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Say Hello to Full Employment

theatlantic.com

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Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#261

Post by mac01021 »

lainga wrote: post #28
wgerard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The openings seem to be largely in trades or nonskilled labor: > Competition for workers has gone crazy, Joe McConville, who co-owns a popular chain of made-from-scratch pizza restaurants, told me. “At almost every restaurant that I’ve worked at, you always had a stack of applications waiting,” he said. “You’d call somebody up and half the time they're still looking for an extra job. That’s not happening anymore.” >…

The last sentence is the big problem. I feel like a lot of industries didn't just make the best of the advantageous labour market in the last 10 years, they reshaped themselves to become dependent on it (i.e., on cheap and easily-replaced human capital). Now that labour's tight again, they're finding that they've worked themselves into a hole they can't get out of.

> they reshaped themselves to become dependent on it

What does such a restructuring look like, in concrete terms?

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#262

Post by CocaKoala »

otakucode wrote: post #241
CocaKoala wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the employees willing to be retrained? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-effect-coal-retrain...

The alternatives that coal miners have are garbage. They are being asked to leave union jobs with decent pay, decent benefits, protection from unfair treatment, and embrace radically lower pay, radically worse benefits, and active unfair treatment. You can't expect anyone to get excited by those prospects. If computers were outlawed tomorrow, would you sign up to stock shelves at Walmart with a smile on your face and…

> he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing.

That's the first sentence of the article. You're telling me that in a list of over one hundred course, covering everything from computer programming to nursing, there's nothing with pay and benefits comparable to coal mining?

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#263

Post by ChrisLomont »

polotics wrote: post #62
ChrisLomont wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which I or my children will have to pay back at some point Which is not as relevant as you think, since if your kids have to pay it in 50 years, deflation will have made it effective 1/4 as much or so. And if the current spending results in more total wealth at that point than if the spending was not done, then everyone is better off. Not all deficit spending is bad economics, in the same way buying a house or payin…

You wrote deflation, but I think you meant inflation: with deflation the purchasing power of the $5000 borrowed would go up, not down.

Correct - my mistake. The point is the same however - sovereign debt does not work like household debt, especially when the debt is denominated in a currency the sovereign controls, as is the case in the US.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#264

Post by lainga »

mac01021 wrote: post #261
lainga wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last sentence is the big problem. I feel like a lot of industries didn't just make the best of the advantageous labour market in the last 10 years, they reshaped themselves to become dependent on it (i.e., on cheap and easily-replaced human capital). Now that labour's tight again, they're finding that they've worked themselves into a hole they can't get out of.

> they reshaped themselves to become dependent on it What does such a restructuring look like, in concrete terms?

Slashing benefits and wages. Making long hours and unpaid overtime the industry norm. Getting rid of whole departments and replacing them with third-party contractors. These all seem uncompetitive for businesses, but it must seem easy to do when your entire industry sector is doing it: truckers can't leave you if every other company is just as bad.

The dependent part is where these slashes and cuts are accompanied by lowering prices in a race to the bottom within the industry, to the point where every business in the sector is operating on near-zero margins. Then, when wages overall start to go back up, the first business in the industry to flinch has to raise prices immediately as well, and ends up getting out-competed into oblivion. But if nobody flinches, the entire industry's labour pool dries up, harming everyone.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#265

Post by lovich »

shados wrote: post #245
scarface74 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t do job boards either - I always go through recruiters. But if you are a “senior Dev” that knows Java and they are looking for a Node Developer, you aren’t going to be anywhere on thier list to hire.

to me, recruiters === job boards. The interesting openings are through direct connections and referrals.

It's always going to be better for you if you get direct connections and referrals, but that is not happening at a fast enough rate to satsify employer demand for vetted employees. Additionally it's putting the onus on the employees entirely for making sure they are a good fit for the companies.

If they truly have a shortage of workers they are going to either reduce the stringency of their requirements, raise wages to entice workers to come to them instead of competitior's, or train employees. The SF area does some of the wage raising, when they aren't colluding with each other to keep wages down, but the rest of the country seems content to just complain about a lack of qualified people without doing anything to change their situation

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#266

Post by lovich »

hnlurker wrote: post #108
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saving that $300 a year at a highly unlikely 10% interest ends up being $36k after 25 years. It's not solving any problems. To even save up that $500 minimum would take 2 years. We can't just blame it on a single straw-man.

