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Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

economist.com

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Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#201

Post by Clubber »

throwawayjava wrote: post #37
danielvf wrote: post #9

I worked with small / medium manufacturers in the prosperous part of the Southeast. Hiring is brutal currently. Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of sho…

> Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. I bet you'd get approx. 0 noshows if you bumped salary. > Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. So don't give drug tests? > Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of showing up on time (or at a…

>I bet you'd get approx. 0 noshows if you bumped salary.

That's both the easiest solution and the one last chosen. Complaining about how shitty the workforce is usually comes first. :)

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#202

Post by giobox »

southphillyman wrote: post #189
ransom1538 wrote: post #108

>> "Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of showing up on time (or at all)" Don't kid yourself. Those new hires are at other jobs making more money. I am booked for a roofer in feb 2018 (fingers crossed - friend of a friend). Blue skills are in extremely high demand. And those guys are working extremely hard making really high incomes (400k+). These guys are highly paid and are not…

Where can one go to learn these "blue collar" skills? As a recent home owner I'm learning first hand how valuable these skills are by way of my wallet. Seems like most people I meet who do these kinds of jobs were "born into it", and learned by helping a family member who was already in the industry. Are there IIT type schools which teach these kinds of things on a part time basis?

For a great many, youtube is surprisingly awesome. My normal approach to home DIY now is to watch as many youtube videos of the process I want to try as possible, then make a determination if it is something I still want professional help with or can try to do myself.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#203

Post by Clubber »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #142
watwut wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug test measure whether you smoked weed anytime last weeks, up to three months if I recall right. It has little to do with whether you are high first day on the job. It has more to do with drug war then with incidents.

If you can't pass a drug test it's a sign you can't get your shit together, abstain from weed, and pass a drug test.

No it isn't. You've probably been seen and healed by a great doctor that smokes or has smoked weed recently. There is a good chance your financial advisor, lawyer and/or boss smokes or has smoked weed recently. Most professionals who do certainly don't boast about it with the witch hunting Puritan culture in the US, but there are a lot of them out there, and you've probably never noticed because it's not noticeable.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#204

Post by erikpukinskis »

lurker456 wrote: post #114
danielvf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably none [edit: in manufacturing]. Most illegal immigrants don’t work manufacturing. The three most common jobs for illegals around here are construction, yardcare, and building cleaning via nested subcontractors. Manufactures have hard assets they could loose. Sketchy subcontractors can just disappear and rename. The growth is from the demand side - people are buying more right now.

Isn't lower class work interchangeable to some extent ? Less illegals to do construction means a larger portion of construction it will be done by legal employees, which reduces the available pool for manufacturing.

Construction is not particularly more interchangeable than programming. Inexperienced workers can do some tasks, which have been prepped by more experienced workers. A worker operating out of their depth will cause problems that cost 10x to fix.

In other words: you can fill part of your staff with interchangeable workers, but not all of it.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#205

Post by throwawayjava »

runeks wrote: post #172
thanatropism wrote: post #29

This comment (not by me; the poster name isn't even visible anymore): > Illegal border crossings on the southern border are down 78% and blue collar wages are rising. Of course correlation does not equal causation, but when there are fewer available workers to hire/train and demand remains constant, wages tend to rise. was marked dead. Why? Is the illegal crossing number wrong/fake news?

> Is the illegal crossing number wrong/fake news? Given that they’re illegal, how could we ever know if the number is down or if they just found some other way to cross the border? Also, it would be quite foolish to think there is only a single factor affecting wages. There are a multitude of factors, and a reduction in the number of illegal immigrants might be one of them, although it’s hard to be sure.

The explanation also doesn't fit the data. Wages have been surging the past few years, not just this year.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#206

Post by 52-6F-62 »

humanrebar wrote: post #167
52-6F-62 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be pretty funny, but plumbing can be pretty damned complex work. I could see some potential in apprenticeships taking place remotely, though. At least in the latter years of one. And maybe compliance tests, journeyman tests, etc — depending on the nature of the work. And in that case, less Skype, and more AR.

The risk is pretty high, too. Instead of a $300 p-trap replacement, you can do it yourself, but if you do it wrong, you can have 4-5 figures of accidental water damage to the house.

Absolutely! And that's just in your bathroom wear-and-tear maintenance.

