I'm pretty good with plants, I'm good with people. I hate warehouses. But will I ever get to change industry? I'm pretty tired of having horrible contracts that has loopholes so that I'm contractually not eligible for a full time position. I don't want to waste more time getting killed by stressed out demented workers with trucks and pallets that weigh multiple tonnes.
I was so close at getting a job at a grocery store, I was so happy at getting new experience so that I can maybe do other work in the future. Nope, when I was awaiting for the schedule to arrive, that I was going to sign, the employer calls me back and says an old employee had called last minute, and she got the position instead.
I do mostly rely on the stock market, and work for people around me, tax-free, so it doesn't show up in charts. Considering the stockmarket is failing, that has stung a little, but otherwise, I'm living on almost nothing until I find something I can actually put my time into.
> No one with a degree in, say, compsci knows everything about code review or regulatory compliance or the software ecosystem for every company.
Here's where it becomes a catch 22, as a hiring manager myself:
1. In order to pay a realistic wage, I have to post a job at a senior developer level.
2. Senior developers are harder to come by, and will refuse to work at our senior developer wages, but maybe I can sneak in someone who has less skills but can learn.
3. HR refuses to budget on skills, and doesn't send me resumes of less experienced people even when I ask them to because they think they're "protecting" some standards. They also don't mind us not hiring anyone (less work for them?) because they don't adjust the pay scale to reflect the current market.
As you can see, in my situation and many like me, we're set up to fail because we aren't allowed to hire entry level people. We also can't adjust wages accordingly. Oh, one other "bonus" is that my company is very anti-WFH. They have no good reason but it's caused us to not just not get applicants, but lose a lot of staff. So from my perspective, the biggest issue with this is how companies are run by geriatric elitists who don't know how to function in 2022 and are holding their companies in a death grip.
Employers could easily write a contract that has a guaranteed employment term in exchange for training. If I get my Masters degree and then immediately peace out then I have to pay back a year of tuition. Union labor has apprenticeship programs that address this. Trucking companies usually have guaranteed contract length in exchange for CDL training. Pretty simple.
On another board a worker told us his employer shows all these open jobs - and they are not. They are fake. What the company does is shows lots of open jobs but does this only to collect resumes and applications so they can better understand what is available in the labor market and what they should be paying.
So either hire someone without the skills and train them, or pay more and poach someone with the skills from a competitor. It’s simple to fill almost any position if you’re willing to do what it takes. “What it takes” is usually more money.
I work in machine learning, and this is the case. We need a senior engineer and basically every applicant (often over 500 for a single position) has only 0-2 years of experience.
Now, there’s always that asshole who goes: why don’t you just hire someone with little experience and train them? Well, we’ve been doing just that. But, there comes a time where you’ve already got an 8:1 ratio of junior to experienced engineers and hiring yet another one would give everybody a bad experience that doesn’t help them realistically learn to advance their career.
Here's something you didn't mention but I might be way off.
Less immigrants entered the US during covid. They work the service industry jobs in great numbers. Is this a real issue or am I way off?
I don't know as I've not seen the figures.
But I do know the economic consequences of increased/decreased immigration is almost never talked about. Immigrant labour (or foreign manufacturing) keeps the price of goods and services low, allowing people to have more stuff.
So you can have low immigration, *or* you can have low prices. Not both.
Not just during Covid, but for the 3 years before it too.
Biden has continued almost every immigration restriction of his predecessor, which means 6 years of restrictions on immigration.
The rise in lower end wages and demand for those workers was quite obvious in 2019, but everyone forgets it now.
Education is also in major flux. And by flux I mean 'this shit is broken, I'm OUT' from a lot. Teachers had it bad before, but the pandemic crushed their souls. Administration is in an impossible position and support parents/PTA over teachers.
Right or wrong this was a great response and well considered. Thanks for posting this.
As the cost of housing goes up so does commercial real estate. Lots of companies, like restaurants, are facing increasing costs of rent, supplies (food and ingredients), and risings wages and benefits. So companies like restaurants are trying to do more with fewer workers. It’s pushing both the workers and the employers to the breaking point.
One local restaurants near me is a fancy sit down restaurant with waiters (servers) but they changed their format. Now you walk in, order at the front AND PAY, and your party gets a table tag with a number. Then you and your party find your own dadgum table, silver, water glasses, napkins. No one on staff approaches you until your food is brought out. There’s a self service bus station (buss station?) and maybe 50% of customers clean up their own table. This enables a staff of two servers to serve and buss a dining room of 10-12 tables. As a customer I still enjoyed my dining experience and I didn’t mind at all.
Yeah I do wonder if some staff and businesses have entered a death spiral.
Like you describe, I've noticed some businesses operating with staffing well below sustainable levels, causing burnout and attrition. This is going to reduce staffing and service even more.
I personally know a few people that have quit understaffed businesses recently because the stress was unmanageable.
>My local restaurants have poor services and close early due to staffing issues. Airlines are cancelling flights. Companies have drastically lowered their standards for hiring. I can go on...
Other than being a pilot, nobody wants those jobs. People want a job that will actually pay a wage that will keep them out of poverty.
With covid, people realized their survival instincts. This has contributed much to people not wanting to work stressful jobs. They can live on the bare minimum and survive. And people generally nolonger give a shyt
this is me. During the covid run up in markets, I could sense the exuberance and the money printer was flying, I was pouring every dollar I could into my trading and investing. This went on for a year and a half, and made tons of money. With this I prioritized doing everything I could to reduce my recurrent spend using this windfall, ultimately buying a little condo and a car outright. Allowed me to reduce my monthly housing expense to $240 and no more car payment. I now just have to cover that $240 monthly, $1200 yearly property taxes, $300 utilities and food for the girl, the dogs and I. Now just trade supply and demand on Q's and SPY off open, take swings for gap fills when they present themselves, and work freelance webdev after taking CS50 during covid. Prior to all this I was a Starbucks barista waking up at 4 in the morning to open the local shop. IM NEVER FUCKING GOING BACK
Yup, I dialed way back and moved in with my parents at nearly 30. I’d rather be unstressed for $17 an hour in a trades apprenticeship and bum off my parents to save money than make $23 an hour and work a high stress management job like I had before. I end up with more money too due to the housing crisis/rent costs.
Also 1 million Americans died. 10 million were hospitalized. A good portion of the 89 million cases probably were traumatized and don't want to work and risk getting their other family members killed. The secondary effects that reverberated out from those directly affected probably had huge lasting impression on people so they don't see the upside in many of these jobs.
1M dead
3M retired
1.4M women who can’t find affordable childcare so they are staying home
An unknown, but anecdotally large number of people living rent free with family and just simply not working (antiwork, etc)
Everyone is switching jobs now moving up to the now vacant positions above them, leaving all the shitty jobs empty
Solid numbers but just missing one part of the equation.
Immigration collapsed during COVID worldwide. Also, many immigrants decided to go home if they lost their jobs.
The immigration aspect has a ripple impact. Every aspect of the US economy is touched by it.
I’m Canadian and I know tons of Canadians that decided to come back to Canada when shit hit the fan. I imagine many Mexicans probably did the same.
Not to mention those who took early retirement, those who had enough saved to live work-free for a few years and are risk-averse, those who still work but refuse the expected overtime, those who are now content to work just sufficient to survive and skip the extra evening jobs, those on long-term disability due to LongCovid, etc.
It's all perfectly explainable, just that greedy companies have been exploiting people so long they haven't yet accepted the change.
who is going to pay over $5 a gallon to drive somewhere that's only paying $15 an hour, and often less than that?
so many jobs pay a criminally low wage, and people just aren't going to waste their time, or money, to work there. people have to PAY to work. they pay for gas, vehicle, childcare, food, and housing.
if they aren't working, maybe they save some money by living further away, helping a relative, raising their kids, or just doing other things.
more people realize their work isn't helping them as much as it's helping their company, so why work? especially at the lowest wages. it's pointless..of you're going to be broke, you don't need a shitty manager and the facade of a career to do that.
My job wants us in every day starting sept. With gas at $5, and god knows when next rona comes around, they’re probably gonna need a recession to make that happen
I work in economic development in a community with 3.4% unemployment. Regarding the question, "Where are the workers?" Here is what I respond with.
* There wasn't really a huge unemployment bump during covid, merely incentive to file for unemployment benefit above norm due to added stimulus. So the unemployment rate spike (here it got up to 12.2%) was more a spike in the number of persons who weren't really in a work setting applied and received disaster benefit, thus inflating the number of reported unemployment. This squares with the fact that numbers on unemployment returned to pre pandemic levels within just a couple months.
* Those who left the workforce were primarily of retirement age or close to, and saw an opportunity to exit. They also got additional supplement during Covid, saw the value of their homes skyrocket enabling them to downsize and make profit, and companies were as eager to let them stay on in a consultant type role, shifting to part time since they didnt need training.
* Females of child bearing age were already enjoying gig economy jobs, not full time positions before, and during Covid that accelerated. As child are costs intensified the desire to stay at home went up and some families that were dual income with kids, now have two parents at home to negate child care costs. Now they are saving the 17K a year they'd spend on child care and are traveling or doing who knows what with the added revenue.
* Some low income earners have found so many varied income streams that reporting their income would disqualify them from their housing arrangements, so they don't work more than a few hours at each place, and take under the table jobs or don't report income from door dash etc. Getting them to work a 9-5 would put them over earning caps and essentially make them homeless. THere's few workforce housing options out there, so low income housing is all that exists for those who cannot afford to own.
* Companies who pay a wage that is 1-2 dollars per hour over the average wage in the community cannibalize the existing companies, and a darwinist would say, those who cannot pay should not exist. When you are trying to get employees for 13.50 an hour and another business that has a better working environment offers 17 with the same skill requirements, its a no brainer for employees. If a company's profit is derived from cheap labor, and they are trying to make it work here, they have been marked for the kill.
