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There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

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Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#41

Post by michael_h »

moxious wrote: post #24
michael_h wrote: post #6

I'm always baffled by the people in these articles. From the anecdote at the beginning: he's having trouble hiring people for $12/hour (up to $70K/year with bonuses, etc). I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are just lazy and don't want to work.

Yeah, the journos who are writing big articles about big trends always seem to want to anchor them with anecdata from the 2 local guys they talked to, as if that actually sheds light on the situation. Usually it just confirms whatever narrative their story is pushing. I don't know what's a fair price in every area of the country for all of these jobs, so beats me if $12 is good or bad, but beyond this one anecdote, p…

It doesn't really matter if $12/hour is good or bad. If you're having trouble finding new workers, you're going to have to poach from the existing labor pool (aka from your competition) with higher wages and better benefits. If you can't pay the same wage as your competition because your business is swimming in overhead costs, then you will soon go out of business in favor of your more efficient competition. I believe this is supposed to be the good bit of the capitalist system.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#42

Post by maxsilver »

michael_h wrote: post #6

I'm always baffled by the people in these articles. From the anecdote at the beginning: he's having trouble hiring people for $12/hour (up to $70K/year with bonuses, etc). I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are just lazy and don't want to work.

So this job pays $12/hr. Which is $1,555.05/month after tax, assuming 40hr work week. And the average 1-bed apartment rents in North Charleston, SC is roughly $1100/month (according to Zillow), leaving the employee $450/month to cover all food + medical + debt + transit + utilities and any other expenses.

I can't imagine why no one is taking the position. It sounds like a fulfilling opportunity to install auto glass while living on the poverty line.

It's like employers don't even attempt to think about anything from the employee's perspective -- even after they've struggled to fill their own positions. "Cheap business owners" couldn't be a more accurate byline.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#43

Post by patrickg_zill »

You can check this kind of stuff out by looking on your local Craigslist postings.

Machinist wanted (with decent level of understanding multiple machines, reading blueprints etc.) - 5 years experience - $25/hour in the Denver/Boulder area. e.g. http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html (and you have to supply some of your own tools) ... this is not a cheap area to live in BTW. $50-60K is barely middle class for this area.

We've been praising the guy who hires 10 plumbers and then automates his back office (he is scaling), while looking down on the plumbers who do the actual work. Then we wonder why it's tough to find plumbers...

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#44

Post by CocaKoala »

brianwawok wrote: post #15
onion2k wrote: post #5

If we're generous and say that the auto-glass installer job pays a bonus of $10,000 a year that leaves $60,000 earned at $12/hour ... which is about 96 hours a week. I can think of plenty of reasons why you'd have trouble finding people to do that job.

I doubt the 70k makes $12 an hour. Likely a supervisor making say $20 an hour.. comes to a base of 42k. Other 28k he would make in 17 hours of overtime per week (Remember you get time and a half for overtime), for a total of 57 hour weeks. Not out of the question hours in a busy factory. I did some of those in college summer days...

Working 57 hour weeks for a couple months is a different game than working them as a fact of life.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#45

Post by analogmemory »

michael_h wrote: post #6

I'm always baffled by the people in these articles. From the anecdote at the beginning: he's having trouble hiring people for $12/hour (up to $70K/year with bonuses, etc). I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are just lazy and don't want to work.

North Charleston isn't exactly a large metropolis with a high cost of living. $12 isn't terrible for an job with almost no requirement except a warm body and two arms.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#46

Post by toyg »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #30
twoquestions wrote: post #14

As someone else has already said, the biggest shortage is skilled labor, not unskilled. Trouble is, it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job that may not be there when you graduate, and it's unwise to train someone when they could get poached by the next company not willing to shell out for training. I also wonder how sticky their wages are. If a business can endure not filling a position unt…

Case in point: my employer has a vacancy that has been unfilled for the better part of a year now because they want to hire a full-time Database Administrator and not pay more than $65k. My theory is that they're intentionally low-balling it so that no one will apply and they can hire an H1B.

> a full-time Database Administrator

Do those even exist anymore, in the US? In the UK I very rarely encounter UK-based DBAs, 99.99% are offshore.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#47

Post by moxious »

fullshark wrote: post #39
moxious wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the journos who are writing big articles about big trends always seem to want to anchor them with anecdata from the 2 local guys they talked to, as if that actually sheds light on the situation. Usually it just confirms whatever narrative their story is pushing. I don't know what's a fair price in every area of the country for all of these jobs, so beats me if $12 is good or bad, but beyond this one anecdote, p…

People relate much more to anecdotal examples than statistics. A good journalist for these types of stories has hard data underlying their premise and usually a good in-person interview or two to put a human face on it.

Agreed, people relating to them is why they do it, no question.

It's just that engineers and scientists are typically trained to know that anecdata is a very poor way to reason about the world, it consistently leads you into the wrong conclusion, making you feel like you have support for a fact when you actually don't.

If the good journalist has hard underlying data, I would not at all begrudge them the anecdotes, and yet I'd still like to see their data thank you very much.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#48

Post by user5994461 »

twoquestions wrote: post #14

As someone else has already said, the biggest shortage is skilled labor, not unskilled. Trouble is, it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job that may not be there when you graduate, and it's unwise to train someone when they could get poached by the next company not willing to shell out for training. I also wonder how sticky their wages are. If a business can endure not filling a position unt…

> If a business can endure not filling a position until they can find their person willing to work for peanuts, why offer more?

If the skill is rare enough or the pay is low enough, they will simply NEVER get anyone.

The job ads and the "we can't find people" will stick though.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#49

Post by blfr »

moxious wrote: post #20
twoquestions wrote: post #14

As someone else has already said, the biggest shortage is skilled labor, not unskilled. Trouble is, it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job that may not be there when you graduate, and it's unwise to train someone when they could get poached by the next company not willing to shell out for training. I also wonder how sticky their wages are. If a business can endure not filling a position unt…

There's no fast way out of the situation. Training and education is ultimately the answer, but to fill today's jobs, that needed to happen 2-4 years ago. So today, I think we're up a creek in any case. Still, best get to training and educating people ASAP, because 2 years from now is coming sooner than most people think. We could complain about how much it costs to do this, or we could just shut up, do it, and then e…

There's no fast way out of the situation.

Of course there is and at least some Republicans at least claim they're going to take it: slash immigration, lower the labour supply, raising its prices.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#50

Post by greglindahl »

lkrubner wrote: post #19

Let's do this experiment: let's have all businesses double whatever wage they are currently paying. Is there still a shortage of workers? No? Ah, in that case, we have solved the problem.

This is a flipped version of the lump of labor fallacy. If the price of a service is too high, some consumers will do without. So sure, you can double the wages of housecleaners, but that might drastically shrink the number of houses being cleaned.

You've already seen this play out in manufacturing: industries with high wages have tended towards automation and/or offshoring work to low wage countries. If you're building automobiles, there's a limit to what consumers are willing to pay for an auto.

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