Never mind commercial plumbing! Small business owners trying to sort out a commercial block backup caused by a grease-trap failure could start to turn out a few issues...

Plumbers deserve higher regard than they're given (all great plumber jokes aside).

That said if the tech could be used to improve the training of specialists in remote areas/ areas that might be short a few journeymen or master tradespersons, or aid in especially complex problems, it could be a huge boon and reduction in cost (eg - travel costs).

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#207

Post by logfromblammo »

skellera wrote: post #139
logfromblammo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just give an automated field-sobriety test for alertness, judgment, and reflexes at the start of each shift? Pass the test, and you can clock in and get to work. Fail the test, hit the nap room (unpaid) for a while, and try again when you wake up. It would catch people who are drunk, high, having a stroke, or just sleepy, rather than just the guy who used cannabis two weekends ago and is perfectly capable of…

No one is required to give you a job. The increased cost to do that everyday is not worth it to the company if they can weed out possible irresponsible workers from a drug test. It’s work, not a babysitter. All everyone is talking about is weed which I’m sure most of us agree shouldn’t be tested for but we don’t even know what the failed tests failed for.

I think you underestimate the cost differential between contracting with a lab to drug-test your employees on an ongoing basis, and with hiring a software developer once to make a rudimentary video game that positively correlates a passing score with operating heavy industrial equipment safely for the next 8 hours.

Hell, you could set up an old Atari with Frogger in it, and require employees to score X points before clocking in. It might not have a very strong correlation, but it sure would be cheaper and more goal-specific than drug testing.

It would more likely take the form of "watch this simulated surveillance video of the work floor, and press the space bar to stop the machinery on the entire production line". When someone steps over the warning tape on the floor around the person-shredder, you press the button. If someone gets their sleeve stuck in the dude-grinder, you press the button. If the part-spewer starts stamping out misaligned doohickeys, you press the button. If your response time is too slow, you aren't fit to clock in for today's shift. Or it could be a simulation of operating the actual machine that employee uses, attempting to predict their productivity for the day.

It has the added benefit of sneaking safety training videos into the daily workflow.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#208

Post by SamReidHughes »

Clubber wrote: post #203
SamReidHughes wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't pass a drug test it's a sign you can't get your shit together, abstain from weed, and pass a drug test.

No it isn't. You've probably been seen and healed by a great doctor that smokes or has smoked weed recently. There is a good chance your financial advisor, lawyer and/or boss smokes or has smoked weed recently. Most professionals who do certainly don't boast about it with the witch hunting Puritan culture in the US, but there are a lot of them out there, and you've probably never noticed because it's not noticeable.

Yes it is. If your great doctor had to pass a drug test, he would be perfectly capable of abstaining long enough to pass it.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#209

Post by Clubber »

maccard wrote: post #106
throwawayjava wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. I bet you'd get approx. 0 noshows if you bumped salary. > Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. So don't give drug tests? > Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of showing up on time (or at a…

> I bet you'd get approx. 0 noshows if you bumped salary. I'm not sure exactly what industry the original poster was referring to, but broadly my experience has been that there are many people who are just unreliable. I worked in retail a few years ago, and it was incredible. People just don't show up, or show up so intoxicated from the night before that they're not actually capable of doing their job. Now, as a deve…

>Again, people are flaky. Suddenly paying someone more isn't going to make them start showing up on time.

That's not the objective. Offering more money for the position buys you a better chance of finding someone reliable.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#210

Post by erikpukinskis »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #67
Xylakant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes little sense. Illegal immigrants usually occupy the least qualified and least-paid jobs. Few persons that are qualified to apply for a manufacturing would rather apply for a job that an illegal immigrant could get.

Do the illegal immigrants take those jobs because they pay so little, or do those jobs pay so little because there has always been a steady supply of illegal immigrants desperate to fill them at below-market prices? If your business model relies on wages being suppressed by those illegal workers, then maybe your business deserves to go bankrupt when the supply dries up and Americans start demanding $15/hour.

First off, these businesses typically don’t “rely on” those wages, the owner is just taking a $20k bonus because they can and they like money.

Undocumented workers take the jobs because there is no financial incentive for an owner to risk breaking the law unless they are getting cash back. The worker is basically paying their employer to break the law.

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