41–50 of 521 posts
It’s not for everyone of course.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, about 1,245,000 of them died [1], and I'm sure there were a substantial number of older working-age people who went for early retirement to reduce the chances of dying from public contact. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
1.2 million people in the workforce died? 70% of covid deaths were over the age of 70 years. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2006392117
https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-data-shows-long-covid...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The structural issue is that Covid allowed for the activation energy for people to find better jobs. And possibly cut down on supply of people willing to work hotel cleaning jobs for low pay. It is probably among the least desirable work. Volatile hours, busiest times are weekends and holidays, literally cleaning up anything from bodily fluids to garbage and dealing with smells. No one outside of large unionized hote…
Why has the workforce participation rate cratered? If people simply changed to a better job, that figure would hold steady. Instead it shows us that millions of Americans decided to stop looking for work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People had ~3 years to find new jobs outside of hospitality after the industry basically shut down. No one is sitting at home, they found new jobs. There's also the toll COVID took on the workforce, and COVID-related disabilities.
This can't be the explanation. If it were true, the workforce participation rate would be steady. Changing jobs doesn't raise or lower that figure. A person is employed whether they scrub toilets or do brain surgery. But it's not steady. Literally millions of people have stopped working and looking for work since 2020.
And, unsurprisingly, they wanted more money to return. Restaurants, hotels, and the like, tend to be extra stress for no more pay.
In some Las Vegas hotels I no longer need to stop at a counter or stand in a line and it’s 1000x better experience. I can walk directly to my room and scan my phone. I can scan my phone for parking. I can grab extra keys at a kiosk, if I need them. I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. I also select the option not to have my room cleaned each day. I’ll ask someone in the hall for towels if I stay long e…
Quoted post unavailable.
Its not a shortage of workers, it's a shortage of underpayable workers.
Note that this isn't the first time in history this has happened.
I wonder where everyone has gone. The lazy answer is that companies aren't paying enough. But how is it better to sit at home making $0 than working and having an income? How do they afford rent or electricity or pay for car insurance? The workforce participation rate is still well below pre-pandemic levels. Millions of people just up and left the workforce. It's not as if they are looking for work at the right wage,…
Gig work would be a more flexible alternative for a secondary wage earner. - delivery (Amazon/Instacart/Doordash) - rideshare (Uber/Lyft) - homestay (Airbnb/Vrbo) cleaning
> It's not for lack of trying. Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020, and employers are offering greater flexibility in scheduling. Still, workers are nowhere to be seen. 25% of minimum wage isn't much.
There are other limits they are pushing against. I haven't used a hotel for a while now because it just costs more than I can afford. They can put their wages up higher but if it starts cutting in to their sales it's an issue.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/inflation-hasnt-been-bad-f...
https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-...
etc
The Fed is hard-selling a lie that inflation is due to supposedly skyrocketing labor costs and low unemployment. It's not. It's the ultra-wealthy jacking prices, squeezing the shit out of their workforces, converting everyone they can to "gig" or "contract" workers, and cheapening their services and products like they're trying to get blood out of a stone. The pandemic caused a stunning jump in concentration of wealth.
That's why we have historic numbers of open job positions. The jobs are there, but people don't want them because a)the pay and benefits have been squeezed down to the barest minimums b)the conditions suck c)employers are exceedingly demanding in terms of qualifications.
A perfect example would be the status quo in IT and development. Everyone and their mother and cousin wants to hire a Senior DevOps engineer with three pages worth of skills and two decades of engineering or development skills. Forget "ground floor" opportunities, companies aren't even interested in offering 2nd or 3rd floor opportunities, like bringing in traditional IT infrastructure folks and training them in the transition to cloud-based stuff and devops methodologies.
Go pop open Indeed and surf a bunch of low-level support positions and look at the CVS-receipt-length list of required skills/technologies and the huge list of responsibilities for a position that probably pays $40k in a lower income rural area to $60k if you're lucky in one of the higher COL metropolitan markets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over a million people died of covid. Many more have become permanently disabled. Many of them were retired seniors but among the people who were not, they were disproportionately service workers who couldn’t wfh.
The average age of a covid death in the US was 80 years old.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/too-young-die-ag...
You will note that for the US, approximately 25% of the excess deaths in 2021 were from people 64 and younger.
That is still a large number.
Also note:
> And among high income countries, one notable outlier is the United States, which has a much younger profile of deaths than its income-level would suggest.
That hit minorities, lower income, and "essential workers" harder than other areas. These are the people who are cleaning rooms and working hospitality and service sectors.
Its not a shortage of workers, it's a shortage of underpayable workers.
> Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020, and employers are offering greater flexibility in scheduling. Still, workers are nowhere to be seen. I dunno, my pay sure hasn't gone up by 25% in the past 2 years.