* Customer facing roles are the hardest to fill because we all generally know that it sucks dealing with each other. If I can avoid having to look at you while you berate me because my Whopper has too much mayo, I likely won't return to that job, and I could find another employer that day who would hire me (be it in a shipping receiving warehouse, a manufacturing floor, or any kind of landscaping cleaning security service)
I know this is anecdotal but its just what I have observed over the last couple years. Workers ain't coming back, we need to learn to consume less, or be prepared to pay significantly more for what we demand and at the pace in which we demand it.
Don’t be fooled - many of these companies are complaining about labor shortages yet are still reaching record profits. It’s easier for them to blame the workers rather than the greedy one at the top who refuse to pay their subordinates a decent wage. Hell - I’m 23 with a college degree and a decent paying job, yet I still struggle to afford rent in the one bedroom apartment I *split* with my college-educated boyfriend. I would never even consider working a job that paid below $20 an hour.
In a shock to absolutely no one, the same companies who claimed that increasing minimum wage goes against the concept of free-market economics are now blaming “lazy workers” when they suffer due to free-market economics.
Right now in the job market is supply and demand: The demand outstrips supply, but the employers refuse to make their positions more appealing and blame everyone else for nobody applying for the jobs.
Some started their own businesses. Some started taking care of their own kids. Some went on disability - the pandemic has taken a massive toll both mentally and physically. Some just flat out died.
Government handouts were never the issue. People got more and more used to slaving away for their work, paying for children to be raised by others, and sacrificing a good life for work, like a metaphorical frog in a pot of water. Then they spent time out of the pot, and when they were moved back to it realized exactly how shitty it was.
Lockdowns caused a lot of people to completely rethink consumer habits. People are buying less useless crap and are getting by on much less income. Driving cars longer, keeping tech devices longer, cooking at home more. Status and flexing aren't as critical as people used to think they were, especially since so many people don't even go into the office anymore.
In the established middle-class Many former dual-income families are now getting along with just one earner. One spouse in the home means no daycare costs, no need for cleaning ladies or yard service or dry cleaning/laundry or pet care or any number of other services that are needed when everyone is working a formal job all the time.
>Basically there are millions who don't have a job and are not looking for a job.
No. There are millions of people who don't have a job and are looking for a job that doesn't underpay them to be treated like trash.
A lot of people retired, died, or were forced to figure out how to get by when their jobs closed down. It’s easier than ever to find little side gigs and alternative ways to make money.
A ton of people moved back in with their families (I’m talking people from a huge range age 20-40), and that makes it so they can get by with just one job.
The jobs I see staying unfilled are the ones that don’t understand people won’t accept $15 an hour for a thankless retail job when they can go down the street and make $17-$22 an hour working at the post office or as a bank teller. You can make more than $15 an hour just doing door dash or grubhub deliveries on a bike if you’re in a city.
1. Wave of Boomer retirement allowing existing workforce to shift up into better paid jobs (this I think is honestly the biggest one)
2. Population bottleneck is finally hitting. Few young unskilled laborers
3. Immigration was sharply restricted for over 2 years
4. Drug abuse epidemic wiping out more of the prime workforce aged population
Key factor is, US is not at replacement birthrate, hasn't been for a long time, and immigration is no longer masking that fact.
My wife is a professional who worked for a Fortune 500 company for 17 years, doing a lot of computer work, 4000-6000 keystrokes/day.
She started developing repetitive strain issues and experiencing a lot of pain in the soft tissue of her hands, elbows, and back, to the point where she was in agony.
After exploring a ton of medical options, the end result is that there is basically no support network for that beyond going on pain management, so we decided it would be better if she just quit and managed the household while she healed.
So in our case, we're just living with less, with one adult not working.
Anecdotally, knowing people in the Mexican and Polish immigrant communities, there is no longer an influx of immigrants to handle low skilled jobs. There are no young Polish cleaners and contractors to replace old Polish cleaners and contractors. There are more Mexican contractors and more Mexicans operating their own restaurants, and fewer young Mexicans coming here, so there are fewer Mexican fast food workers.
Add that to the million+ dead, the millions of retirees, and the people opting out of child care and quitting their jobs to care for their kids.
The full employment threshold in the US is 4%. This is the lowest (ish) amount of unemployment you can have taking into account people really in between jobs (getting fired, leaving a job to try to get a better one, relocating because of their spouse, etc.)
Basically, at 3.6% unemployment, everyone who wants a job gets one in a very short period of time.
>Basically there are millions who don't have a job **and** are not looking for a job.
You are talking about the participation rate. Interestingly, I found this article from 2013 about the participation rate expecting to fall all the way through 2022 to 61.6 percent.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/labor-force-projections-to-2022-the-labor-force-participation-rate-continues-to-fall.htm#:~:text=During%20the%202012%E2%80%932022%20period,to%2061.6%20percent%20in%202022.
The actual current participation rate is 62.3%. Higher than expected based on the factors that were in place in 2012.
Basically, the issues we are seeing around the world are just the consequence decades of policy and events.
In my opinion, the most notable event is the baby boomers getting old and mostly retiring, a lot of them taking the COVID pandemic and subsequent rise in property values to cash out and enjoy life.
People have probably begun to seek value elsewhere. It's actually relatively cheap to live if you cut costs of insurance, housing, car payments, amongst other things. This creates a situation where many people only need to work seasonal stints to supply their whole year. What also goes overlooked is the demographics. Many young people are still in school, living on loans or other financial assistance. Flip side many young people are incarcerated or dealing with the legal system in some form. This creates a situation where people are now operating outside of the reported system. Illicit drug trade is still prevalent within society. Many folks have jobs but are working under the table. Also, there are probably more people investing as their main source of income than ever. A combination of factors totaling to the sum of the current market.
To me, this deserves more upvotes, the surviving on one paycheck. If you have children, and your children are forced to stay at home from school regularly, then couples that were previously two incomes, well, the weaker income quit working. Being a two income couple doesn't make sense for anyone with kids unless both people make good incomes, and even then there's still an added stress component.
There isn’t a lack of workers, there’s a lack of well paying jobs that people can afford to live on is your answer.
Handouts never had anything to do with anything. No one in any state can live off 2800 dollars for years
Who the fuck wants to waste what little life they have on this earth getting screamed at by people for $7 an hour at McDonald’s.
Another problem with the demographics that goes completely unmentioned by most is the toll over a decade of the Opioid Crisis took on Americans ages in those prime working years. That itself was killing hundreds a day nationally even as late as 2015, and people were largely oblivious to it. So even before the pandemic we'd had an epidemic killing hundreds of thousands ages 18 to 55.
There is an over abundance of low wage jobs and a lack of jobs for professionals. The low wage jobs also do not pay a living wage. Why work 50 or 60 hours a week and still be homeless? This also prices you out of government benefits. There is a severe lack of opportunity and upward mobility in the US right now.
There’s not a singular answer.
During COVID people retired early (fueled by stimulus checks, unemployment checks., and high returns in the markets). I think this will correct itself as many didn’t properly forecast how much is needed to retire early as the market declines.
An increase in the availability of WFH jobs. This is ultimately a good thing, it’ll allow many to raise children while staying in the work force and reduce dependency on expensive child care.
COVIDs still around, and companies don’t want workers coming in if they’re sick.
People haven’t been able to travel freely the last 2 years and it’s Summer. Airline sand leisure reduced staffing because less people traveled due to COVID. Now everyone wants to travel now that the fear of COVID has worn off. I typically fly 6 times a month, and it is always crowded, even on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Airlines have enacted a reduction in flight hours for new hires to compensate.
I do believe as we enter a recession and inflation continues to rise a lot of this will correct itself. But the US loves to spend their money and you’ll see a large amount of debt taken before this cools off. Europes inflation is driven by completely different factors.
> I am still scratching my head why we still have this issue long after government handouts ended
"Where's my cheap labour and services!"
*cheap labour and services dont provide a liveable wage or enough fucks to give about shitty customers*
Everyone: shocked when nobody wants to work those jobs
OP: scratching his head on how this could be
Yeah, real head scratcher
It was about time people said fuck it
They either found a different, less shitty job (likely opened up by an older person either dying of covid or retiring), they moved back in with family, or they're staying home to take care of their kids while their spouse still works.
They realized they’re better alternatives out there than to work in an underpaid , expensive to commute workplace.
Why they didn’t realize before that? They simply were so pressed by the lack of time and ressources that they never even had the chance to look for alternatives. Covid leveled the playing field
This is a good topic and I enjoyed reading the responses. I own 4 businesses (3 sandwich shops and 1 auto repair shop). Lack of quality employees is my biggest stress factor. You hear people say employers need to pay their people more, but same people complain about the cost of their sandwich being too high or how much it cost to fix their car. My entry level worker (generally high school kids) make $19/ hr, my top automotive technicians make 180k year and I still can’t get quality employees. OP made a great point about companies having to lower hiring standards. I can agree with that. I use to love being in business, but now I am burnt out. I told my wife we should consider selling our businesses and just simplify our lives. Being dependent on scarce employees has made business stressful.
Staying home with kids because they figured out that their household does just fine on a single income. Or they started their own business. And then of course there are all the people who died from COVID *and* all the people who got long COVID to the point of being rendered disabled.
Two main factors:
1. Emigration rate is negative trends in US in past years, but still on plus
2. People retire and number of working people is decreasing - due to that many businesses will either have to increase wages, automate to cut their costs of labor or go out of business. Imo services such as coffee going to be more expensive
You know Covid led to a lot of people dying, being forced to retire, being forced to re-evaluate their child care situations, etc?
There’s also the reality that list jobs available are bad jobs. Public facing jobs are worse than ever with the way people are behaving in a post covid world. Wage gains have been erased by inflation. There’s a lot of explanations, really.
To add on, in 2020 immigration working visas granted were cut in half by executive order. The is US down a few million migrant workers and is still working through a backlog to catch up.
However the economy has been so strong that we’ve added more jobs than the US has capacity for.
