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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

#101

Post by AnimalMuppet »

pc2g4d wrote: post #28

The mismatch between available jobs and the skillsets of the workforce has baffled me. Is it just that autoglass installers aren't in sufficient demand for people to train to become autoglass installers? And so would it be economically inefficient for the government to subsidize the education of more autoglass workers? But maybe it's not a question of insufficient demand for these skills. Maybe it's a question of mat…

> Is it just that autoglass installers aren't in sufficient demand for people to train to become autoglass installers?

The article said (in the very first line) "no experience necessary". They still can't get autoglass installers.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#102

Post by seanp2k2 »

MarkMc wrote: post #95
maxsilver wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

$12 per hour is somewhat less than the median personal income in the US [1], so I would not expect the auto glass worker to pay median rent. There may also be an option to live in a cheaper area outside North Charleston. I agree it's not a fulfilling job, but I wouldn't characterise it as "living on the poverty line". The job pays $24,000 per year but for a single person the official poverty line is $11,770 [2]. [1]…

Yeah, and imagine what it's like to make less than $12k and live near any halfway decent city (in economic terms). 4 people to a studio apartment situations are due to stuff like this.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#103

Post by cbdfghh »

whybroke wrote: post #91
cbdfghh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>employees weren't allowed to quit In the US you can quit and look for another job, the same way how MS can exit the OS market. The same way MS doesn't leave the OS market (too lucrative), most people don't walk off on their jobs.

non-compete clause

Not everywhere. CA, for example, doesn't permit them.

But companies also have non-compete (or other exclusionary) clauses which are legal outside of anti-trust laws.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#104

Post by stuckagain »

madengr wrote: post #99
zhivota wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expand the graph back to 1948, where it starts, and you'll see labor participation is higher now than it was from 1948-1984. So it's not that simple, unfortunately.

Back then, 1 income could raise a family. The participation was not needed.

That process runs both ways. When the economy is doing better, labor participation can go down due to incomes going up. The grandparent pinned the qualitative judgement "permanently discouraged" upon this graph, but that's just one way to read it.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#105

Post by brianwawok »

mturmon wrote: post #29
brianwawok wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

But now you are working 57 hours a week in steady state to make that $70K and it does not sound like such a good deal any more.

It's not a good deal! Thats why I code.

But that is how some working class people make enough to sound their kids to private school. Working their tails off.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#106

Post by pragmatic »

toyg wrote: post #46
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've mostly encountered them in banks where there is regulation or a strong desire not to let developers access production data/systems (Sarbox or something, I forget). However their use seems to be declining in most other industries.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#107

Post by diyorgasms »

knz wrote: post #65
maxsilver wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Cheap business owners" couldn't be a more accurate byline. There have been a number of headlines recently about how corporate profits are near record highs. Isn't paying employees enough to buy the product considered capitalism 101?

That's the Fordist school of thought, which is not universally accepted. Labor unions and employee protections have been weakened to the point that the working class has the choice to either work for subsistence wages or die of starvation/exposure.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#108

Post by diyorgasms »

brianwawok wrote: post #105
mturmon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But now you are working 57 hours a week in steady state to make that $70K and it does not sound like such a good deal any more.

It's not a good deal! Thats why I code. But that is how some working class people make enough to sound their kids to private school. Working their tails off.

I see that they have to do that as a moral failing of capitalism, both that public schooling is insufficiently good for their children and that a worker's base wage is insufficient to provide for that worker's child's education.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#109

Post by dabockster »

caseysoftware wrote: post #31
goodcanadian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's speculation, but my take would be that there are two missing pieces: 1) Inadequate pay. 2) Unwillingness to train. If you don't have the exact skills that the company wants, they won't hire you. But they will complain that they can't find anyone even though they are really only offering unskilled level wages.

And location. If you're 30/40, odds are you have a family, roots somewhere, and maybe a mortgage. Your ability/willingness to move - especially after being out of work for a while - is near zero. * I'm late 30s with all of the above.

> If you're 30/40, odds are you have a family, roots somewhere, and maybe a mortgage. Your ability/willingness to move - especially after being out of work for a while - is near zero.

This is also true for someone like me as a recent grad with an older vehicle, a student loan to pay off, and lack of sufficient savings to move too far away from my hometown. One of the large issues of the education crisis that I don't hear being discussed is that a lot of students, like myself, often spend literally everything we have to get the degree after constantly hearing about success story after success story in the K-12 system. In these cases, it is implied that college is the only way to get ahead in life and we need to get there by any means necessary.

I mean, how the hell am I supposed to magically relocate halfway across the country (or even commute >50 miles away from my house on a daily basis) when the infrastructure doesn't exist and/or no benefits are offered besides "you should be glad that we're even paying you"?

But hey, I'm just a whiny millennial brat who should be glad that spanking/belt whipping is illegal.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#110

Post by blfr »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #76
blfr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does lowering the labor supply solve the problem of the labor supply being too low? Next up: solve hunger by setting food on fire.

It solves the problem of cheap employers since that attitude will become untenable.
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