I was just responding to the often cited claim that average Americans would be devastated by an unexpected $500 expense. They're spending $300+ on lottery tickets, and yet can't cover a $500 expense. It seems a rather simple solution to me.. don't throw away your money on lottery tickets.

500>300 so it's not really gonna help without a multi year plan. That would be an ideal move if humans were emotionless automatons but that point people need some amount of entertainment or hope to keep on going day after day. If you took away everyone's vices _and_ subjected them to the reality of life as an average American you'd have riots on your hands

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#267

Post by oculusthrift »

bjourne wrote: post #235
azernik wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The selection of this metric is not some recent political decision - the headline number has been U3 for a loooong time, and its definition was decided by the UN-affiliated International Labor Organization. It's not a good measure, but it's not a case of politicians picking a convenient metric, it's just a case of a bad metric being optimized for.

It is essentially the only metric available that is readily comparable between countries. Also, whatever definition you use for "real unemployment rate" that rate will be linearly dependent on the U-3 metric. If the U-3 number goes up, then "real unemployment" goes up and likewise if it goes down. Those who are interested can read the report to the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (yes, there are…

So if i’m despondent and give up searching for a job then doesn’t U-3 unemployment go down and therefore wouldn’t using a definition that included the despondent not be linearly dependent?

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#268

Post by vivekd »

bjourne wrote: post #235
azernik wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The selection of this metric is not some recent political decision - the headline number has been U3 for a loooong time, and its definition was decided by the UN-affiliated International Labor Organization. It's not a good measure, but it's not a case of politicians picking a convenient metric, it's just a case of a bad metric being optimized for.

It is essentially the only metric available that is readily comparable between countries. Also, whatever definition you use for "real unemployment rate" that rate will be linearly dependent on the U-3 metric. If the U-3 number goes up, then "real unemployment" goes up and likewise if it goes down. Those who are interested can read the report to the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (yes, there are…

I want to add that "actual employment rate" or labor market participation rate is also a grossly misleading figure. For example America had it's highest labor market participation rate in 2000 - during the great recession. Also, Indonesia has a much higher participation rate than America and most Western countries, even though the job market there is likely not as good as Europe or America. Russia is above Germany despite the fact that any reasonable person would choose to job hunt in Germany over Russia. Unemployment does actually seem to be the better metric

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#269

Post by scarface74 »

lovich wrote: post #265
shados wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to me, recruiters === job boards. The interesting openings are through direct connections and referrals.

It's always going to be better for you if you get direct connections and referrals, but that is not happening at a fast enough rate to satsify employer demand for vetted employees. Additionally it's putting the onus on the employees entirely for making sure they are a good fit for the companies. If they truly have a shortage of workers they are going to either reduce the stringency of their requirements, raise wages…

I kept a spreadsheet of when I was looking for a job in 2015 using recruiters. This was after filtering for location and salary. This was all within a two week period.

I network like crazy - with people who know where the jobs are.

Leads: 16

Position filled: 4

Phone Screens: 9

I didn’t like tech stack: 2

Didn’t have qualifications and didn’t apply: 1

In person interviews: 4

Offers: 4

Rejections: 0 - I took myself out of the running after accepting an offer.

I actually had 6 phone screens in one day from different companies.

Notice that out of the 16 “leads” none of my resumes disappeared down a black hole. I always knew where I was in the process and I knew that someone in the position to hire me was considering my resume.

Also, I don’t contribute my 100% non failure rate to being a special snowflake. I was able to discuss each lead with a recruiter and had inside knowledge of what the hiring manager was looking for.

I’ve worked with recruiters to hire people. The good ones form a professional relationship with the hiring company.

Back in 2012, I left a job with nothing in the pipeline for a new job. I called one of the recruiters I had been working with and within 4 days I had an offer making $10K more with what was then a Fortune 10 company.

My last job search last year took 7 days from the time I started looking to getting an offer with the salary, (slightly higher), the technology stack, the location, and the company size I wanted. The pickings do of course get a lot slimmer though the higher your salary requirements.

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