181–190 of 531 posts
It is strange that the top known factors for this are not even mentioned in this or other similar news stories. First, closing of schools caused large numbers of women to leave the workforce in order to care for children. Until schools are fully open and day care is available those women will probably not be going back to work. Second, all markets are cultivated things. Employers in the most troubled sectors have rec…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In a market economy there is no such thing as a "shortage" of workers You need a license to drive a truck in the UK (the actual subject of the article). It takes a minimum of two months acquire [1]. Even paying a thousand dollars an hour does not magic more qualified candidates into existence at short notice as you appear to propose. The reason for the shortage is the trivially foreseeable effects of idiotic hard-l…
I doubt it. If the pay was high enough and the term was long enough, you'd see interest from retired licensed drivers and licensed driver's who'd changed jobs. Then you have 2 months to train up and license new drivers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one of the problems with minimum wage laws: they prevent the labor market from clearing. Some people want to work but due to lack of skills their labor is worth less than the minimum and thus no employer will hire them. I understand that people can't live on less than the minimum wage. But the solution to that is a proper social safety net, not imposing arbitrary minimum wage limits.
Minimum wage limits is one of the best tools we have to act as a safety net. What would you replace it with 1 dollar an hour workers with a bigger food stamp budget? If you can't afford to pay someone the minimum prices you can't afford your business. A minimum wage creates a floor. Allowing low wages means pushing the burden to everyone else not that business.. raise your prices or move to a lower cost country.
Based on observation during the far fewer times I visit them, they appear dramatically less busy than they used to be. It’s not clear that “just raise your prices and pay workers more” is going to work out for them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If labor is a market, laborers are at a fundamental disadvantage compared to employers when it comes to clearance: the employer has an asymmetric advantage in its ability to wait to hire someone; laborers are a lot less capable. I don’t know that unemployment is a good solution, but I think it speaks volumes that people might be using it to balance the standard inequity.
Employers need employees, and employees need employers. If you have orders to fill, and noone to do the work, you're just as fscked, as if you have bills to pay, and no money to do it. Employers get an added benefit of being able to wait it out a bit, since they generally have more money than workers, and workers have unemployment benefits, which means that they can wait it out (until the benefits stop). The problems…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one of the problems with minimum wage laws: they prevent the labor market from clearing. Some people want to work but due to lack of skills their labor is worth less than the minimum and thus no employer will hire them. I understand that people can't live on less than the minimum wage. But the solution to that is a proper social safety net, not imposing arbitrary minimum wage limits.
Minimum wage limits is one of the best tools we have to act as a safety net. What would you replace it with 1 dollar an hour workers with a bigger food stamp budget? If you can't afford to pay someone the minimum prices you can't afford your business. A minimum wage creates a floor. Allowing low wages means pushing the burden to everyone else not that business.. raise your prices or move to a lower cost country.
Minimum wage isn't a safety net at all. Minimum wage is a mitigation of the problem of low bargaining power of unskilled labor; it basically raises but narrows the tightrope above the safety net.
> If you can't afford to pay someone the minimum prices you can't afford your business. A minimum wage creates a floor.
Yes, it creates a floor for the value of labor you must be able to provide before you can be sustainably employed. (It also, simultaneously, sets a floor for what businesses will offer for labor even in conditions of labor oversupply; set at the right level, this makes it a net win even given the safety net problems it can exacerbate, but it is not the same as and does not remove the need for a safety net.)
> Allowing low wages means pushing the burden to everyone else not that business.
Only for the employees in fields affected by labor oversupply that would be employed in any case, and which are employed at lower wages.
Conversely, it also means lifting some of the burden off everyone else for the people who would not be employed with a minimum wage but who are employed without one.
> raise your prices or move to a lower cost country.
Unless you take the workers with you, “move to a lower cost country” means more people unemployed that are fully reliant on social support in the country that squeezed you out. Which is why minimum wage isn't a safety net.
>Add Brexit into the equation, and the old assumption that companies can just hire extra people from Eastern Europe to fill any gaps can no longer be taken for granted. Wild idea, but maybe companies should pay higher salaries. I bet they would find plenty of workers. If their business relies on paying people sub-standard wages, maybe their business deserves to fail to make room for someone else who is better at maki…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a market economy there is no such thing as a "shortage" of workers. You just don't want to meet the market price of the workers with that skill set. You could imagine a widget factory whose economics rely on paying employees X, it doesn't mean there's a "shortage" of workers, but the workers demand a wage that makes your work unprofitable. The fact is a lot of people are paid not to work through generous covid-rel…
What would you call it if we had 5 positions at the widget factory, but only 4 prospective employees looking for work? Wouldn't that constitute a worker shortage, as no matter how high I make my wages as a widget foreman, there are still less workers than there are open positions? Or is that not something that could really happen outside of a textbook problem?
A shortage occurs when an external force prevents price from rising. Medical doctors in some jurisdictions, for example, are often legally prevented from accepting higher offers to prioritize patients. Instead their service fees are fixed and they have to accept patients on system that is usually a mix of first come, first serve and needs-based priority. Therefore a doctor shortage, in said jurisdictions, is quite possible. But you generally won't find such restrictions in the general labour pool.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All of this stuff about workers disappearing and people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on. Well said. We’ve been bombarded with news articles and thought pieces about how COVID has forever changed the workforce, how people are refusing to work jobs they don’t like, how people are quitting en masse because their employers won’t al…
Right. Why would I seek a job if the unemployment benefits pay me nearly as much to do nothing?
No one capable of working should be taking unemployment, ever.
This is how social safety nets get demonized by politicians, and it works. A factory worker and mother of three who was making car parts from the start of COVID-19 until now and was never laid off and who never had the option of quitting work, fucking hates someone who sits on their ass collecting unemployment playing Xbox games all day. That's the relatively young Hispanic woman who lives down the road from me. I was fortunate; I already work remote so the only thing COVID did for me was restrict my dining choices temporarily here in Texas.
The answer to every problem we seem to face in America always ends up being, "Just throw some fucking money at it!"
I'm sick of it. Many of our problems couldn't be solved if we had literally quadrillions of dollars of cash. Sometimes - many times - it takes a lot of good old fashioned hard work, in the arenas of careful thinking, and then careful doing. Neither of which it seems either political party is particularly interested.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All of this stuff about workers disappearing and people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on. Well said. We’ve been bombarded with news articles and thought pieces about how COVID has forever changed the workforce, how people are refusing to work jobs they don’t like, how people are quitting en masse because their employers won’t al…
One of the stories I often hear, is that people have decided to move house to the countryside, as they are now able to work remotely. I don't know how true this is: are these people not concerned if their employer decides to reopen offices and require employees to work in the office again when the pandemic inevitably ends?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If labor is a market, laborers are at a fundamental disadvantage compared to employers when it comes to clearance: the employer has an asymmetric advantage in its ability to wait to hire someone; laborers are a lot less capable. I don’t know that unemployment is a good solution, but I think it speaks volumes that people might be using it to balance the standard inequity.
Employers need employees, and employees need employers. If you have orders to fill, and noone to do the work, you're just as fscked, as if you have bills to pay, and no money to do it. Employers get an added benefit of being able to wait it out a bit, since they generally have more money than workers, and workers have unemployment benefits, which means that they can wait it out (until the benefits stop). The problems…
you weigh more, you're worth more, it doesn't last forever but the difference is staggering