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Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

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Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#61

Post by usmeteora »

jazzyk wrote: post #58
usmeteora wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, high skilled employers have lots of trouble finding high skilled workers, and one of the main economic incentives driving gender and ethnic equality in high tech work places is the disadvantage of not being able to have the maximum amount of resources to pool skilled workforces from. They can't get enough qualified people.

>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)

hmm,

Well, I was specifically referencing the top 5 biggest tech companies, and the pay may seem low to the people who have been working there fresh out of college but its still relatively high pay compared to most other industries with people of the same academic and skill level but in a different industry.

They interview alot of people and the people don't turn down the jobs because the pay isn't enough, they don't get the jobs because theres not enough qualified people.

So I don't know how your statement is relevant but I don't think they don't get hired and rejected from their interviews because they applied and changed their mind that the pay wasnt high enough....

That being said, given that the skill level sought out is hard to find, and the people with those skill levels are in such high demand with many many options at their fingerprints, including but not limited to never having to work in an office if they don't want to, that there is an argument the pay should be higher for the people that do have this skill level, and work long hours, despite the rest of the world protesting at the inequality of tech valley and not seeming to understand how much of a meritocracy it is RELATIVE to other high earning places like wallstreet and politics, where the old boys club is much more relevant than tech valley (all relative here) (and i dont disagree, people with niche skill who earned it and are needed should be evaluated appropriately) but this is not the situation I was talking about.

I'm talking about the situation where people get turned down from any of these jobs where they even have the luxury to complain a software engineer salary at a top 5 company is too low, because they don't have the expertise to get the job in the first place.

Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#62

Post by abakker »

jazzyk wrote: post #58
usmeteora wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, high skilled employers have lots of trouble finding high skilled workers, and one of the main economic incentives driving gender and ethnic equality in high tech work places is the disadvantage of not being able to have the maximum amount of resources to pool skilled workforces from. They can't get enough qualified people.

>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)

could be. Could also be that we are not making enough qualified people. Minting new, skilled labor is not highly responsive to changes in demand for labor.

Of course, most companies don't do anything to train or build talent in-house anymore. If you do increase your skills, it is most likely in spite of your employer, and not because of them.

Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#63

Post by euyyn »

jazzyk wrote: post #58
usmeteora wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, high skilled employers have lots of trouble finding high skilled workers, and one of the main economic incentives driving gender and ethnic equality in high tech work places is the disadvantage of not being able to have the maximum amount of resources to pool skilled workforces from. They can't get enough qualified people.

>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)

Where are those highly-qualified employees working at, that pays them more?

Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#64

Post by abakker »

jazzyk wrote: post #58
usmeteora wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, high skilled employers have lots of trouble finding high skilled workers, and one of the main economic incentives driving gender and ethnic equality in high tech work places is the disadvantage of not being able to have the maximum amount of resources to pool skilled workforces from. They can't get enough qualified people.

>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)

Also, remember that not all "high skill" jobs are coding/SW. We just aren't graduating enough skilled welders, CNC machinists, metrologists, mechanics. These jobs DO count as skilled, and are in short supply.

Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#65

Post by subterfudge4 »

jazzyk wrote: post #58
usmeteora wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, high skilled employers have lots of trouble finding high skilled workers, and one of the main economic incentives driving gender and ethnic equality in high tech work places is the disadvantage of not being able to have the maximum amount of resources to pool skilled workforces from. They can't get enough qualified people.

>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)

> ...for the price they are offering.

True. But then question is whether money saved by offering the lower pay is worth the additional productivity brought in by new employee or not. If it is not then it is fair to say there is a shortage of people in Tech industry.

Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#66

Post by usmeteora »

abakker wrote: post #64
jazzyk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)

Also, remember that not all "high skill" jobs are coding/SW. We just aren't graduating enough skilled welders, CNC machinists, metrologists, mechanics. These jobs DO count as skilled, and are in short supply.

Its true. I worked in the semiconductor industry where they retrain coal plant workers and up the pay to grab techs from navy subamarines to get them working in high tech manufsctoring plants.