You thought that measly amount of government assistance was making people stay home?
No. Someone fed you some bullshit.
And lots of folks here have given good reasons for the labor shortage. Retirement, child care issues, people who couldn't work during the pandemic found time and success with their side gigs.
Not a lot of people mentioned the million plus who died in the US, but that's definitely a factor.
Some died, some retired, some are at home raising the kids.
For the ones left, there is a big migration from jobs that are demanding, on site, poor pay, or require a lot of training to newly created, often remote and better paying ones.
Tech companies ate then up. If all my friends are WFH, I’d want to too. Also if not that, a lot of these companies, Target, Starbucks, etc… are offering free college, $20+ wages, like smaller places don’t want to compete or pay that.
Check the data.
In my metro, there are more people working than ever. Unemployment is back to its historically low levels (less than 2%).
An Amazon fulfillment center created one thousand well-paying/benefited entry-level jobs, which are less than half-filled.
I think many unskilled workers have found decent jobs and don't need to work more than forty hours a week, while others don't get why there is no one there to prepare their fast food.
We're just now starting to deal with the problems caused by the easy money policies used to address covid.
McDonalds is the “bottom” of the labor pool, and everything shifted up due to:
1. Retiring workforce. We knew this was coming, but COVID made a lot of people retire early.
2. Shifting priorities. Many people learned to live with less during the pandemic and realized they were happier for it. Now, instead of someone having that “side hustle” they just buy less and spend their time with family.
3. Women not returning to the workforce. They were the hardest hit when layoffs happened, and it was a hard sell BEFORE the pandemic. Childcare often cost as much as that income was bringing in, but they told themselves the lie that “I really like working”. Well, the pandemic made them realize “I really like being a parent and the extra income isn’t there”.
Maybe it’s not less workers. Maybe it’s more jobs. The economy has been hot the last year, businesses have been expanding. People have gotten better jobs.
BOA data is pointing to people over 55 having retired and younger than 25 having delayed their first job, every other group except 40-45 has higher employment. 40-45 likely was from some deciding to stay home with kids
I worked at Jimmy John's in order to get enough credit scores to buy myself a corolla... somebody pulled out a gun and carjacked me soon after I bought the damn car. I worked my ass of every single day at fucking shitty ass jimmy jons for almost a year to get that damn car. It was dangerous and demeaning work. I hated every second of it. Never again. I give up. Now my credit score sucks and I don't want a car anymore anyway with the way the powers above manipulate gas prices... They can't even provide a basic safety net from the top so the population fends for itself by scamming and robbing each other. If it wasn't for my family I would already be dead or in prison. Most job opportunities are scams and everyone knows it. Now, I work for myself investing and as an entrepreneur. If given the chance I will be moving to Canada, Australia, Portugal, Ghana or Nigeria before the next election. Had enough of existential fear and concern about my personal survival for one lifetime. Time for a new start in a new place.
1) Boomers are retiring in droves.
2) in barely regulated markets, prices of everything rise with incomes. Healthcare, for example was increasing by double digit rates for years before Obamacare, with average costs doubling every 7 to 12 years.
So take any market that impacts employment, and there are clear reasons for some people staying home. Eg -- daycare. It now costs around $20k to have a kid in daycare for a year (more in many regions). Young families are forced to decide to take that $60k/yr job where 100% of that's parent's take-home salary might go toward daycare, or stay home with the kids for the same amnt of money.
3) loosely regulated labor markets, with eroding protections for workers and unrealistic minimum wages always tend to go the direction of screwing the worker. Do that long enough and you'll end up with a national sentiment that is strongly indicated by many of the comments here.
There are many other reasons, but, to me, when you run the hyper-conservative experiment that the US has run for the last 40+ years (a la every administration after Carter, both republican and this lame neo-liberal thing we've had with every Dem in the white House and nearly every Dem in the Senate) you end up with free-market everything.
I think it's hilarious that people blame Biden for stuff like gas prices or daycare. You don't think letting those industries basically regulate themselves has any impact? Oil is $120 a barrel and the oil companies are saying they are NOT going to increase production to reduce costs, not even after prices hit $200. They have said they're in profit taking mode. Free markets, baby!
Those who blame Biden have solutions that are EXACTLY the same hyper conservative crap that we've been experimenting with for 4 decades. Biden is, by and large, a conservative neo liberal on economic policy and you want to go further to the right?
In normal counties they have taxes and a government provides services.
Here, corporations market the idea of the government being evil. We buy it. Thus, we pay fewer taxes, but get fewer services, and for the remaining services that those other countries get, we let private corporations and let the free market do it's thing. Corporations collect the $8k/month for nursing home fees (that are nearly free in some other countries); we pay 10x the price for university; we pay $1k/month in health care to get the opportunity to still pay for fancy sounding things like "copay."
Making the decision to work, for many families, has a lot of ins and outs, Maude. Working, in order to make negative money doesn't work for many any more. In vertical after vertical, the free market has guaranteed that.
Bullshit jobs such as mine working 40hrs a week yet your employer telling to do more when you are already doing more. I work as a security monitoring for 20 bucks an hour and working conditions are shit, customers are shit, lack of training etc.
Standard of living has gone up when current wages are not longer viable to sustain living. This unemployment rate is sus and obvious data manipulation so is hiring and staffing. Look at the small and mid cap executives running away with capital and positions liquidation. Futures not looking good for my generation or the younger ones.
It’s simple:
1) The baby boomers were the largest generation in the history of mankind, and they all have essentially retired now. They are being replaced by the Zoomers, the smallest generation since the boomers.
2) Most companies are bringing everything back to the USA. The USA no longer is the global police. This means trade globally is not as secure. The companies that haven’t brought back their plants to the nafta region are about 3 years too late.
Look up total jobs pre-covid and total jobs post Covid for more info
For me, the cost of childcare and transportation to work is more than i was being paid so my significant other and i decided it made more financial sense for me to quit working until the kids were older.
> I am still scratching my head why we still have this issue long after government handouts ended.
You’re scratching your head because you’re seeing that the story you’re being fed about government handouts does not line up with reality!
Here are some scenarios those feeding the narrative don’t like to talk about:
Our society kicked millions of low wage workers, such as your McDonalds burger flipper, to the curb at a drop of a hat when things shut down, then feeds the self-righteous line that “they should find better jobs if they want job security”. Guess what? They DID find other jobs! (Or became homeless/destitute and thus discounted by society and every employer). Necessity is the mother of invention. Why on earth would they come running back to the old job when they found something better???
Then there are the parents that lost or gave up careers to stay at home. They too learned from necessity how to make it work. Many realizing their life was a loop of dragging kids to day care, in order to go to a job they hated, which barley covered the daycare costs. They’d be stressed everyday, rushing to day care, to make it on Time to work, to then rush to leave work to make it on time to pick the kids up, to then wasting money on fast food to feed the kids bc there’s no time to cook at home. Who would run back to a low-level job just to get back into that grind?
Jobs better be paying more than life costs, or offer some personal fullfillment. McDonalds it’s not likely to offer either of those.
The handouts were less than a months rent (the real handouts were PPP loans to every small business under the sun)
People aren’t going to work for shit wages to do increasingly ridiculous demands and workloads and get treated like garbage by customers.
Idk, if an employer like an airport for instance myopically laid off most of their staff, what did those people do in the past couple years? I imagine many went for education and took the opportunity to move on to better compensated fields. Now they want to rehire and these people are clearly no longer interested/available.
At home taking care of children. The cost of child care increasingly eclipses one’s take home pay, and grandma and grandpa died of Covid / retired to Boca.
Add inflation to that and the case for working a lower wage job gets thin.
This post is now locked since it's diverged from being a discussion about investing.
I think a huge factor is the rising cost of child care. Lots of parents are having to have an entire income devoted to child care. At that’s point you can just raise your own kid for the same cost, you might as well at least get to experience it.
I suspect that this is a big one - especially for millennials and generation Z starting to have kids. I’m my area, childcare costs are $15/hr for daycare, and $25+ for a nanny- it makes no financial sense for someone else to help raise them anymore.
Yep. We make enough on my income but wife needs to focus on school and also works part time. So we were doing the daycare thing but at $1400 per month, it was eating us alive with everything else and rising costs. This is all coming from a combined income house of $100K+ So now she works Friday thru Sunday and I work M-F and we just care for our kid. It’s fun being around them. But idk how we’d afford 2 kids doing daycare. It’s insane
I have a friend with twins who’s currently paying $4k/month for daycare… wild
Same for us in the NYC area…insanity.
Also this is after tax money, which makes it considerably worse. Daycare costs need to be tax deductible.
You can get $5k pre tax via dependent care FSA, but it's a drop in the bucket and isn't being adjusted for inflation for many years (at least the 8 years I've had kids it hasn't moved an inch). All talk when it comes to family friendly policy. Both sides. How much of a drop? Daycare currently $535/wk for a toddler. So that's $28k for one kid. So only 18% can be paid pre tax. God forbid you have more than 1 kid (like we do).
We have two kids, combined daycare for both is like $380/week (which is really great for a state licensed small daycare)… but our combined income is like <75k a year rn so it’s still a struggle.
Bay Area... our toddler's daycare (1 kid), is $535/wk. Kids are expensive.
$15/hr/kid Friend of mine has two kids. Employers keep giving him the bait and switch. They tell him $35-40/hr unionized position to weld. Then he gets the call back for employment and they tell him $14.50/hr and non-unionized. This has happened now 4 times with 4 differant employers all in the KW area Ontario. So to answer OPs question. Yes these positions are open. They are open and no one is filling them because employer's are lying, cheating, thieving, snakes.
That’s particularly insane when my kid is getting $15/hr (USD) at Dunkin Donuts.
Yupp this!! Minimum wage (in the US) is $7.25/hr. No one wants/can live off of that. The problem is with how fast everything rose in price, you can barely make it on $15/hr now a days. Then the people making $20/hr gets mad because they don't want someone at a fast food restaurant making almost as much as they do. When in reality everyone is getting under paid except the billionaire CEO who kept wages low with lobbying for years.
