Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

annehelen.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 1001 posts

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#481

Post by humanrebar »

rednerrus wrote: post #172
throwaway1777 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it’s not really a good option. Maybe a high schooler should be focusing on school.

For a lot of kids, if they don't have a job in high school, they don't have any of the things they want. When I was 14 I had a job so I could buy the things my parents couldn't afford which was almost everything. I wanted new shoes and new clothes so everyone wouldn't know how broke we were. I wanted a car when I turned 16 and I knew the only way that was going to happen was if I worked for it. I didn't like not havi…

This. Anyone who says "teenagers shouldn't have jobs" comes from a place of privilege.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#482

Post by conanbatt »

pnutjam wrote: post #307
conanbatt wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a business closes, lots of people lose employment + business owners become more employment competition. Increasing unemployment wrecks wages. It is also not free to give unemployment benefits, it requires higher taxation which moves the sustainability bar higher and more businesses close, etc etc.

You know how people avoid being impacted by a business going bankrupt? They don't take jobs there. Jobs at more stable places are available and people will take them. The businesses need to fail or be sold.

There will always be businesses on the margin that barely survive, and you want as many of those as possible always to increase employment and wages, even if your world vision is only pro-worker.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#484

Post by sthnblllII »

macinjosh wrote: post #65

If this is happening it is truly a good thing. I have always felt that the best way to have improvements for entry-level labor is if they just refused to take the shitty jobs and the market turned on employers. What employers refer to as shortages aren't really that at all. The truth is that the labor market is just not in their favor as it typically is. I do not think it is ideal that the alternative option being ut…

If there are a dozen people in line to take the job who will have to return to a third world country if they dont get it, no amount of worker solidarity with other Americans will increase your wage because every single job will be filled by a foreign worker for whom minimum wage is still many times higher than what they get in their home country. There is no way around the immigration issue. Covid wont last forever.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#485

Post by count »

jschveibinz wrote: post #2

This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side of the problem. Fast food restaurants, or place like "Dale's" mentioned in the article, make very little profit. It is most likely below 10%. Here is an estimate: https://www.restaurant365.com/blog/what-is-the-average-profi... . A 10% profit is very modest. That's not the story of the "fat cats getting rich on the back of the workers" that the article is al…

10% profit is not necessarily very modest. 10% of $50M is a lot of money. 10% of $50K is not a lot of money. 10% only sounds 'modest' in relation to SaaS/software margins which are ridiculous. Walmart's gross margin is only ~28%. Many manufacturing companies compete across 3-5% margins. If the base number is big enough, that's a ton of money still!

%'s are a bad way to measure this, for that reason. Labor isn't even the majority of cost for restaurants (avg is apparently around 34% fully loaded [1]).

[1]https://totalfood.com/busting-restaurant-labor-cost-myth/

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#486

Post by heavyset_go »

rossdavidh wrote: post #43

Well, there's a straightforward (I don't say easy) way to fix this: you require a high enough minimum wage (and healthcare, and sick leave, and etc.). It's not like the restaurant owner has the option of just deciding to pay twice or three times the labor costs, and trust that their customers will be happy to cover the difference, if their competitors don't have to do the same. Because, those restaurant (and retail a…

> The end result of getting rid of "terrible" jobs, is that everything at the restaurant costs 2-3x as much, and so on at the many other businesses (agriculture?) which rely on cheap labor. Which means all those people in professional class jobs (e.g. programmers) will find that their salary doesn't go nearly as far as it used to.

Not 2-3x, more like 0.36% for every 10% increase[1]:

> Many business leaders fear that any increase in the minimum wage will be passed on to consumers through price increases thereby slowing spending and economic growth, but that may not be the case. New research shows that the pass-through effect on prices is fleeting and much smaller than previously thought.

> By looking at changes in restaurant food pricing during the period of 1978–2015, MacDonald and Nilsson find that prices rose by just 0.36 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, which is only about half the size reported in previous studies. They also observe that small minimum wage increases do not lead to higher prices and may actually reduce prices. Furthermore, it is also possible that small minimum wage increases could lead to increased employment in low-wage labor market.

[1] https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/does-increasing-m...

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#487

Post by secondstring »

RileyJames wrote: post #455
bradleyjg wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One concern is that this makes teenage employees relatively more attractive and so increases the adult unemployment rate above what it would be with a uniform minimum wage.

Really? The OP provided an example of country and a policy. You’ve stated an opinion, as a theory with zero evidence. Youth unemployment in Australia is ~double the unemployment rate. 11.8% vs 5.6% https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/youth-unemployment-ra... Employment is more complex than hourly wage.

Easy on that accusatory tone mate. They didn't claim that as their own opinion, but merely gave an alternative viewpoint: "One concern is that...".

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#488

Post by dragonwriter »

humanrebar wrote: post #481
rednerrus wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of kids, if they don't have a job in high school, they don't have any of the things they want. When I was 14 I had a job so I could buy the things my parents couldn't afford which was almost everything. I wanted new shoes and new clothes so everyone wouldn't know how broke we were. I wanted a car when I turned 16 and I knew the only way that was going to happen was if I worked for it. I didn't like not havi…

This. Anyone who says "teenagers shouldn't have jobs" comes from a place of privilege.

No, someone who says “teenagers don’t need jobs in the status quo” comes from a place of privilege.

Someone can recognize the status quo and yet believe that the needs it creates ought to be changed. There was a time younger children needed jobs to. The reason they did was largely because the fact that they could be employed drove down wages for adult workers. One who said children didn’t need jobs at that time would be wrong, probably from privilege – children in working class families needed jobs. But they also shouldn’t have had them, and them as a class not having them also eliminated the need.

With teenagers the situation may not be precisely the same, but the divergence between perceiving what is needed now and what should be is the same.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#489

Post by sbierwagen »

inetknght wrote: post #164
gruez wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.

> Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.* Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate. $58/day = $1740 for 30 days Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, chee…

The impoverished don't spend that much on car insurance. They do spend a surprising amount on cars, though: either many repairs, or buying replacement used cars when the last one gives out.

If they're really in a bad spot, they'll be buying these cars financed. You don't want to be in a position where you're paying off a car that long since was sold for scrap steel price at a junkyard.

Also a smartphone is a must: they often don't have a traditional computer at all! An internet-capable phone might be the only way they can access email, unless they're truly destitute and using libraries for internet access.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#490

Post by humanrebar »

TimPC wrote: post #260
csours wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With apologies to William Gibson "The post-scarcity future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed."

Average Income in the US is $68,703 which certainly doesn't pay a mortgage in most big cities. So I think post scarcity is a tad optimistic. If nothing else there is always going to be a shortage of non-apartment housing where people want to live.

68k would be a lot if rent was reasonable.
Post reply on HN