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Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#141

Post by jvvw »

bb123 wrote: post #120
nly wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Boris Johnson (the British Prime Minister) sold his London family home in 2019 for £3.75M after having rented it out for £2000/week (just under 4x the national average income) while living in his Government provided accommodation in his role as Foreign Secretary (2016-2018).[0] - Property prices have shot up 10% during the pandemic, bolstered in part by the Government cutting stamp duty on sales. - A few days ago t…

There is housing available within commuting distance - I bought a 2 bedroom flat walking distance from a station with a 35 minute link to Kings Cross for under 200k. People seem to think they have some sort of God-given right to live in central London. If you want to buy a property you may need to make some sacrifices in that department. Yes the town I live in is pretty shite, and I have to train to work or to see fr…

Luton? I think some parts of London are more reachable from affordable places than others and that requirements do change when you have a family (more space and you may not need the best school but you don't want a terrible one). We live further up the Thameslink line and we get a lot of people moving here from London after having children, but it is a long commute.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#142

Post by ZeroGravitas »

nly wrote: post #44

Housing is anything from a third to 50% of the average UK earners take home income. Median house price to median income ratios are at historically high levels[0], and rents are now also rising[1] Either wages need to rise or house prices need to fall. [0] If you look at somewhere mundane like Essex the median 'affordability ratio', as measured by the Office of National Statistics ( https://tinyurl.com/x5jatcx8 ), was…

Wage rises without solving the housing issue is only going to raise house prices further.

There's a bunch of potential solutions, but no-one directly benefits from them in the short term.

Any attempt to fix it will be met with sob stories about old ladies in multi-million dollar homes being "forced out of their homes".

So we'll all just sit and watch as things slowly spin out of control.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#143

Post by ladyattis »

tomp wrote: post #39
ndr wrote: post #11

"We advertised locally for 70 fruit-pickers and we had nine applications. On follow-up, only one was still available... in terms of recruiting locally, we failed completely," says Ali Capper, the owner of Stocks Farm in Suckley and chair of British Apples and Pears. At her orchard, harvest has just started. It must be done quickly and requires many pairs of hands. Ali had to turn to specialist recruitment firms and h…

I love how all the elite arguments that immigration doesn't reduce wages (which the working class always thought were complete bullshit) were proved to be complete bullshit during the pandemic-related border closures. Of course, the discussion about what to do about that remains - open borders & keep wages low, or close borders & raise local wages, or close borders & keep wages low & invest in automation - but it's n…

On each country it really depends. For the US, low wage immigrant workers don't depress wages that much but in high skill areas immigrant workers can depress wages up to 20% last time I read a study on the matter. So it's really about what kind of work and where. Lots of engineers have felt the squeeze on immigrant labor for years but since engineers don't usually unionize they don't bark as much and thus bare the loss.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#144

Post by xienze »

nicoburns wrote: post #126
xienze wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, "if". The problem is that companies don't move in lockstep with the broader economy, so it might take a year or two of food and goods increasing in price 12% before your company has managed to give you a 5% raise, which in turn requires them to raise the prices of their goods. And hopefully _their_ customers don't balk at the increased price because _they_ haven't yet been able to absorb their own set of wage in…

The context of this post is that companies are having difficulty hiring and are having to increase wages. Which is what is being hypothesised to lead to price increases. Which would suggest that wage increases would come first in this instance.

Yes, but they're hesitant to do that because of the impact the wage increases (which then get passed on to consumers) will have on sales. There's this notion that companies could simply double or triple wages with a negligible impact on the bottom line or consumer prices but are just being dicks. Which is not really the case. Margins are just razor-thin. So you get in a sort of Mexican standoff situation. Who's going to blink first, raise wages, and lose sales?

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#145

Post by giancarlostoro »

kavalg wrote: post #95
nivenkos wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is to control the housing market and stop it being used an investment against inflation. Force people to invest in industry against inflation - not rent-seeking in housing, or cryptocurrency pyramid schemes. Only allow resident citizens to own the one property they live in, and have the government handle rentals like the old council housing / Folkhemmet homes.

Reminds me of my childhood in Eeastern Europe, where people were getting divorced (only on papers) in order to buy another aprtment :)

I met a Cuban a few years back that said the same. His parents worked their butts off and owned two homes. They got divorced to keep them both, but they were never separated only legally.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#146

Post by ZeroGravitas »

zpeti wrote: post #73
pibechorro wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation will make any increase in wages meaningless. It will also further drive investment into housing to escape the free falling cash. The answer is no lockdowns, no bailouts, and no quantitative money printing to oblivion. Let the everything bubble pop and start over with sound first principles. We will get there, but not before politicians make it worse and delay the inevitable defaults.