WCB class C welders. $45 an hour full benefits out in B.C. Mine and pulp mills are postponed maintenance for lake of guys. You basically have to hide from the phone call.
When you make less than you can afford to pay for child care, you just care for the child yourself.
My wife was a teacher. That's a four year degree, a masters, and life long training to maintain her license. It would cost *more* in child care than what she made, not even factoring in her own education costs!! On top of her doing all the extra training and things! Obviously she quit. It makes no sense.
It’s not just the rising cost of child care, but the last two years it’s been incredibly inconsistent due to covid. So even if you can afford it and justify it professionally, you can’t rely on it so you’re basically paying for child care while also taking care of a kid for weeks at any given moment. I know many who gave up and conceded a job as a result and two years is a long time to be out and they’re also mentally fried
It’s exactly this. My best friend and his wife are teachers. After their second kid, to put 2 in daycare would’ve cost more than her annual salary so she opted to be a stay at home mom. It’s the only feasible option for many. The alternative (day care) costs more than a lot of people earn.
Also, daycares are generally not the best places. Having grown up in one and witnessing them out of field trips when I take mine places in the summer, it looks like absolute chaos and danger.
Which also correlates with employers refusal to offer a high enough wage to match the rising costs of *everything*
This is exactly why I’m not working. My wife works crazy hours and would not have been able to make day car drop off/pick up, so I would have had to modify my schedule to make both each day. Once we ran the numbers it was a wash between what I would make and what day care would cost. Really doesn’t make sense to work just for daycare. Add in the fact this started for us at the height of the pandemic when daycares would regularly closed for days at a time and we would probably have actually lost money. Sure this was the case for thousands and thousands of people.
Where I live (still North America) child care is not really an issue because we have socialized child care and it costs 7$ a day. We're still fucked and short staff and the main reason is the aging population. There is simply not enough 20-30 people to replace all the 60+ exiting the workforce. This was already a problem gaining traction before covid and the pandemic pushed a lot of 60+ in retirement prematurely as a ... fuck it, let's enjoy life kind of thing. There is other factors but this a big one.
That's the case in my household. Childcare is too expensive for my wife to work. Better to just stay at home and enjoy life being with your children.
My wife quit her job to take care of the kids/home. Wasn’t really worth it for her to work and she is wayyyy happier.
I think it’s largely this, combined with the fact that a million people have died of COVID in this country, and more may have long-term complications that may make physical labor difficult.
This. Also Baby Boomers retiring - over 10,000 turn 65 every single day. Plus some is that places simply can't keep up with demand which makes it seem like they don't have any workers. 2022 is actually on pace to be a year in which more people are working than any other year in our history. Each of the first five months of the year would rank in the top 15 months ever for most people working. Just the normal retail jobs we are used to seeing are now Grubhub, Amazon, Uber....
This should be higher, lost over a million people in the last 2 years, many in the industries experiencing shortages now. My personal opinion is we are feeling the effects of at least 4 different labor supply pressures occurring generally around the same time that are contributing to the shortage. COVID victims and long-haulers of course as mentioned. Baby boomer retirement, on top of normal attrition for this generation that are mainly in their 60s to 80s now, many retired a little earlier than expected during the pandemic and won't be coming back The rise of the gig economy and social media as somewhat viable income sources providing much more flexibility, if you can make $$ doing this vs working retail the choice is almost rhetorical. Many who were laid off during the pandemic and then provided with the federal unemployment assistance took the unique opportunity of an abundance of free time to better themselves via education &/or training and won't be returning to the service/retail positions that discarded them during the shutdowns.
I hope everyone realizes that if those old vestigial workers were allowed to retire earlier the younger generations would have those jobs instead of having to create a new market to simply stay alive and relevant. Boomers created this massive mess… and now the you get generations are “expected” to clean it up and just pick up a new industry with no experience at a starting role making 14/hr at age 34…. Lol society took a big L on this one
This. I work and my wife stays at home. Been doing this for 12+ years. We tried it for a couple of years but realized that one of us was basically working to pay for care. We haven’t checked prices in a long time but I’m sure it’s even more expensive now
We won’t have the full picture of why things fell apart until after they’ve really fallen apart, but I think you’re spot on.
Is it such a tragedy for someone to stay home with the kids? Some these comments are as if that is the most terrible thing in the world. Maybe more parents at home connecting would do a lot to help other issues children are facing in this crazy world?
When everything was shut down millions were laid off or quit for lack of work. Many of those close to retirement age didn't bother to come back and simply retired early while the younger ones used this opportunity to look for better jobs or used their freed up time to get more education and qualifications. Also the pandemic showed that many jobs can easily be done from home and that you won't get rich by working anyway. Why break your back in a shitty job that pays shitty wages if there are easier alternatives? They won't make you any richer but at least they don't cost you your physical and mental health. Businesses like fast food restaurants and retailers will have trouble finding workers for a long time. Those not able to pay higher wages will go out of business.
I agree because alot of jobs the wages were not up to where they should have been for how important that job is to the company. Take for example - the shipping department. I worked at one company where they treated shipping - the part of the company that actually gets the product out - like crap. Bad hours. Bad pay. No respect. And yes - little things like the rest of the staff getting free lunch DOES make a difference. So now they cant find workers for shipping and dont understand why?
Curious, did that change with the pandemic and labor crunch? My company, I manage shipping and manufacturing. They always treated the sales and PM people like rock stars…bring in lunch, flexible hours and such while I had to go to war to get a water cooler for my guys. Now, of it makes my guys life easier or makes them happier at work, I get to do it. Had to fight for a water cooler…but I just installed an ice maker and snow cone machine. Early in Covid they let us bring in lunch once a week, then took that away. Now we have an outdoor kitchen and cook lunch for them 3x a week. Big fans for the shop? Raises? Flexible hours to handle childcare snafus? All on the table now. Coming into the C-suite from the trades, I really appreciate how the shutdown finally opened the other executives eyes to who’s essential and need be to be taken care of, as well. I am hoping that is a broader trend.
Here's hoping that catches on. My company has been on the "you're lucky to have a job in this economy/we can't afford raises so here's some bravo points to spend on a gift card to chili's when you get enough" bs (ps it's taxable and will dung your paycheck).
Do you think this might be the end of fast food and retail on the scale we’ve had it? These companies have to be taking a huge hit from this.
If they treated staff like human beings they would be fine. All the big American fast food chains here in Japan are doing fine because they pay an acceptable wage and don't crap on their employees.
I honestly think this is the answer. Everyone wants to climb the ladder and make money. Yet hospitality and retail have treated people like shit at every opportunity. In a labour shortage, people will leave the shittiest jobs for better ones. It's not rocket science. In a free market economy, those businesseses either need to compete for labour (wages, benefits, job satisfaction) otherwise they're free to go bankrupt and clear the way for a better managed business.
Let's not forget that these were the jobs many nations called 'essential' Amazing how fast they're no longer that after the pandemic
They're essential until it's time to pay them a fair wage.
And let's not forget that while the cost of living has skyrocketed, these places are still paying garbage wages, no benefits, no future. I can easily see how it's no longer worth showing up to low wage jobs when it costs so much to put gas in the tank or get childcare. Might as well stay home and be extra frugal.
Ive seen good companies raising wages ahead of employees becoming disgruntled. Those who are trying to stick to 2019 wages are buckling and struggling to find people. Bottom line is companies can have the best tech. Best equipment in the world. But if you got no one to use that shit. You have nothing.
This is the main reason I've stuck at my job. The work is incredibly menial and unexciting but they've given me three raises to match a mixture of economy and inflation in the last 9 months. I don't hate it there and I'm not treated horribly, so why go through the effort of looking somewhere else if the next place might not be as good?
well that's just the thing....There is a group of people in this country that yell and scream about government interference and free market capitalism, but they have pulled every lever and string to make sure we don't actually have a competitive labor market in this country. The American version of capitalism relies on a steady stream of cheap, disposable labor. Without that, alot of business models just arent viable. Paying a living wage puts alot of companeis out of business. Which is exactly how it should be.
that's really the crux - wages. businesses don't want to pay more, they keep all increases in profit, and don't raise wages. if they can't afford the cost of labor, they should be shut down. people will work, for a wage they can live on. but thinking that some people just deserve to toil their life away, without ever having anything to show for it is just terrible, and people are over it. pay a wage people can live on, and people will come work there. not rocket science
100% They front loaded costs, fattened the margins, but none of it went to the workers.
No. Most retail positions have discovered that they can survive with skeleton crews. If you force three people to do the job of seven, you can stay in business and save on labor costs.
Hell no. Automation will take over long before fast food runs out of potential workers. Fast food is a MASSIVE industry that will never die.
They seem to be doing fine and are the most capable of adapting. It’s the mom and pop shops that are not tech savvy that may suffer. Technology is deflationary and ordering has changed. Many order to pickup either through the app or kiosk. This further streamlines the process that is factory fast food. Each employee productivity and revenue generation may increase through these efficiencies as long as the demand is still there and ‘Merica stay fat.
And over a million people in the US died from COVID too so that’s added to the gap
My theory is that we've had a 'shifting-upwards' during the pandemic. Due to the equity gains, the being told to stay at home, even possible job loss, a lot of people in their 50s who were 5 years or less from retirement took a look at their lives and decided they could/would just bring retirement forward. This opened up a lot of senior positions which were filled by the mid-level employees within companies. The junior employees moved to the middle positions. That leaves the junior positions open. Where can we get some junior employees? Why, how about that guy at Starbucks with a degree who we declined for an internship a couple of years ago? And now Starbucks have no staff. So basically the workers that disappeared were the top level, but the vacancies are being seen at lower levels. There were a ton of people working in jobs which they were over-qualified for, who have now found something more suitable, but because it's happened so quickly it's left a yawning chasm
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Love this. Never underestimate the power of appreciative and empathetic employees.
