Job vacancies surge past one million in new record • Hacker News Board

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#181

Post by FartyMcFarter » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #150

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> House prices aren't that tightly linked to incomes. House prices are more strongly influenced by interest rates and availability of credit.

I believe banks in the UK don't lend you more than 4.5x - 5.5x of your income, regardless of interest rates.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#182

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #138

zpeti wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty big red flag was why so many multinational corporations are pro open borders. Corporations rarely take a stance on political issues unless they have a reason to do so.

In the US there is a particularly pro big business conservative wing of the right that is hyper in favor of unlimited low skill immigration. It's totally at odds with the mainstream conservative position on immigration. So why do they hold that position? It's not out of the kindness of their gentle pro-immigration conservative hearts of course. It's because they want the cheap labor to feed to big business and it hel…

> (including by still prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders)

Bernie only changed his tune after Trump got elected. FWIW, it's always been obvious that more immigration reduces wages for low-skill workers (and everyone I suppose, depending on the volume of immigration). I was always really confused that this was not common knowledge.

Like, Ross Perot ran against Clinton/Bush 1 on pretty much this platform, and that was in the 90's.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#183

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

mmarq wrote: post #85

tomp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proof is in the pudding: "we can't find local workers willing to work for these low wages so we'll import them from abroad". A lot of EU immigrants come to London to work in tech/finance because they offer higher wages than pretty much anywhere on the continent (I was one of them). But the working class is pretty far removed from the effect of professional-class immigration. The UK has many other structural probl…

> The proof is in the pudding: "we can't find local workers willing to work for these low wages so we'll import them from abroad". Everywhere in world there are labour shortages, because we just ended lockdowns 3 months ago. In other places they are blaming the shortage on the young being lazy or on unemployment benefits, with the same scientific rigour. So I’m still waiting for a proof (not a pun or an anecdote) tha…

> Whatever the working class is in the UK, if they believe that immigration reduces salaries, they are far removed from any modern notion of truth.

Can you provide some references for your (rather strong) claim?

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#184

Post by EGreg » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

The market for jobs isn’t clearing.

Jobs growth is weak and yet there are many vacancies.

Does this mean people are finally holding out for higher pay? The goals of UBI have been demonstrated? And we have barely given out a UBI, only a few stimulus checks.

Perhaps people got a taste of working from home and companies need to allow more remote work.

Either way, I do not see this as a bad thing.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#185

Post by throwaway1777 » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

nly wrote: post #153

bb123 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Define 'commutable distance', because to me that means 30-40 minutes door to door. Hitchin is 33 minutes to Kings Cross on Thameslink and I could definitely do my commute from Hitchin station in ~50 minutes, which is roughly 10 minutes more than it takes me from Zone 3, door to door, now. If you look around on RightMove, 2 bed flats going near Hitchin station (Purwell) are ~£335K and a 20 minute walk away, so my comm…

We’re talking about where all the people who work at costa and pret live more than the top 2% earners. I guess they all need to commute in from the outskirts to make the rich people’s coffee.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#186

Post by ghaff » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

api wrote: post #166

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Existing owners won't let you do that, as it would depreciate their real estate portfolio.

They won't in major cities which are all basically real estate cartels, which is why I am bearish on major cities as anything other than office parks for rich people and young professionals without families. Most other things like art, actual innovation, and child rearing are going to migrate to medium sized cities, towns, and the countryside for basic economic reasons. It's already slowly happening.

> It's already slowly happening.

You're basically describing the norm in the US from post-WWII until about 20 years ago. Many large cities that many think of as desirable elite cities today (with real estate prices to match) were losing population into the 1990s.

The attractiveness of living in downtowns to mostly college educated young people is mostly a fairly recent phenomenon and there's no guarantees it won't reverse.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#187

Post by WhompingWindows » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

How does the global job vacancy market look? Here in the US, a lot of local restaurants and retail stores are hiring; practically every place you enter has a NOW HIRING sign out front.

I'd say immigration would be a huge boon to many of these small businesses, but when I spoke to one restaurant owner, he bemoaned the labor shortage and a $15 minimum wage. It'd kill his prices, he'd lose customers. Then, in other rants, he's using all the Fox News lines about stealing our jobs, keep them out of our country, caravans, ugh.

He doesn't connect the dots and see how pivotal immigration is to the economy. Either you have more babies, increase productivity, increase efficiency, or you allow immigrants in to make up the gap in the babies we're not having anymore. But no, the color of their skin, the difference of their culture, is enough to make economics less important than identity to the right wing in the USA.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#188

Post by EGreg » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #69

When a few companies or industries can’t find enough labor, the solution is simple: Raise wages to attract a larger percentage of the labor pool. When every company and industry is struggling to hire, raising wages is still necessary but it no longer fixes the bigger problem. Those higher wages aren’t producing more labor, they’re just convincing employees with jobs to switch to other jobs. Switching jobs creates a v…

Labor shortages don’t necessarily drive supply down — this is going to lead to a boom in automation. Those automated jobs aren’t coming back. We need to phase in a UBI even if it $1 a month for now.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#189

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #164

neilwilson wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zombie businesses required to pay more for labour go bust. Raising the cost of labour is a far more reliable way of eliminating zombies than attempting to raise interest costs. No business can operate without labour.

> Zombie businesses required to pay more for labour go bust. They may survive for a long period of time in a perma low interest rate environment where debt has become cheap and stocks are highly inflated. Low interest rates, as well as enabling debt accumulation, also float the stock market, which provides shareholder dilution-based funding to businesses that otherwise would have far more severe problems. Uber is an…

To be fair to Snowflake (not that I disagree) their product is pretty good. It's far too expensive for what it is, but at least it's not Hive.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#190

Post by Levitz » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

jenscow wrote: post #81

fergie wrote: post #55

The labour squeeze is placing upward pressure on wages, which is pumping more money into the economy which is in turn exacerbating the labour squeeze. Wages have been stagnant in the UK for too long. In the last decade or so certain sectors of the economy (hospitality, agriculture, nursing) have been too dependent on a vulnerable "serf class" of easily exploitable workers. That workers have got more money to spend is…

But if there aren't enough workers to give the pay increase to, then what? Reducing the pool of workers (Brexit) doesn't sold the wage problem. If a production line requires 30 people, and there are only 20... increasing their wages won't help. It won't encourage additional staff, as company B to Z is doing the same, and people aren't out of work because the wages are too low. Increasing minimum wage is the better wa…

The kind of company that can survive in an economy paying X doesn't necessarily survive if they later have to pay 120% of X.

And that doesn't have to be a bad thing either, that kind of company probably wouldn't have existed to begin with if inequality wasn't brutal nowadays.