They dish out money to relocate them, buy out their mortages to help relocate, send them to training/tech school, and the many techs who worked under me on my team made $170k + a year being one of maybe a handful of people in the world skilled at working on a specific machine in the fab.

They can't get enough guys (edit: or girls, girls were treated well where I worked and there were definitely women in the fab with wrenches working on tools, did not mean to discriminate but yeh women and men, whoever is willing to learn and do the work, they will hire) to work in these places so they are seeking out workers from retiring generation plants and military.

They all had it really good, actually enjoyed their jobs and got to learn high tech skills but not sit an an office all day and work on really high tech machines, got to work shift hours, night hours and get shift and night differentials and spend their weekends off traveling or doing whatever. They had a lot of fun and good guys to work with.

As for me I was their fresh out of college Shift Engineer/Manager who was salaried at 1/3rd the pay with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and being salaried I worked 70+ hrs a week and was on call 24/7, but they got to turn their mind off at the end of the shift, and always ragged me about it, but in a fun loving way. It's actually really humbling to be managing people twice your age making three times as much as you. I learned so much about technology and in general life from these people who had tech jobs in odd places all over the world, and it's good to have a different perspective and get exposed to your industry from the ground up by people who genuinely work hard and know their stuff. I'm glad I got exposed to that industry/life/those people.

Theres definitely alot of room for working men with a factory/tech/military background to have jobs if they are willing to learn new skills.

And ultimately life is a constant set of new experiences so as long as you are willing to learn new skills you can/should in most cases be willing to find something, and right now industries are seeking out and paying people for these skills.

What I noticed among these men who worked here doing well making alot more than me and living a good life is while telling me awesome stories from their travels in the navy or what have you, they had had multiple careers before and never shied away from the opportunity to transfer their skills technical and mechanical and apply it to an ew industry.

Theres lots of guys out there with the same life experience, skill level who arent willing to adapt or learn new industries, and thats not the problem in my opinion of anyone else but that person who feels they dont need to learn new things because they worked in a factory once.

Definitely lots of need in areas more than software dev.

Right now for example, Samsung is hiring like crazy for these kind of tech workers in Austin TX, paying them shift and night shift differentials and starting salaries beginning in the 6 figures range. The more experienced ones get fought over to pick and choose and negociate salaries and paid even more to train new workers, live a really good life.

Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#67

Post by jandrewrogers »

What it costs a business to pay a wage and what an employee receives as a wage are not that tightly coupled. An important analysis is how these two numbers vary relative to each other. Business costs track economic productivity and employee output pretty closely in competitive markets. The wage is what is left over after all non-wage employment overhead costs have been accounted for.

If the business cost of employment is growing faster than wages, which I believe has been the case for some time (and anecdotally matches reality in my experience), then the culprit is a non-wage cost that is growing even faster than the business cost that will keep a company solvent. Employee wages are net of healthcare, new regulatory costs, etc. Healthcare cost growth rates the last several years are probably by themselves sufficient to explain depressed wage growth relative to business cost; the growth rate of overhead for wages has been high enough to eat up quite a bit of potential wage growth.

To make wages go up faster, you need to reduce the growth rate of employment overhead so that wages make up a larger percentage of the business cost of employment.

Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#68

Post by s_kilk »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #43
hyperpape wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a ruling class in the 90s as well, but wages increased. So the question is what is different about today?

The ruling class is much greedier than they were in the 90s.

They also have concrete proof (by way of the reaction to the 2008 crisis) that they have essentially unlimited license to be as greedy as they like, and the public will just take it.

Re: Unemployment in the U.S. Is Falling, So Why Isn’t Pay Rising?

#70

Post by ptr_void »

usmeteora wrote: post #61
jazzyk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)

hmm, Well, I was specifically referencing the top 5 biggest tech companies, and the pay may seem low to the people who have been working there fresh out of college but its still relatively high pay compared to most other industries with people of the same academic and skill level but in a different industry. They interview alot of people and the people don't turn down the jobs because the pay isn't enough, they don't…

I think jazzyk was hinting that - with enough pay, people will do what they can to make themselves qualified. There's also the option of choosing the best people they get and start training them internally to make them qualified.
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