Labor shortage or terrible jobs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#221

Post by drdeadringer » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #114

mywittyname wrote: post #20

I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation. These jobs have been propped up by debt. It looks like the pandemic has put and end to this. Transportation costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that it's basically impossible for a poor person…

> propped up by debt Payday lenders make a killing on exploiting this.

I worked on a (US) Naval shipyard for a spell.

The number of payday loan shops in the immediate surrounding area was astounding. I kept hearing word of "Don't Do Payday" financial help training for the Naval crew, who apparently were a prime target for the industry. Before working there, I had little idea such existed.

Think "worse than 'cash your cheque here'" places.

I don't know how many Naval folks I worked with took in to these places, but every time I passed one I frowned and shook my head.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#222

Post by medvezhenok » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #200

cratermoon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think America has been too scared of inflation for too long This is true! The Federal Reserve, since the Carter administration, has acted like even the slightest bit of inflation is impending doom.

Remarkably, since the tail end of the Bush administration, it's the opposite: the Fed has desperately tried to get inflation up to its 2% target level, and mostly missing. The reasons are debatable, but I'd argue that it's mostly because the mechanisms they're using end up inflating the stock market instead of consumer goods. There are economists terrified of any inflation, but it's an attitude that's more popular wi…

"Despite the cacophony of complaints about "ruinous" budget deficits and "excessive" monetary growth, the headline-grabbing double-digit inflations of 1974 and 1979-80 were mainly of the special-factor variety. Only a minor fraction of each inflationary acceleration can be attributed to changes in the baseline rate; the rest came from supply shocks from the food and energy sectors, from mortgage interest rates, and from the end of price controls—a whole host of special one-shot factors. It is precisely this aspect of the recent inflation that this paper seeks to document. Since the paper focuses on the special factors to the exclusion of the baseline rate, it is worth pointing out at the outset that the two inflations are not really independent. Inflation from special factors can "get into" the baseline rate if it causes an acceleration of wage growth. At this point policymakers face an agonizing choice—the so-called accommodation issue. To the extent that aggregate nominal demand is not expanded to accommodate the higher wages and prices, unemployment and slack capacity will result. There will be a recession. On the other hand, to the extent that aggregate demand is expanded (say, by raising the growth rate of money above previous targets), inflation from the special factor will get built into the baseline rate."

This is the difference between the responses to 2008 and 2020. The first was exactly the first example from the paper, and the second is the latter (expansion of demand capacity).

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c11462/c11462.pdf

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#223

Post by bradlys » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

I find this is true even within software. There is a large complaint about not enough engineers. There are enough engineers - it’s just that you won’t pay enough for them for the given locale! If every startup started compensating like FAANG, they’d have no trouble finding talent.

Personally, I’ve had to go through this recently where I received 5 job offers. All well below what I’d consider “market” rate. They were all lower than past offers. Basically, companies are being very cheap with equity and/or salary. If you live in SF and are a senior engineer, giving equity that only matches FAANG when the company hits an absurd valuation that will likely never come is just not going to get people to come. Why bother? Whole point of startups is that you could earn more than faang if you get lucky enough. It shouldn’t be that you just match FAANG if you get lucky.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#224

Post by thunfischbrot » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #223

I find this is true even within software. There is a large complaint about not enough engineers. There are enough engineers - it’s just that you won’t pay enough for them for the given locale! If every startup started compensating like FAANG, they’d have no trouble finding talent. Personally, I’ve had to go through this recently where I received 5 job offers. All well below what I’d consider “market” rate. They were…

Meh - I see one of the benefits of working outside of FAANG and other enterprises to work on something you trule believe in. Who truly loves working on improving the returns on online advertising to extract more money out of people's pockets?

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#225

Post by luckylion » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #223

I find this is true even within software. There is a large complaint about not enough engineers. There are enough engineers - it’s just that you won’t pay enough for them for the given locale! If every startup started compensating like FAANG, they’d have no trouble finding talent. Personally, I’ve had to go through this recently where I received 5 job offers. All well below what I’d consider “market” rate. They were…

> If every startup started compensating like FAANG, they’d have no trouble finding talent.

That can't work. Current talent is a zero-sum game. You offer more, you get someone to switch over to you, somebody else offers more still and takes that person from you.

You might attract more future talent to the industry by offering more, but since software developers already make 2-10 times the average, I doubt that people think "you just can't make money in software, I'm going to do something else".

