Another key factor is that a lot of baby boomers are reaching retirement age. With every kid being told college is the only path to become "successful," there's going to be a lack of talent in the trades at least in the near term that's going to continue driving wages higher.
Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
141–150 of 606 posts
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Past performance != future performance But it's the best signal we've got. Ignore it at your peril. Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/science/jared-diamonds-gui...
Drug test measure whether you smoked weed anytime last weeks, up to three months if I recall right. It has little to do with whether you are high first day on the job. It has more to do with drug war then with incidents.
If you can't pass a drug test it's a sign you can't get your shit together, abstain from weed, and pass a drug test.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. I bet you'd get approx. 0 noshows if you bumped salary. > Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. So don't give drug tests? > Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of showing up on time (or at a…
> I bet you'd get approx. 0 noshows if you bumped salary. I'm not sure exactly what industry the original poster was referring to, but broadly my experience has been that there are many people who are just unreliable. I worked in retail a few years ago, and it was incredible. People just don't show up, or show up so intoxicated from the night before that they're not actually capable of doing their job. Now, as a deve…
> Again, people are flaky. Suddenly paying someone more isn't going to make them start showing up on time.
It seems to work for the highly paid developers who have had zero no-shows on your watch.
Otherwise, it appears that you're implying that developers are less flaky than other people.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone who smoked a joint a couple days ago can absolutely work with concrete cutters or 1k volt lines.
It's not about whether they can or can't. It's about the massive liability for the company if they fuck up on the job and cause property damage or bodily injury.
Yeah, but a non-pot smoking worker (vs the pot smoker), both sober while on the job, are equally as likely to make a mistake.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's almost as if extended poverty has ruined people's ability to function in a job market that wasn't there for them sooner. Poverty is called a trap for a reason. It's a self-reinforcing cycle as much as it's an income bracket.
Is there a case at all to be made for personal responsibility when such a large percentage don't even bother to show up? How can one possibly ever get out of poverty if s/he can't even make it to an interview?
This is what's known as a collective action problem. I don't have the answers, and the few people who've actually tried solving it haven't had much luck.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you against this? Flexible working hours that can bend to accommodate very malleable human lives seems better than rigid adherence to traditional schedules for the sake of it.
It's important that businesses answer the question and stick to it. Do they want people to work a set schedule or not? Or businesses can make demands, but in this labor market they'll have to pay for people to meet 'em. I can promise to be in my chair at 9 am everyday, but I want to leave at 5 and if I'm tired, the business gets to pay for a less than productive day.
If they want me commuting during both morning and evening rush hour, they better pay a premium over companies that let me work around commuting. The extra 30+ minutes per day stuck in traffic or on trains does not come for free.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#147This 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?
illegals dont have SSNs. EMployers have to run ssn verification before they hire you. These checks are instant and this will popup immediately. Can they still hire you - well maybe for janitorial -> manufacturing jobs I'd say highly unlikely.
Yup, kinda like how the Speed Limit on the highway is 65 so nobody ever goes faster than that.
Oh wait...
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone who smoked a joint a couple days ago can absolutely work with concrete cutters or 1k volt lines.
It's not about whether they can or can't. It's about the massive liability for the company if they fuck up on the job and cause property damage or bodily injury.
Are the same standards applied for alcohol?
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#149Does every paragraph needs to rephrase that it isn't thanks to Trump? Maybe I'm wrong but lately it seems every US media outlet needs to mention him this way or another in every topic possible (positive or negative light)
I think you may be underestimating the importance of this article to US politics. One of the biggest issues in the 2016 election was stagnating blue-collar wages - it was one of Trump's main platforms, and one of the main factors that made him President. If the economy continues to do well across all income levels, regardless of why, and regardless of how unpopular Trump remains, there is a good chance we will see a…
I don't think Scott Adams is really accurate there. What is going on is that Trump and the Republican Congress have been stupendously ineffective on the legislative level, to the point where this tax reform may be their first major legislative accomplishment.
If the tax reform blows everything up, inflates a bubble, whatever, then they'll take a major electoral hit. If they're not bloody-stupid, they'll let "Obamanomics" slide in the background, and allow the long-awaited comeback from the Great Recession to buoy their approval ratings into continued electoral dominance.
Even 2016 was seeing slight increases in wages. We may now be seeing a period in which investment capital is so cheap, but infrastructure and industries so rotted out and wages so low, that it becomes feasible to re-develop whole areas of the country nearly from scratch.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#150Earlier 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
Based on a fair bit of experience in these types of things (unskilled individual doing skilled trade work around various homes/rentals etc), anyone who's capable of doing these types of things while supervised via facetime is probably just as capable of and willing to do them with a youtube or web tutorial.