Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last? • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by vadimberman » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 5:35 AM UTC

Strom wrote: post #510

vadimberman wrote: post #506

But, but, but... automation! Singularity! Boston Dynamics robot backflips!

If backflipping robots do the easier work, then what is left for humans is the more complex well paying work. When you remove the lower paying jobs from the average calculation, the average will rise. Indeed the article even states that at 89%, male prime-age [labour market] participation remains close to a record low . The article also has an opinion quote stating that some of the recent wage gains are misleading, b…

That's the point, it will take A LOT longer for the robots to replace these menial jobs. (And they are not all as low-paying.)

I remember articles from one or two decades ago about the attempts to automate a very dangerous and not even low-paying job of window washing in the high rise buildings. It is a real problem, it does not require HAL-9000 grade AI that can analyse Shakespeare, it is economically viable, and neither then nor now it is completely automated. I see that in Australia, window washing jobs are paid as high as low to midrange software development.

I am not even going to mention more complex tasks like a work of a plumber, a gardener, a janitor. Is the work of a janitor the more lucrative occupation?

It takes very long to get from the first demos to a prototype working most of the time, and even longer from the prototype to a system that can be relied upon in a mission critical environment (a category that most applications of robotics fall into). The Silicon Valley prophets got it all backwards.

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

#532

Post by bluthru » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 5:42 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #489

bluthru wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Of course it's right to hate people who have no respect for your country's laws and have a meaningful negative impact on your quality of life. You're trying to make it into a racial issue to excuse people who make life worse for…

> Of course it's right to hate people who have no respect for your This crosses into political ranting which is definitely not what we want here. Thoughtful discussion, please, or nothing. We've had to warn you about this before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The best word would be "understandable" instead of "right" because the intent was to explain their political perspective, but I was quoting the parent's matter-of-fact use of "right".

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

#533

Post by golergka » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 6:30 AM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #463

golergka wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know I understood the blue collar hatred of illegals. ... Not that its right, mind you Honest question: why not? I have a lot of members of extended family who have gone through a LOT of pain to become legal immigrants in the US, and they hate the illegals exactly because illegals have broken the rules that they have payed so hard to follow. If an agent A sacrifices it's profits to follow the rules and agent B ju…

Because they're people too, and trying to survive in this perverse game of "Capitalism". I value human rights more than I value state or federal "rights". And in this case, there's more than enough resources to go around. And a second derivative answer - not everyone who came here had a choice.

Calling a game "perverse" is a classic tactic too use when you're losing and can't own up to it. There may be "enough" resources – but they aren't yours to go anywhere. And freedom to do whatever you please with the things you own is the most fundamental human right of all.

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

#534

Post by ianai » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 6:42 AM UTC

myegorov wrote: post #516

tjpaudio wrote: post #374

Data Scientist at major company here that was pounding nails in construction circa 2005. This to me is no surprise. At the time I was early 20s and needed that job that would be sort of an apprenticeship. The problem was, these jobs just didn't exist. The young guys (me) got laid of every winter to keep on as many senior crew members as possible and every spring the jobs were less skilled and more labor (think demoli…

Your career path (and its determinants) mirror mine to an uncanny degree. Nonetheless, I disagree that there's a long-term shortage of skilled labor in the US in general, or that any short-term shortage has its root cause in underdeveloped supply channels. I saw first hand how easy it was to procure non-union labor, even at the height of construction boom circa 2004 (when I left construction trades) or 2015 (when I l…

I agree. The ability to employ people from just about anywhere makes demand very sensitive to any wage increases.

Further, the economy doing well when people see wage increases reinforces that marginal increases in income for the 99% highly benefit the national output.

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

#535

Post by scoggs » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 6:50 AM UTC

myegorov wrote: post #516

tjpaudio wrote: post #374

Data Scientist at major company here that was pounding nails in construction circa 2005. This to me is no surprise. At the time I was early 20s and needed that job that would be sort of an apprenticeship. The problem was, these jobs just didn't exist. The young guys (me) got laid of every winter to keep on as many senior crew members as possible and every spring the jobs were less skilled and more labor (think demoli…

Your career path (and its determinants) mirror mine to an uncanny degree. Nonetheless, I disagree that there's a long-term shortage of skilled labor in the US in general, or that any short-term shortage has its root cause in underdeveloped supply channels. I saw first hand how easy it was to procure non-union labor, even at the height of construction boom circa 2004 (when I left construction trades) or 2015 (when I l…

> While it does take about as long to become a skilled carpenter as it takes to become a software developer (and a strikingly similar mindset too).

Sorry for the non-contributing anecdote but I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Once you start to understand things more clearly as a system and how to work on that system you come to realize it's a lot of tacking things together any way possible.

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

#536

Post by traek » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 6:50 AM UTC

improv32 wrote: post #299

runeks wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. No person owns an infinite number of dollars. But I will happily bake you a loaf of bread for $10,000 each. In fact, I’d quit my day job to do that. That shortage wouldn’t last long.