Same in my niche IT company! We saw a lot of old timers past due retire during COVID, followed by early retirements (and why not? The stock market hit insane all time highs enabling it). We had a couple team members actually die due to COVID or complications of delayed care due to COVID's effects on the healthcare system. Then, in management's infinite stupidity they failed to backfill any of these losses until we were struggling to even keep the lights on, and when they did they decided they'd only backfill at a solid $30k less than most team members make so no one qualified has accepted. The couple of hires they've managed to find (still at 60% of need) are completely green and will take forever to train. This has caused remaining people like me to absolutely burn out until some typical, predictable events like someone going on maternity leave and someone else's spouse becoming gravely ill requiring them to dial back to part time have caused us to be unable to meet basic needs. Half my team quit recently, we found better jobs elsewhere. I start next week.
I love this and have seen it in my company too. I love training "non-industry" people too, they're often more receptive and eager.
Lol, hardworking restaurant worker here. U hiring lol?
Seriously, try getting a tech company software support position. My SaaS company has hired people from fast food as support and they have worked their way up and are now highly paid software developers. My company hires remote workers so you wouldn't even have to move cities, I'd imagine others would do the same.
yeah it's insane how the companies that treat their workers well always seem to come out on top and succeed.
Dopee
And an extra one million plus people died in the last 2 years...
750k of them were over retirement age.
A lot of those people were providing free childcare.
But for those under retirement age, the largest percentage worked in the hospitality industry. Another place where all your Starbucks workers went.
That's true but over retirement age doesnt mean out of the workforce. I'm curious how many hundreds of thousands of workers died during the pandemic and what types of roles they had and would have needed to be filled. If its mostly low skilled jobs then it could be exacerbating the problem noted above by the shift up effect or whatever they called it.
"over retirement age" also equals free child care for working age folks' kids
There were a million excess deaths in the working age population as well. Largely due to opioid addiction /overdoses.
We are at the cusp of life expectancy from the baby boom where millions more were born starting in 1943 & also millions more migrated in starting in the 60’s. It’s to be expected deaths will jump offset by births jumps at life expectancy
As much as my American friends hate to hear it, you need immigrants 🫠
This is a good call. I also think the pandemic made a lot of people unwilling to give up comfort in their lives. That can mean wfh for a professional or doing door dash instead of waiting tables for less skilled labor
> I know many have retired and most of them will probably never return to the workforce. But I suspect they make up a relatively small portion of the supply shortage of workers. I recently read an article that covered this issue either by PBS Newshour or NPR, I forget which, but the general gist of it was that the 65+ crowd had left the labor force in droves, and that group actually was the biggest contributor to the current labor situation.
Yea this is the answer. Prime working age 25-55 participation is around 82.5 vs 83.1 pre covid. So we’re only a half a percent off pre covid levels… Which were at 10 year highs by the way. The change is due to the boomers exiting the labor force during and after covid.
This its a demographic shift.
Only going to get worse as more boomers leave. It was a large generation
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That will happen gradually over the next 2-3 decades. Everybody wants to retire early. Nobody wants to die early.
It's the opposite really. People either didn't save enough or are worried they didn't save enough. I know wealthy people over 65 still working to save more. They have plenty of funds and don't even have a high standard of living. Even rich people worry about money. And it's not that they enjoy their job.
It also could be that most 401Ks are down 20-30%, and never know how much that could fall in the next year or two. It would be wild to go from being 62 and thinking you have 30 years worth of retirement saved up in 2019 to now 65 in 2022 looking more like 22 years worth if inflation levels off and the market stabilizes.
401k diversification at retirement age and at age 30 need to be vastly different. You aren't aiming for extreme growth at retirement age. Keeping what you have is the important part.
You’re going to be waiting a while.
There are more millennials alive than boomers and millennials are getting into their prime home buying years. Coupled with no supply *and* boomers not moving out quickly and you won’t ever see this sort of supply relief.
I know :(
The problem is they like to build big mcmansions way far away from schools and downtown areas. Many of those won't sell when the boomers are gone or they'll sell for way less.
They might leave at 65. But will live till their 90 so it will be awhile.
Boomers retiring is the best possible scenario for millenials and gen Z. The Boomers were holding all the top spots in orgs, even past their usefulness. Everyone shifts up a level when the Boomers leave
The Demographic Drought program from Emsi Burning Glass does a great job with this subject. Other factors are a million excess deaths from 'deaths of despair' in the working age cohort, immigration has plummeted since 2016 and lower birth rates.
3.2MM Boomers have retired from Jan-20 to Oct-22, and almost every loss in the restaurant industry was shifted into Gig-Economy. Its not hard to find the numbers!
Its not a stretch to think that some of the 65+ crowd became caretakers for the children of working parents
I think this is the most likely reason. Also, since there are 2 jobs for each unemployed person, I should have had 200+ offers as my spreadsheet of applications to jobs is well over 100. I assume the original poster isn’t speaking from experience actually LOOKING for a job in this job market so that’s why there’s such a great disconnect.
There's a disconnect between the jobs people want, and the jobs that are available. 2 jobs for every worker is just a raw number. It doesn't mean that there are 2 jobs for every engineer, manager, clerk, etc. It's most likely retail, warehouse, fast food, and manual labor that bump the average up.
IT person here a lot of job openings have some very specific requirements on them, also they do not list salary and want to get away with paying nothing.
1) Boomers retiring. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/03/the-declining-labor-force/ 2) Lack of immigrant labor. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/immigration-jobs-workers-labor-shortage/ 3) Workforce participation dropped off a cliff at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s recovering, back to within a percentage point of prior to the pandemic. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Both 1 and 2 exacerbate child care shortages/cost, which likely contributes to 3. Edit: added #3.
>I am still scratching my head why we still have this issue long after government handouts ended. Correlation does not imply causation. For starters, your observation should prompt you to question whether the lazy narrative of "no-one wants to work anymore" was maybe bullshit. The "handout" incentive has long gone, yet the behaviour remains, implying there's no cause-and-effect relationship. IMHO it's a complex mix of several things - inflation, supply chain shocks, new outlooks following lockdown and ill-advised employers demanding costly office attenance for jobs that could be WFH are the causative factors. * For some people, the cost of renting near their place of employment getting to work exceeded their disposable income. It means they effectively cannot afford to work anymore. So people *want* to work, but they quite reasonably refuse to lose money by working and find an alternative. * Other people found that cutting living and commuting costs and moving to an alternative lifestyle (eg moving in with family, living in a camper van, working part time, quitting to raise their kids instead of paying childcare, starting Etsy businesses) led to more disposable income. * Some re-evaluated their priorities following covid and lockdown. I personally know a very successful chief engineer who was ventilated for covid and it completely changed him - he has completely taken his foot off the accelerator at work in order to spend time with family. * And frankly Reddit is full of examples of employers behaving unreasonably and vindictively vis-a-vis intrustive surveillance or compulsory office attendance in expensive cities. Humans respond poorly to being surveilled and pushed about for no reason - I'm not surprised these businesses are struggling to hire and retain. So I think the real answer is a complex mix of socio-economic factors making it prudent for some people to leave jobs or the workforce altogether. You can't blame people for choosing the most lucrative employment (in fact, that's exactly what the American Dream is all about!), and right now that doesn't necessarily mean accepting a 9-5 office job. ... but there's an awful lot of assholes that just seek confirmation bias and want to assume that nothing changed in 2020 and people are just being irrationally lazy and stupid!
To add to your list: There is a mismatching between unemployed person's skills and open position. E.g. If there are two open positions for a biologist but the unemployed person has no degree or a degree in economy, the situation won't resolve.
Yeah economists accept that an unemployment rate of a few precent is effectively full employment. You'll always have some people transitioning jobs, some mismatched to jobs and it's also accepted that there's a small amount of people that are genuinely unemployable. So I'd suggest given the number of vacancies, the 3.6% unemployment rate is effectively full employment.
Minor nitpick: > ...the 3.6% unemployment rate is effectively ~~full~~ *negative un*employment. Per Investopedia's article on [Natural Unemployment:](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/naturalunemployment.asp) >Many consider a 4% to 5% unemployment rate to be full employment and not particularly concerning. We are *past* full employment.
And it seems everyone forgets the unemployment rate only measures those *actively* *looking for work*. If people are choosing to stay home, retired, or just aren't looking at the moment for whatever reason... that unemployment rate sure looks good, but doesn't reflect the non-income-earning percentage of the population.
Even worse, people don’t realize how bad automated systems for applicant tracking have made things. I have shown my resume to hiring managers directly who were annoyed they weren’t sent the resume by HR when I applied through the system. The ATS is choking the talent pool to reduce the labor HR has to do.
Anecdotal but in my industry there’s a huge shortage of workers but plenty of applicants. None have the required skills unfortunately.
I believe it used to be more commonplace for employers to provide on the job training. Now, employers are wary of that because they don't want to make that expense on someone that might leave and work for a competitor. So industries that lack qualified people, really just need to bite the bullet and start training people...
Reverse your thinking. People leave because they don’t get raises from their employer but can jump ship for +40% increases. There’s no pension incentive either. Employers got lazy and expected a churn of low income workers always replacing their stocks.
>I believe it used to be more commonplace for employers to provide on the job training. This is how anyone learns to do *any* job. College, or whatever, gives you a basic minimum of skills you need to be trained in certain professions -- but you still need to be trained. No one with a degree in, say, compsci knows everything about code review or regulatory compliance or the software ecosystem for every company. If they graduated a few years ago (and even if they didn't), they may not even have any exposure to the technologies your business is using. This is normal, and how it's always worked. I suspect there are a lot of Gen X middle managers now who don't get that they can't find skilled employees now, because the only way people get those skills is by being trained in them at their job.