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#226

Post by jfengel » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

medvezhenok wrote: post #220

jfengel wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remarkably, since the tail end of the Bush administration, it's the opposite: the Fed has desperately tried to get inflation up to its 2% target level, and mostly missing. The reasons are debatable, but I'd argue that it's mostly because the mechanisms they're using end up inflating the stock market instead of consumer goods. There are economists terrified of any inflation, but it's an attitude that's more popular wi…

The reason is quite clear - the Fed cannot transfer money effectively to the poor/middle class; it's fiscal policy that can do that (and labor unions to some degree, which were gutted in the 80s). Inflation doesn't happen when you give more to the people that don't consume (and sustained inflation only happens when there is an actual shortage of some good, and arguably we have overcapacity for everything today so inf…

That's absolutely correct, but it has been remarkable the way there's been no money flowing to the poor and middle class.

Supply-side economics clearly doesn't work, but it wasn't totally insane. If money was pumped into corporations you'd expect at least some of it to turn into more conventional demand. Buy a private jet or a yacht (built by workers and maintained by more workers), or start a company that pays wages, or something.

Instead, all of the money just gets shuffled among each other. It's not just that trickle-down doesn't work; it's that it doesn't seem to trickle at all. Even to non-Chicago economists that's a little surprising. Chicago School turns out to be more than just incorrect, but utterly at odds with reality. Rich people simply don't behave the way they imagine they do.

About the closest it comes is messing with the real estate market -- mostly in the form of pricing lower-class renters out. That benefitted the existing homeowners, and maybe that's helped stem middle class decline a tiny bit, but there are too many other forces working against them. Instead, it just trickles more money back up.

It'll be interesting to see what happens as COVID eases off. That's a very unusual kind of shock, and I'm surprised it hasn't been even more economically disastrous than it is. Part of it is that the government has done a weak form of the right thing, pumping money directly to consumers. If not for that we'd have seen a deflationary spiral of truly catastrophic proportions.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#227

Post by joelfolksy » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

lastofthemojito wrote: post #138

gruez wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.

I think the classic example of this is the pizza delivery driver (or now the gig economy food delivery driver). The driver might think "I made $100 today, great!", but they generally don't have a good sense for their total expenses. Sure, they know how much gas cost them this week, but they don't know how much the next auto repair will be, or how much depreciation they're incurring on their vehicle. And when their au…

True. Of course, that only scratches the surface of why it's a terrible job. In many locales, policies that cover commercial driving are prohibitively expensive, and the majority of drivers are effectively uninsured (often without realizing it). It's not a stretch to say that insurance fraud is a core part of that industry's business model.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#228

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #98

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you handle buying clothes?

That's a tricky one, but it's solvable, if you're willing to give up the idea of having new and different styles regularly. Find a style & brand you like, figure out what size you wear and just buy that. You might have to send something back until you nail it. For people with odd size requirements like me (I'm short), shopping online usually means you can find a better fit, because stores tend not to carry much outsi…

So yeah, re-buying clothes/brands is fine. But I spent a bunch of money on clothes online and ended up with stuff that is nice, but which feels weird (and with some too-small pockets).

I don't really know how one can solve for these kinds of issues online, even if we could CV together what clothes would look like on people (which is at least theoretically solvable with current technology).

And fwiw, clothes are like one of the things that everyone needs to buy, so online only is almost certainly not going to happen in this space.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#229

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #131

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you handle buying clothes?

I just buy them online like anything else, in the same size I always wear. I had already stopped buying clothes in-person before the pandemic. I guess I am normally-shaped enough that I don't run into problems with things fitting this way, but certainly this is more problematic for some people.

Yeah, makes sense. My trouble is that I'm in between sizes, so I tend to either end up with too small pants, or many, many belts.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#230

Post by cratermoon » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #135

cratermoon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pro-labor right Such a thing does not exist.

how about socially conservative union workers, for example.

By "socially conservative" do you mean opposed to reproductive choice, anti-immigration, opposed to LGBTQ+ rights, opposed to affirmative action, and those kinds of wedge issues? Kind of the the inverse of libertarian "economically conservative, socially liberal"?

I wonder how much those issues would fade from their consciousness if they weren't constantly fed the lie that their precarious economic status is the fault of immigrants, the cost of social welfare programs, the "gay agenda", the "great replacement" theory, and so forth.