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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?

#211

Post by watwut »

Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #65
dionidium wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside my particular company, your response is just more evidence of the culture change I'm talking about. Not every job is going to engage you or enable you to make the kind of difference you want to make in the world. The notion that this is a valid excuse for telling your boss, "hey, pops, I'm not feeling engaged this morning, gonna be in later" is a new one . Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe not. But it's…

I think there is some truth to what we're both saying. At my particular company, the koolaid has always been about how innovate and exciting the work is. But you get in and spend a lot of your time fixing bugs and working on old, monolithic codebases. People want to make a difference, employers sell the vision, and then there's this mis-match and you have the disengaged worker. I think the problem is the reality that…

The thing is, skilled smart people who don't mind spend their time fixing bugs and working on old codebase exist. Especially if the company allows them to have work life balance so that they can have hobbies or spend time with families and what not.

The problem is that a programmer described above would not be hired by your company and simultaneously wont recognize your company as a good place for him from job posting. Even admitting that you dont mind fixing bugs is other peoples code might make you sound as lesser programmer in current culture.

Otherwise said, there is mismatch between what companies need and what they reward.

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

#212

Post by expertentipp »

jetrink wrote: post #135
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…

This reminds me of the observation[1] that most applicants for programming positions can't implement FizzBuzz. This has led some to conclude that the majority of programmers would be stumped by the task, but it is more likely that such programmers are overrepresented in the applicant pool. 1. http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest

So we have filtered 0.5% "elite" passing FizzBuzz, what shall we do now? Those need CV crafted in LaTeX, maintain public repositories, have fluency in latest frameworks and APIs, demand moderate salary... wait... nobody's left. SHORTAGE! Teach EVERYONE programming!

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

#213

Post by kevstev »

CJefferson wrote: post #97
dionidium wrote: post #17

I work at a medium-sized software company. We've had similar problems with younger employees. Guys literally posting in company-wide Slack channels that they're "feeling a little sleepy this morning, gonna be in later." Can you even imagine somebody saying that to their boss in some black-and-white movie from the 1940s? "Hey, how about instead of coming in later you hit the bricks and never come back?" The culture ha…

I'm happy to be at work at 9am on the dot, if my boss is happy for me to leave at 5pm on the dot, and not read any email or slack until 9am next morning. In my experience it is basically impossible in modern tech jobs to do that.

Seriously. Some companies want it both ways- constant access via email/slack/on call rotations, but a strict clock-out time of 5pm? "You aren't a team player."

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

#214

Post by briffle »

throwawayjava wrote: post #54
bkohlmann wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about manufacturing jobs is that they often involve operating heavy machinery. Drug use and intoxication drastically increases the chance of death or dismemberment - for the inebriated, or often, others around them. As a pilot, I seriously don’t care if you show up to work high or not - unless you’re doing maintenance on the jet I’m supposed to fly.

Fail drug test != show up to work high.

My grandpa took a part time job after retiring after 30 years at chevron/ortho. Failed his drug test. Turns out, they lost the sample, and in the testing companies mind, he couldn't be proven to pass, so he failed.

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

#215

Post by bluGill »

alextheparrot wrote: post #52
bdamm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now grab a 3ft section of copper tubing, cut it to length with your pipe cutter, bend it with your copper bending tool, and flare it with your flare clamp... what, you don't have any of those? Wellll.."

Great! There’s an opportunity for same day rental delivery here too

The return delivery costs are as much as the cost of the tools themselves.

I always tell people wanting to do a job themselves that the first time your costs are the same as hiring a pro, but the second time you own the tools and it is just time.

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

#216

Post by crankylinuxuser »

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?

Well I have something to share precisely about that.

Was in 2001 prior to 9/11 in south Indiana. I applied to a factory. And another one. And another one. Nothing. No bites. I then found work at a gas station Subway across the first factory. Our primary business were the factories.

9/11 happened. Within days, the factories shut down. We at subway were like "WTF happened?" Cause we were staffed like normal for rush.

Then we talked to one of the workers who stayed - there was a huge implicit threat that INS was going to make nationwide sweeps deporting all illegals. So, they left ahead of time. And "gee golly" the factories were now hiring and one said they had better wages.

Again, its correlation kind of.. Well not really. Supply and demand is a pretty hard rule. And when you have undocumented, working for less than minimum wage, and foregoing regulations on employees, is anyone surprised?

I know I understood the blue collar hatred of illegals. I've been on the receiving end of that. Not that its right, mind you- but understanding others viewpoints is the start of fixing them.

(Fixed spacing, from making comment on phone.)

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

#217

Post by runeks »

pure_ambition wrote: post #41

No it won't last, because as soon as the wages start coming up then the fed will say "inflation is heating up" and raise interest rates, causing businesses to spend more on debt service and less on employees.

I agree that it won’t last, but I think exactly the opposite will happen: with wages going up, people will spend more money, which will increase the profits of businesses, who will use the profits to hire more people to keep up with the increased demand.

Retail shelf space is capital. If consumers empty shelves twice as fast, the return on shelf space-capital will double (assuming the markup doesn’t change). It’s not the Fed raising rates, it’s the market over-bidding the Fed.

If the Fed were able to stop these movements, our economy wouldn’t be as bubbly as it is.

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

#218

Post by bluGill »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #71
onion2k wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine there's an opportunity for a startup that let's someone who wants to do a simple job themselves Facetime with a plumber to talk them through the work. No idea if there's any profit in it though.

DIY always breaks down when you need to purchase an expensive tool that you only use once.

Fortunately most of the tools you don't use once. The few you do tend to be the types of tools a pro would rent as well.

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

#219

Post by opportune »

moduspol wrote: post #199
opportune wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but personal responsibility is learned/cultural. It could take a while for people to break the cycle when they grew up seeing their parents make poor decisions, who also grew up seeing their own parents make poor decisions, etc. Not saying that all poverty is a result of poor decisions but that the two feed on each other

They do--but this (a difficulty in getting lower-paid workers to even show up) is a new phenomenon. We've always had lower-paid workers and poverty, but something else has changed. My concern is that the "something else" might be counter-effective but well-intentioned policies intended to help.

Personally I don't think we should be incentivizing people to show up to work under threat of homelessness/starvation like we did in the past, even if it may be more effective. If people want to live their lives in the "comfort" of SNAP and SSI, I'm personally ok with it. The market will adjust and maybe those blue collar jobs will begin paying even more (or people will adapt)

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

#220

Post by logfromblammo »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #155
vkou wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither are drug tests for determining whether or not someone is high when they show up to work.

I agree. However, I'd rather get pinged via a quantifiable metric like BAC than someone's opinion regarding my perceived impairment.

How exactly would an automated sobriety test make use of a qualitative metric?

Is a score on a video game quantifiable enough for you? There are so many "brain training" games that do nothing but score you on your observation, working memory, reflexes, etc. Back in college, everyone had to participate in the psych experiment test pool, where many of the experiments were coded in extremely rudimentary Visual Basic, to show video clips and record the time intervals between on-screen events and keypresses.

That's more objective than a human checking your eyeballs to see if there are too many involuntary movements, or making a subjective determination that there weren't enough social displays of submission to the tester. And it scales better to have X computers set up for employees to test and clock in at the same time than to have a supervisor processing the whole line one by one.

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