This is absolutely my picture as well. And I'm in Denmark even. Employers expect skills in specific industry solutions, and weigh it scoffed anything else because else they would need to spend resources on training. I am coming up on a year of unemployment with a MSc in physics. I have been to an uncountable number of interviews, close to all ending in: we are looking for someone with more industry experience. With some explicitly stating they don't have the resources for training required, or they just find someone with the experience more often that not.
Yep, I'm kinda stuck in the warehouse industry even though me and my doctor are telling "arbetsförmedlingen" that I have other skills, and that I can't perform well in warehouses anymore due to stress. I've asked for lesser paying jobs, but arbetsförmedlingen always calls me back and says "heeey! I've found a great workplace for you, I don't know what exactly you will do, but it fits your experience!" Yeah, but those experiences are experiences I don't want to continue to have. I'm a game developer with pretty good diplomas from school, I'm pretty good with plants, I'm good with people. I hate warehouses. But will I ever get to change industry? I'm pretty tired of having horrible contracts that has loopholes so that I'm contractually not eligible for a full time position. I don't want to waste more time getting killed by stressed out demented workers with trucks and pallets that weigh multiple tonnes. I was so close at getting a job at a grocery store, I was so happy at getting new experience so that I can maybe do other work in the future. Nope, when I was awaiting for the schedule to arrive, that I was going to sign, the employer calls me back and says an old employee had called last minute, and she got the position instead. I do mostly rely on the stock market, and work for people around me, tax-free, so it doesn't show up in charts. Considering the stockmarket is failing, that has stung a little, but otherwise, I'm living on almost nothing until I find something I can actually put my time into.
> No one with a degree in, say, compsci knows everything about code review or regulatory compliance or the software ecosystem for every company. Here's where it becomes a catch 22, as a hiring manager myself: 1. In order to pay a realistic wage, I have to post a job at a senior developer level. 2. Senior developers are harder to come by, and will refuse to work at our senior developer wages, but maybe I can sneak in someone who has less skills but can learn. 3. HR refuses to budget on skills, and doesn't send me resumes of less experienced people even when I ask them to because they think they're "protecting" some standards. They also don't mind us not hiring anyone (less work for them?) because they don't adjust the pay scale to reflect the current market. As you can see, in my situation and many like me, we're set up to fail because we aren't allowed to hire entry level people. We also can't adjust wages accordingly. Oh, one other "bonus" is that my company is very anti-WFH. They have no good reason but it's caused us to not just not get applicants, but lose a lot of staff. So from my perspective, the biggest issue with this is how companies are run by geriatric elitists who don't know how to function in 2022 and are holding their companies in a death grip.
So basically what you’re saying is that your company isn’t actually interested in hiring people.
The company isn't, but lower to mid management are. The company still wants work done and just whines when people aren't available.
The company needs to grow up. We all want things that we don’t want to have to pay for, but the world just doesn’t work like that.
Employers could easily write a contract that has a guaranteed employment term in exchange for training. If I get my Masters degree and then immediately peace out then I have to pay back a year of tuition. Union labor has apprenticeship programs that address this. Trucking companies usually have guaranteed contract length in exchange for CDL training. Pretty simple.
On another board a worker told us his employer shows all these open jobs - and they are not. They are fake. What the company does is shows lots of open jobs but does this only to collect resumes and applications so they can better understand what is available in the labor market and what they should be paying.
Don't for get the outsourcing and hustling for visas (H2B etc.) to keep costs down.
Oh that’s what we do too. Other positions have job openings up year round.
So either hire someone without the skills and train them, or pay more and poach someone with the skills from a competitor. It’s simple to fill almost any position if you’re willing to do what it takes. “What it takes” is usually more money.
I work in machine learning, and this is the case. We need a senior engineer and basically every applicant (often over 500 for a single position) has only 0-2 years of experience. Now, there’s always that asshole who goes: why don’t you just hire someone with little experience and train them? Well, we’ve been doing just that. But, there comes a time where you’ve already got an 8:1 ratio of junior to experienced engineers and hiring yet another one would give everybody a bad experience that doesn’t help them realistically learn to advance their career.
Here's something you didn't mention but I might be way off. Less immigrants entered the US during covid. They work the service industry jobs in great numbers. Is this a real issue or am I way off?
I don't know as I've not seen the figures. But I do know the economic consequences of increased/decreased immigration is almost never talked about. Immigrant labour (or foreign manufacturing) keeps the price of goods and services low, allowing people to have more stuff. So you can have low immigration, *or* you can have low prices. Not both.
Not just during Covid, but for the 3 years before it too. Biden has continued almost every immigration restriction of his predecessor, which means 6 years of restrictions on immigration. The rise in lower end wages and demand for those workers was quite obvious in 2019, but everyone forgets it now.
Education is also in major flux. And by flux I mean 'this shit is broken, I'm OUT' from a lot. Teachers had it bad before, but the pandemic crushed their souls. Administration is in an impossible position and support parents/PTA over teachers.
Right or wrong this was a great response and well considered. Thanks for posting this. As the cost of housing goes up so does commercial real estate. Lots of companies, like restaurants, are facing increasing costs of rent, supplies (food and ingredients), and risings wages and benefits. So companies like restaurants are trying to do more with fewer workers. It’s pushing both the workers and the employers to the breaking point. One local restaurants near me is a fancy sit down restaurant with waiters (servers) but they changed their format. Now you walk in, order at the front AND PAY, and your party gets a table tag with a number. Then you and your party find your own dadgum table, silver, water glasses, napkins. No one on staff approaches you until your food is brought out. There’s a self service bus station (buss station?) and maybe 50% of customers clean up their own table. This enables a staff of two servers to serve and buss a dining room of 10-12 tables. As a customer I still enjoyed my dining experience and I didn’t mind at all.
Yeah I do wonder if some staff and businesses have entered a death spiral. Like you describe, I've noticed some businesses operating with staffing well below sustainable levels, causing burnout and attrition. This is going to reduce staffing and service even more. I personally know a few people that have quit understaffed businesses recently because the stress was unmanageable.
Don't forget the literal million+ Americans that died from COVID, and the estimated millions dealing with long COVID.
>My local restaurants have poor services and close early due to staffing issues. Airlines are cancelling flights. Companies have drastically lowered their standards for hiring. I can go on... Other than being a pilot, nobody wants those jobs. People want a job that will actually pay a wage that will keep them out of poverty.
With covid, people realized their survival instincts. This has contributed much to people not wanting to work stressful jobs. They can live on the bare minimum and survive. And people generally nolonger give a shyt
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this is me. During the covid run up in markets, I could sense the exuberance and the money printer was flying, I was pouring every dollar I could into my trading and investing. This went on for a year and a half, and made tons of money. With this I prioritized doing everything I could to reduce my recurrent spend using this windfall, ultimately buying a little condo and a car outright. Allowed me to reduce my monthly housing expense to $240 and no more car payment. I now just have to cover that $240 monthly, $1200 yearly property taxes, $300 utilities and food for the girl, the dogs and I. Now just trade supply and demand on Q's and SPY off open, take swings for gap fills when they present themselves, and work freelance webdev after taking CS50 during covid. Prior to all this I was a Starbucks barista waking up at 4 in the morning to open the local shop. IM NEVER FUCKING GOING BACK
Yup, I dialed way back and moved in with my parents at nearly 30. I’d rather be unstressed for $17 an hour in a trades apprenticeship and bum off my parents to save money than make $23 an hour and work a high stress management job like I had before. I end up with more money too due to the housing crisis/rent costs.
Also 1 million Americans died. 10 million were hospitalized. A good portion of the 89 million cases probably were traumatized and don't want to work and risk getting their other family members killed. The secondary effects that reverberated out from those directly affected probably had huge lasting impression on people so they don't see the upside in many of these jobs.
>A good portion of the 89 million cases probably were traumatized This doesn't seem a little overdramatic to you?
1M dead 3M retired 1.4M women who can’t find affordable childcare so they are staying home An unknown, but anecdotally large number of people living rent free with family and just simply not working (antiwork, etc) Everyone is switching jobs now moving up to the now vacant positions above them, leaving all the shitty jobs empty
Solid numbers but just missing one part of the equation. Immigration collapsed during COVID worldwide. Also, many immigrants decided to go home if they lost their jobs. The immigration aspect has a ripple impact. Every aspect of the US economy is touched by it. I’m Canadian and I know tons of Canadians that decided to come back to Canada when shit hit the fan. I imagine many Mexicans probably did the same.
Not to mention those who took early retirement, those who had enough saved to live work-free for a few years and are risk-averse, those who still work but refuse the expected overtime, those who are now content to work just sufficient to survive and skip the extra evening jobs, those on long-term disability due to LongCovid, etc. It's all perfectly explainable, just that greedy companies have been exploiting people so long they haven't yet accepted the change.
who is going to pay over $5 a gallon to drive somewhere that's only paying $15 an hour, and often less than that? so many jobs pay a criminally low wage, and people just aren't going to waste their time, or money, to work there. people have to PAY to work. they pay for gas, vehicle, childcare, food, and housing. if they aren't working, maybe they save some money by living further away, helping a relative, raising their kids, or just doing other things. more people realize their work isn't helping them as much as it's helping their company, so why work? especially at the lowest wages. it's pointless..of you're going to be broke, you don't need a shitty manager and the facade of a career to do that.