Which gets right to the point. Bread supply is elastic,you could quickly set up shop and produce more bread to satisfy demand whereas skilled labor is highly inelastic. Training, gathering hands-on experience, it's all a time-consuming process so there's a long time delay between when demand rises and when supply can rise to meet it

> there's a long time delay between when demand rises and when supply can rise to meet it

Yes, exactly. The demand curve shifts right and the markets find a new equilibrium (most likely at a higher wage than the old equilibrium), but there’s no “shortage”. It’s just markets clearing at a different price level than what people are used to.

Calling it a “shortage” is like saying every time Starbucks raises their prices there is a shortage of coffee — at the old price, sure, but not in absolute terms. That’s not how equilibriums work.

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

#537

Post by wyclif » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 6:55 AM UTC

myegorov wrote: post #516

tjpaudio wrote: post #374

Data Scientist at major company here that was pounding nails in construction circa 2005. This to me is no surprise. At the time I was early 20s and needed that job that would be sort of an apprenticeship. The problem was, these jobs just didn't exist. The young guys (me) got laid of every winter to keep on as many senior crew members as possible and every spring the jobs were less skilled and more labor (think demoli…

Your career path (and its determinants) mirror mine to an uncanny degree. Nonetheless, I disagree that there's a long-term shortage of skilled labor in the US in general, or that any short-term shortage has its root cause in underdeveloped supply channels. I saw first hand how easy it was to procure non-union labor, even at the height of construction boom circa 2004 (when I left construction trades) or 2015 (when I l…

I was a land surveyor from 2000-2008, it's a subset of civil engineering. But unlike CE, there's a lot of field work and a small amount of office work. In my case I'd say it was anywhere from 80-90% field and 10-20% office. But even though surveying is hardly unskilled labour and usually requires a degree, it was still subject to the same effects the grandparent comment mentions: constant layoffs in winter, culminating in 2008 and the subprime mortgage crash (which, surprisingly to some, affected commercial property) when all 12 staff surveyors at the office where I worked were laid off on the same day for good, with no expectation of being called back ever again.

It will be no surprise to anyone reading this that land surveying is dead now, especially two/three-man team land surveying. Nobody was trained during those "gap" periods, and meanwhile the older generation of baby-boom surveyors (of which there were many) retired. Furthermore, LiDAR, scanning, survey-grade GPS, and robotic total stations meant that some engineering firms cut corners and took a chance by sending CEs out into the field solo to do the field work. That dynamic ensures no training of new surveyors in the field is possible.

EDIT: I'm a developer now.

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

#538

Post by friendzis » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 7:23 AM UTC

hyperion2010 wrote: post #107

I had a long talk with a guy getting his general contractor's license yesterday. He told me that down in San Diego they are continually short on construction workers, so much that one of his friends said that there is 10 years worth of construction that needs to be done and no one to do it. Wages at ~$45/hr, and probably rising, some projects paying perdiems for commutes from Orange County. Strange.

Apart from "packing donuts" type jobs, most jobs require some degree of knowledge and skill. Some jobs have higher knowledge half-life than others. While IT has notoriously short knowledge half-lifes, construction has rather long half lifes.

Suppose that we train x+y construction workers a year, x work in the industry until retirement, y - retrain to different profession. This means that there are y*years dormant specialists that can be brought back to industry.

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

#539

Post by raarts » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 7:32 AM UTC

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #442

Thlom wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No wonder you spend enormous amounts of money on health care in the states. In Norway most doctors makes just above $100,000. I guess this is more or less comparable to the rest of Europe.

Doctor pay has almost nothing to do with the absurd medical costs. With 1.1m doctors in the US, and median pay at 180k, that's $200B. US healthcare spending is 3.2 trillion. Beyond that, I think they deserve that much when factoring in the cost of education, liability of the job, and decrease in years of employment. Here's some math: - median age of retirement: 63. - median UPS salary over lifetime: $70k. - UPS drive…

> isn't worth the extra 600k

Do you really think you should pay twice as much in the US compared to other countries with equal quality?

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

#540

Post by lostlogin » Wed, Nov 22, 2017, 7:41 AM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #296

lostlogin wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the drug testing bs. How is that relevant? If the worker is present, is sober, and not hungover what business is it of the employers what the employee does on their own time? The drugs that are readily detectable are mostly the ones that don’t matter too, while the ones that are more concerning (to me anyway) are either not tested for or are not detectable fairly fast. And alcohol is ok to abuse. Why? It would…

> I hate the drug testing bs. How is that relevant? If the worker is present, is sober Have you ever seen a lathe accident, for example? You can't spot test for being high on marijuana or pills like you can for drunkenness, so you rely on the urine test to keep everyone on the floor safe from being crushed in a press by a stoned co-worker (or themselves.)

I’ve seen a fair few industrial accidents including amputations and deaths. I don’t think that the injuries we have each seen are very relevant. The things that are detected and punished are not necessarily the things that cause harm. Smoking pot a week ago isn’t actually a problem. Being tired from watching Netflix all night is far worse, as are a few other things, including drugs which aren’t readily detected. The imperfect system currently used causes one hell of a lot of harm. There needs to be something, but the current system isn’t right.