Agreed. 20 years of lower and lower interest rates, meaning higher and higher mortgage amounts have driven up prices into oblivion. Either these prices are inflated away or there is a collapse. There's not much else you can, UK housing market is so far from market reality that it's a joke. And ironically the more you create policies like lower deposit amounts for younger people, or subsidised mortgage payments, the m…

Depends on what you mean by "government intervention".

The phrase is usually used to stop people fixing problems like this, which are the kind of collective action problem that only government action can solve.

The government intervention you mention is actually just the voters with property using their vote to protect their wealth. And that worked exactly as intended.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#147

Post by prawn »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #108
prawn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be tackling housing prices. I think wages (in AU, at least) already render many small businesses unviable. Historically in Australia, it's seemed like houses have doubled in price every 10 years. More recently, it's seemed like every 5 years. A house I bought 10 years ago would now be 2.5* that as land value alone. A building I bought has apparently doubled in value in five years.

>I'd be tackling housing prices. The government has absolutely no desire to do that. Their voter base is predominantly home owners who think of their house as an asset that should only go up in value.

Yes, I think the best opportunities are incremental changes like phasing out negative gearing, tweaking SMSF rules and so on.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#148

Post by adventured »

ahtihn wrote: post #135
mysterydip wrote: post #4

There's a fast food restaurant near my house that is trying to fill vacancies at $20/hr.

McDonald's has been paying $20/hour in Switzerland for a long time. Given how rich the US is as a country, I always found it surprising that minimum wage there is so incredibly low.

Keep in mind the minimum wage also varies by state. The state minimum wages overrule the federal minimum wage when eclipsed (so if the federal rate is $7.25, and Maryland state is $12, then you have to pay $12 as a business in Maryland). It's probably ideal that the minimum wage is state based, with a lower baseline provided by the federal, given the extreme variance in prosperity and income levels between the states.

It'd be like Germany and Greece or Lithuania having the same minimum wage, if you had Massachusetts or Connecticut with the same minimum wage as West Virginia or Arkansas (two of the poorest states).

GDP per capita (loose reference for income potential) in New York state is $90,000 per year ($87k in Massachusetts). It's $40k to $45k in Mississippi / Arkansas / West Virginia by comparison.

So for reference that $90k New York figure is higher than Norway and comparable to Switzerland. And the Mississippi figure is a bit above Italy. Base wages just can't rationally be the same in Italy and Switzerland for common service jobs.

Almost nobody earns the federal minimum wage in the US. It doesn't matter very much at the present rate and could be easily, safely raised with minimum labor disruption. The federal minimum wage hasn't been relevant for 15-20 years, because the market left it behind.

To push the lower tier wages higher, the US would need to set the federal minimum wage up near $15 these days. That's the floor that Amazon (via their fulfillment centers) has placed on the labor market as they compete to fill their huge need for labor, pulling it away from companies like Walmart. You can now earn $15 working at Walmart, Target, Amazon, grocery stores and a lot of convenience stores or similar type service businesses with essentially zero labor skill or experience.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#149

Post by moreira »

Veen wrote: post #115
nly wrote: post #44

Housing is anything from a third to 50% of the average UK earners take home income. Median house price to median income ratios are at historically high levels[0], and rents are now also rising[1] Either wages need to rise or house prices need to fall. [0] If you look at somewhere mundane like Essex the median 'affordability ratio', as measured by the Office of National Statistics ( https://tinyurl.com/x5jatcx8 ), was…

It's why I'm contemplating moving from the South West to the North East. I work remotely, so it doesn't matter much where I am. Rental costs in the North East are dramatically lower than where I am now (a location that attracts Londoners wanting a place in the country, significantly increasing house prices).

I did exactly that this year - went from £1050/mo for a 2-bedroom flat in the south to £375/mo for a 2-bedroom house with a back yard, in the North East.

You can get anything you need delivered these days, including groceries, and I’m within walking distance of a train station if I need to head to an airport or go anywhere bigger.

It’s seriously worth considering.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#150

Post by Reason077 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #142
nly wrote: post #44

Housing is anything from a third to 50% of the average UK earners take home income. Median house price to median income ratios are at historically high levels[0], and rents are now also rising[1] Either wages need to rise or house prices need to fall. [0] If you look at somewhere mundane like Essex the median 'affordability ratio', as measured by the Office of National Statistics ( https://tinyurl.com/x5jatcx8 ), was…

Wage rises without solving the housing issue is only going to raise house prices further. There's a bunch of potential solutions, but no-one directly benefits from them in the short term. Any attempt to fix it will be met with sob stories about old ladies in multi-million dollar homes being "forced out of their homes". So we'll all just sit and watch as things slowly spin out of control.

> "Wage rises without solving the housing issue is only going to raise house prices further."

House prices aren't that tightly linked to incomes. House prices are more strongly influenced by interest rates and availability of credit. And, of course, supply/demand fundamentals (ie: population change vs. number of housing units in an area).

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