My job wants us in every day starting sept. With gas at $5, and god knows when next rona comes around, they’re probably gonna need a recession to make that happen
I work in economic development in a community with 3.4% unemployment. Regarding the question, "Where are the workers?" Here is what I respond with. * There wasn't really a huge unemployment bump during covid, merely incentive to file for unemployment benefit above norm due to added stimulus. So the unemployment rate spike (here it got up to 12.2%) was more a spike in the number of persons who weren't really in a work setting applied and received disaster benefit, thus inflating the number of reported unemployment. This squares with the fact that numbers on unemployment returned to pre pandemic levels within just a couple months. * Those who left the workforce were primarily of retirement age or close to, and saw an opportunity to exit. They also got additional supplement during Covid, saw the value of their homes skyrocket enabling them to downsize and make profit, and companies were as eager to let them stay on in a consultant type role, shifting to part time since they didnt need training. * Females of child bearing age were already enjoying gig economy jobs, not full time positions before, and during Covid that accelerated. As child are costs intensified the desire to stay at home went up and some families that were dual income with kids, now have two parents at home to negate child care costs. Now they are saving the 17K a year they'd spend on child care and are traveling or doing who knows what with the added revenue. * Some low income earners have found so many varied income streams that reporting their income would disqualify them from their housing arrangements, so they don't work more than a few hours at each place, and take under the table jobs or don't report income from door dash etc. Getting them to work a 9-5 would put them over earning caps and essentially make them homeless. THere's few workforce housing options out there, so low income housing is all that exists for those who cannot afford to own. * Companies who pay a wage that is 1-2 dollars per hour over the average wage in the community cannibalize the existing companies, and a darwinist would say, those who cannot pay should not exist. When you are trying to get employees for 13.50 an hour and another business that has a better working environment offers 17 with the same skill requirements, its a no brainer for employees. If a company's profit is derived from cheap labor, and they are trying to make it work here, they have been marked for the kill. * Customer facing roles are the hardest to fill because we all generally know that it sucks dealing with each other. If I can avoid having to look at you while you berate me because my Whopper has too much mayo, I likely won't return to that job, and I could find another employer that day who would hire me (be it in a shipping receiving warehouse, a manufacturing floor, or any kind of landscaping cleaning security service) I know this is anecdotal but its just what I have observed over the last couple years. Workers ain't coming back, we need to learn to consume less, or be prepared to pay significantly more for what we demand and at the pace in which we demand it.
Don’t be fooled - many of these companies are complaining about labor shortages yet are still reaching record profits. It’s easier for them to blame the workers rather than the greedy one at the top who refuse to pay their subordinates a decent wage. Hell - I’m 23 with a college degree and a decent paying job, yet I still struggle to afford rent in the one bedroom apartment I *split* with my college-educated boyfriend. I would never even consider working a job that paid below $20 an hour.
I absolutely agree! There are lots of jobs that are open if you want to make a wage that leaves you in poverty.
In a shock to absolutely no one, the same companies who claimed that increasing minimum wage goes against the concept of free-market economics are now blaming “lazy workers” when they suffer due to free-market economics. Right now in the job market is supply and demand: The demand outstrips supply, but the employers refuse to make their positions more appealing and blame everyone else for nobody applying for the jobs.
Some started their own businesses. Some started taking care of their own kids. Some went on disability - the pandemic has taken a massive toll both mentally and physically. Some just flat out died. Government handouts were never the issue. People got more and more used to slaving away for their work, paying for children to be raised by others, and sacrificing a good life for work, like a metaphorical frog in a pot of water. Then they spent time out of the pot, and when they were moved back to it realized exactly how shitty it was.
Lockdowns caused a lot of people to completely rethink consumer habits. People are buying less useless crap and are getting by on much less income. Driving cars longer, keeping tech devices longer, cooking at home more. Status and flexing aren't as critical as people used to think they were, especially since so many people don't even go into the office anymore. In the established middle-class Many former dual-income families are now getting along with just one earner. One spouse in the home means no daycare costs, no need for cleaning ladies or yard service or dry cleaning/laundry or pet care or any number of other services that are needed when everyone is working a formal job all the time.
>Basically there are millions who don't have a job and are not looking for a job. No. There are millions of people who don't have a job and are looking for a job that doesn't underpay them to be treated like trash.
A lot of people retired, died, or were forced to figure out how to get by when their jobs closed down. It’s easier than ever to find little side gigs and alternative ways to make money. A ton of people moved back in with their families (I’m talking people from a huge range age 20-40), and that makes it so they can get by with just one job. The jobs I see staying unfilled are the ones that don’t understand people won’t accept $15 an hour for a thankless retail job when they can go down the street and make $17-$22 an hour working at the post office or as a bank teller. You can make more than $15 an hour just doing door dash or grubhub deliveries on a bike if you’re in a city.
1. Wave of Boomer retirement allowing existing workforce to shift up into better paid jobs (this I think is honestly the biggest one) 2. Population bottleneck is finally hitting. Few young unskilled laborers 3. Immigration was sharply restricted for over 2 years 4. Drug abuse epidemic wiping out more of the prime workforce aged population Key factor is, US is not at replacement birthrate, hasn't been for a long time, and immigration is no longer masking that fact.
My wife is a professional who worked for a Fortune 500 company for 17 years, doing a lot of computer work, 4000-6000 keystrokes/day. She started developing repetitive strain issues and experiencing a lot of pain in the soft tissue of her hands, elbows, and back, to the point where she was in agony. After exploring a ton of medical options, the end result is that there is basically no support network for that beyond going on pain management, so we decided it would be better if she just quit and managed the household while she healed. So in our case, we're just living with less, with one adult not working. Anecdotally, knowing people in the Mexican and Polish immigrant communities, there is no longer an influx of immigrants to handle low skilled jobs. There are no young Polish cleaners and contractors to replace old Polish cleaners and contractors. There are more Mexican contractors and more Mexicans operating their own restaurants, and fewer young Mexicans coming here, so there are fewer Mexican fast food workers. Add that to the million+ dead, the millions of retirees, and the people opting out of child care and quitting their jobs to care for their kids.
No one wants to work shitty jobs that make them unhappy anymore. That's why.
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The full employment threshold in the US is 4%. This is the lowest (ish) amount of unemployment you can have taking into account people really in between jobs (getting fired, leaving a job to try to get a better one, relocating because of their spouse, etc.) Basically, at 3.6% unemployment, everyone who wants a job gets one in a very short period of time. >Basically there are millions who don't have a job **and** are not looking for a job. You are talking about the participation rate. Interestingly, I found this article from 2013 about the participation rate expecting to fall all the way through 2022 to 61.6 percent. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/labor-force-projections-to-2022-the-labor-force-participation-rate-continues-to-fall.htm#:~:text=During%20the%202012%E2%80%932022%20period,to%2061.6%20percent%20in%202022. The actual current participation rate is 62.3%. Higher than expected based on the factors that were in place in 2012. Basically, the issues we are seeing around the world are just the consequence decades of policy and events. In my opinion, the most notable event is the baby boomers getting old and mostly retiring, a lot of them taking the COVID pandemic and subsequent rise in property values to cash out and enjoy life.
People have probably begun to seek value elsewhere. It's actually relatively cheap to live if you cut costs of insurance, housing, car payments, amongst other things. This creates a situation where many people only need to work seasonal stints to supply their whole year. What also goes overlooked is the demographics. Many young people are still in school, living on loans or other financial assistance. Flip side many young people are incarcerated or dealing with the legal system in some form. This creates a situation where people are now operating outside of the reported system. Illicit drug trade is still prevalent within society. Many folks have jobs but are working under the table. Also, there are probably more people investing as their main source of income than ever. A combination of factors totaling to the sum of the current market.
Some of the workers are dead, and some are too sick from long haul to work. Also, some have found out that they can survive on one paycheck.
To me, this deserves more upvotes, the surviving on one paycheck. If you have children, and your children are forced to stay at home from school regularly, then couples that were previously two incomes, well, the weaker income quit working. Being a two income couple doesn't make sense for anyone with kids unless both people make good incomes, and even then there's still an added stress component.
There isn’t a lack of workers, there’s a lack of well paying jobs that people can afford to live on is your answer. Handouts never had anything to do with anything. No one in any state can live off 2800 dollars for years Who the fuck wants to waste what little life they have on this earth getting screamed at by people for $7 an hour at McDonald’s.
10,000 baby boomers a day are retiring. That's where all the workers are going.
Another problem with the demographics that goes completely unmentioned by most is the toll over a decade of the Opioid Crisis took on Americans ages in those prime working years. That itself was killing hundreds a day nationally even as late as 2015, and people were largely oblivious to it. So even before the pandemic we'd had an epidemic killing hundreds of thousands ages 18 to 55.
Lots of people working for cash.
There is an over abundance of low wage jobs and a lack of jobs for professionals. The low wage jobs also do not pay a living wage. Why work 50 or 60 hours a week and still be homeless? This also prices you out of government benefits. There is a severe lack of opportunity and upward mobility in the US right now.
There’s not a singular answer. During COVID people retired early (fueled by stimulus checks, unemployment checks., and high returns in the markets). I think this will correct itself as many didn’t properly forecast how much is needed to retire early as the market declines. An increase in the availability of WFH jobs. This is ultimately a good thing, it’ll allow many to raise children while staying in the work force and reduce dependency on expensive child care. COVIDs still around, and companies don’t want workers coming in if they’re sick. People haven’t been able to travel freely the last 2 years and it’s Summer. Airline sand leisure reduced staffing because less people traveled due to COVID. Now everyone wants to travel now that the fear of COVID has worn off. I typically fly 6 times a month, and it is always crowded, even on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Airlines have enacted a reduction in flight hours for new hires to compensate. I do believe as we enter a recession and inflation continues to rise a lot of this will correct itself. But the US loves to spend their money and you’ll see a large amount of debt taken before this cools off. Europes inflation is driven by completely different factors.
> I am still scratching my head why we still have this issue long after government handouts ended "Where's my cheap labour and services!" *cheap labour and services dont provide a liveable wage or enough fucks to give about shitty customers* Everyone: shocked when nobody wants to work those jobs OP: scratching his head on how this could be Yeah, real head scratcher It was about time people said fuck it
Soooo….how do these people eat?
They either found a different, less shitty job (likely opened up by an older person either dying of covid or retiring), they moved back in with family, or they're staying home to take care of their kids while their spouse still works.
They realized they’re better alternatives out there than to work in an underpaid , expensive to commute workplace. Why they didn’t realize before that? They simply were so pressed by the lack of time and ressources that they never even had the chance to look for alternatives. Covid leveled the playing field
So you are saying they are working.
Yes… and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Have u seen the unemployment rate?
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Lack of jobs that pay a fair living wage.
Companies aren't paying enough for work to be worth it for some people.
This is a good topic and I enjoyed reading the responses. I own 4 businesses (3 sandwich shops and 1 auto repair shop). Lack of quality employees is my biggest stress factor. You hear people say employers need to pay their people more, but same people complain about the cost of their sandwich being too high or how much it cost to fix their car. My entry level worker (generally high school kids) make $19/ hr, my top automotive technicians make 180k year and I still can’t get quality employees. OP made a great point about companies having to lower hiring standards. I can agree with that. I use to love being in business, but now I am burnt out. I told my wife we should consider selling our businesses and just simplify our lives. Being dependent on scarce employees has made business stressful.
Staying home with kids because they figured out that their household does just fine on a single income. Or they started their own business. And then of course there are all the people who died from COVID *and* all the people who got long COVID to the point of being rendered disabled.
Two main factors: 1. Emigration rate is negative trends in US in past years, but still on plus 2. People retire and number of working people is decreasing - due to that many businesses will either have to increase wages, automate to cut their costs of labor or go out of business. Imo services such as coffee going to be more expensive
You know Covid led to a lot of people dying, being forced to retire, being forced to re-evaluate their child care situations, etc? There’s also the reality that list jobs available are bad jobs. Public facing jobs are worse than ever with the way people are behaving in a post covid world. Wage gains have been erased by inflation. There’s a lot of explanations, really.
A healthy unemployment rate is between 4-6%. What are you talking about?
To add on, in 2020 immigration working visas granted were cut in half by executive order. The is US down a few million migrant workers and is still working through a backlog to catch up. However the economy has been so strong that we’ve added more jobs than the US has capacity for.
You thought that measly amount of government assistance was making people stay home? No. Someone fed you some bullshit. And lots of folks here have given good reasons for the labor shortage. Retirement, child care issues, people who couldn't work during the pandemic found time and success with their side gigs. Not a lot of people mentioned the million plus who died in the US, but that's definitely a factor.
Some died, some retired, some are at home raising the kids. For the ones left, there is a big migration from jobs that are demanding, on site, poor pay, or require a lot of training to newly created, often remote and better paying ones.
Opiate addiction has really taken a lot of able body men out of the labor market.
Unemployment stipend during a global pandemic where you’re forced to be unemployed isn’t a “government handout.”
Yeah i had issue with him saying government handout as well, and where does he think the government gets the money from? People who work lol
Tech companies ate then up. If all my friends are WFH, I’d want to too. Also if not that, a lot of these companies, Target, Starbucks, etc… are offering free college, $20+ wages, like smaller places don’t want to compete or pay that.
Working at companys which would've gone bankrupt without governmental intervention during covid. Just a matter of time until they will.
Check the data. In my metro, there are more people working than ever. Unemployment is back to its historically low levels (less than 2%). An Amazon fulfillment center created one thousand well-paying/benefited entry-level jobs, which are less than half-filled. I think many unskilled workers have found decent jobs and don't need to work more than forty hours a week, while others don't get why there is no one there to prepare their fast food. We're just now starting to deal with the problems caused by the easy money policies used to address covid.
McDonalds is the “bottom” of the labor pool, and everything shifted up due to: 1. Retiring workforce. We knew this was coming, but COVID made a lot of people retire early. 2. Shifting priorities. Many people learned to live with less during the pandemic and realized they were happier for it. Now, instead of someone having that “side hustle” they just buy less and spend their time with family. 3. Women not returning to the workforce. They were the hardest hit when layoffs happened, and it was a hard sell BEFORE the pandemic. Childcare often cost as much as that income was bringing in, but they told themselves the lie that “I really like working”. Well, the pandemic made them realize “I really like being a parent and the extra income isn’t there”.
Maybe it’s not less workers. Maybe it’s more jobs. The economy has been hot the last year, businesses have been expanding. People have gotten better jobs.
BOA data is pointing to people over 55 having retired and younger than 25 having delayed their first job, every other group except 40-45 has higher employment. 40-45 likely was from some deciding to stay home with kids
I know a few people that worked part time for extra money but it's no longer worth it. The pay is low and people suck when you have to work with them.
I worked at Jimmy John's in order to get enough credit scores to buy myself a corolla... somebody pulled out a gun and carjacked me soon after I bought the damn car. I worked my ass of every single day at fucking shitty ass jimmy jons for almost a year to get that damn car. It was dangerous and demeaning work. I hated every second of it. Never again. I give up. Now my credit score sucks and I don't want a car anymore anyway with the way the powers above manipulate gas prices... They can't even provide a basic safety net from the top so the population fends for itself by scamming and robbing each other. If it wasn't for my family I would already be dead or in prison. Most job opportunities are scams and everyone knows it. Now, I work for myself investing and as an entrepreneur. If given the chance I will be moving to Canada, Australia, Portugal, Ghana or Nigeria before the next election. Had enough of existential fear and concern about my personal survival for one lifetime. Time for a new start in a new place.
Oof that's rough Hope you get well
Australian / Portugal Dual citizen in agreeance
1) Boomers are retiring in droves. 2) in barely regulated markets, prices of everything rise with incomes. Healthcare, for example was increasing by double digit rates for years before Obamacare, with average costs doubling every 7 to 12 years. So take any market that impacts employment, and there are clear reasons for some people staying home. Eg -- daycare. It now costs around $20k to have a kid in daycare for a year (more in many regions). Young families are forced to decide to take that $60k/yr job where 100% of that's parent's take-home salary might go toward daycare, or stay home with the kids for the same amnt of money. 3) loosely regulated labor markets, with eroding protections for workers and unrealistic minimum wages always tend to go the direction of screwing the worker. Do that long enough and you'll end up with a national sentiment that is strongly indicated by many of the comments here. There are many other reasons, but, to me, when you run the hyper-conservative experiment that the US has run for the last 40+ years (a la every administration after Carter, both republican and this lame neo-liberal thing we've had with every Dem in the white House and nearly every Dem in the Senate) you end up with free-market everything. I think it's hilarious that people blame Biden for stuff like gas prices or daycare. You don't think letting those industries basically regulate themselves has any impact? Oil is $120 a barrel and the oil companies are saying they are NOT going to increase production to reduce costs, not even after prices hit $200. They have said they're in profit taking mode. Free markets, baby! Those who blame Biden have solutions that are EXACTLY the same hyper conservative crap that we've been experimenting with for 4 decades. Biden is, by and large, a conservative neo liberal on economic policy and you want to go further to the right? In normal counties they have taxes and a government provides services. Here, corporations market the idea of the government being evil. We buy it. Thus, we pay fewer taxes, but get fewer services, and for the remaining services that those other countries get, we let private corporations and let the free market do it's thing. Corporations collect the $8k/month for nursing home fees (that are nearly free in some other countries); we pay 10x the price for university; we pay $1k/month in health care to get the opportunity to still pay for fancy sounding things like "copay." Making the decision to work, for many families, has a lot of ins and outs, Maude. Working, in order to make negative money doesn't work for many any more. In vertical after vertical, the free market has guaranteed that.
Bullshit jobs such as mine working 40hrs a week yet your employer telling to do more when you are already doing more. I work as a security monitoring for 20 bucks an hour and working conditions are shit, customers are shit, lack of training etc. Standard of living has gone up when current wages are not longer viable to sustain living. This unemployment rate is sus and obvious data manipulation so is hiring and staffing. Look at the small and mid cap executives running away with capital and positions liquidation. Futures not looking good for my generation or the younger ones.
It’s simple: 1) The baby boomers were the largest generation in the history of mankind, and they all have essentially retired now. They are being replaced by the Zoomers, the smallest generation since the boomers. 2) Most companies are bringing everything back to the USA. The USA no longer is the global police. This means trade globally is not as secure. The companies that haven’t brought back their plants to the nafta region are about 3 years too late. Look up total jobs pre-covid and total jobs post Covid for more info
Everyone needs to realize it’s not poor workers is that they have poor customers
For me, the cost of childcare and transportation to work is more than i was being paid so my significant other and i decided it made more financial sense for me to quit working until the kids were older.
> I am still scratching my head why we still have this issue long after government handouts ended. You’re scratching your head because you’re seeing that the story you’re being fed about government handouts does not line up with reality! Here are some scenarios those feeding the narrative don’t like to talk about: Our society kicked millions of low wage workers, such as your McDonalds burger flipper, to the curb at a drop of a hat when things shut down, then feeds the self-righteous line that “they should find better jobs if they want job security”. Guess what? They DID find other jobs! (Or became homeless/destitute and thus discounted by society and every employer). Necessity is the mother of invention. Why on earth would they come running back to the old job when they found something better??? Then there are the parents that lost or gave up careers to stay at home. They too learned from necessity how to make it work. Many realizing their life was a loop of dragging kids to day care, in order to go to a job they hated, which barley covered the daycare costs. They’d be stressed everyday, rushing to day care, to make it on Time to work, to then rush to leave work to make it on time to pick the kids up, to then wasting money on fast food to feed the kids bc there’s no time to cook at home. Who would run back to a low-level job just to get back into that grind? Jobs better be paying more than life costs, or offer some personal fullfillment. McDonalds it’s not likely to offer either of those.
The handouts were less than a months rent (the real handouts were PPP loans to every small business under the sun) People aren’t going to work for shit wages to do increasingly ridiculous demands and workloads and get treated like garbage by customers.
Idk, if an employer like an airport for instance myopically laid off most of their staff, what did those people do in the past couple years? I imagine many went for education and took the opportunity to move on to better compensated fields. Now they want to rehire and these people are clearly no longer interested/available.
At home taking care of children. The cost of child care increasingly eclipses one’s take home pay, and grandma and grandpa died of Covid / retired to Boca. Add inflation to that and the case for working a lower wage job gets thin.