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Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#241

Post by crispyambulance »

BossingAround wrote: post #21
calltrak wrote: post #7

I am an unemployed programmer. I am 50 years old. I have 15 years of C#, 15 years of sql server, two years of golang, two years of node.js, vue.js, svelte, css, html, postgress, rabbitmq, etc etc etc.... My skills list is about 10 times this short list I just threw up. They tell me there is a skills and labor shortage in tech. That's complete bullshit I am UNEMPLOYED for a year. I don't believe one dam word the gover…

Might also be an attitude problem on your side. If you're serious about getting a job, consider coaching. This "nobody is hiring, everything sucks, and I'm the victim here" narrative isn't really helping you. Also, bringing up stuff like "lies about the cough" (which I assume is OP talking about COVID) absolutely undermines your credibility as an individual capable of critical thinking, which is necessary for softwar…

The guy is frustrated and people say things like that when they're frustrated, it's understandable, though he certainly isn't helping himself by expressing such thoughts.

The "lies" he's talking about, I think, are a side-effect of the dichotomy of having an investor class that is doing better than ever and a working class that's in a downward spiral. Sadly, economic performance is measured strictly for the benefit of the investor class. So yeah, when someone who's involuntarily unemployed sees booming market numbers and talking heads on TV are calling out an economy that's "bounced back", it looks like a lie (and honestly I believe it is a kind of lie too).

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#242

Post by bumby »

shadowgovt wrote: post #235
tzs wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm a bit skeptical of that explanation in the US because schools close for 3 months every summer, without an accompanying large number of women quitting their jobs.

Between summer camps and the weather being nice enough to just go outside and entertain oneself, the 3-month summer vacation is a notably different effect on the economy than the year-long covid isolation with indeterminate future horizon. What you find when you look at the numbers is an awful lot of White collar firms simply get less done during the summer months. "We expect to move forward on that project, but we'r…

To echo this, a previous employer has scheduled downtime that coincides with spring break because they recognized so many parents take time off because of having school-aged children.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#243

Post by civilized »

dcolkitt wrote: post #226
thechao wrote: post #148

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.

This is a common refrain, but I doubt many who say have actually actual experience as an employer. In many businesses the inability to staff leads to existential threat to the entire business. If you're a restaurant and can't seat customers or a SaaS startup and can't keep your service uptime, you'll go out of business very quickly. That represents millions in enterprise value. In contrast an employer who gets fired,…

If the business is run sensibly and isn't hemorrhaging a large percentage of its workers, not hiring just means delayed growth, not an existential threat.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#244

Post by RHSeeger »

tzs wrote: post #221
m0llusk wrote: post #88

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…

> 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. I'm a bit skeptical of that explanation in the US because schools close for 3 months every summer, without an accompanying large number of women quitting their jobs.

Those months can be planned for well ahead of time, and there's generally plenty of child caring activities (camps, schools offering day sessions, etc). This was... very different, and a lot more difficult for most people.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#245

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

matwood wrote: post #82
BossingAround wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might also be an attitude problem on your side. If you're serious about getting a job, consider coaching. This "nobody is hiring, everything sucks, and I'm the victim here" narrative isn't really helping you. Also, bringing up stuff like "lies about the cough" (which I assume is OP talking about COVID) absolutely undermines your credibility as an individual capable of critical thinking, which is necessary for softwar…

> Might also be an attitude problem on your side. I don't know about the OP, but I think sometimes people forget that getting hired is only part skill list match. The other part is likability. I've worked with enough smart assholes to never want to do that again if I can avoid it. I also frequently reflect to make sure I'm not being an asshole.

Being able to be picky about employees is the opposite of a labor shortage.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#246

Post by wintermutestwin »

heurisko wrote: post #159
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #146

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?

Maybe some people are so desperate to escape cities and endless commutes that they are willing to take the risk. My anecdata is that I spent 17 years with one megacorp because they allowed me to WFH back when there were very few places I could jump ship to and not have to move back to the Bay Area.

The small town I live in has seen a large influx of Bay Area remote workers as well. Again - all anecdata, but it is noticeable.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#247

Post by RobertKerans »

nradov wrote: post #132
jen20 wrote: post #102

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…

There are people with commercial driving licenses who aren't currently working as truck drivers. They could be recruited if employers raised wages. And a regular truck driver can be trained in a few months. It's not rocket science.

> And a regular truck driver can be trained in a few months. It's not rocket science.

I get why you've said this, but I'm not sure this kind of flippant remark is helpful -- what exactly isn't rocket science? Is it the actual act of training a truck driver? Is it the act of writing down the things needed to get more truck drivers?

Actual process is non-trivial, expensive (you need to persuade people to leave their families), time consuming and involves a chain of other non-trivial time-consuming tasks that currently doesn't really exist (or is at least regionally bottlenecked).

Sure the market will probably eventually sort it out, but that seems neither a quick nor an efficient way of doing things in this case, where this was widely predicted years previous + is now critically required

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#248

Post by bumby »

nradov wrote: post #238
bumby wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the solution to that is a proper social safety net Playing devils advocate with your logic, how is this different from preventing the market from “clearing” non-viable businesses? I.e., don’t many safety net programs essentially subsidize business profits by allowing employers to lower wages?

It's different because allowing people to work for low wages gives them a chance to improve their skills and move up to higher wage jobs rather than perpetually living off welfare.

Or it traps them in a cycle of poverty where there’s never enough time or money to make the skills necessary to advance. When I worked as a dishwasher or landscaper, I wasn’t building valuable skills to progress my career. Maybe your point holds for some careers, but I’m doubtful it’s relevant to most low-wage (especially non-skilled) labor. I think the point is also diluted when considering there’s almost always more people at the lower end of these jobs than the higher, meaning everybody can’t always be advancing. There will always be more dishwashers than restauranteurs (ignoring automation)

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#249

Post by username90 »

ipaddr wrote: post #152
bombcar wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be practical shortages - there can just literally not be enough people in the area to do the jobs. Saying “it’s not a shortage because you could buy the Yankees and pay the players $millions to assemble widgets” isn’t very informative.

It is.. it speaks to wages not raising enough to meet the demand. You wouldn't need the Yankees a lot of people would do it for a million, half a million, 100,000 pounds. There always seems to be a shortage of people willing to work for little never a shortage of people wanting the CEO's jobs

There is definitely a shortage of decent CEO's, which is why companies are forced to hire and try to work with the charlatans they have today. That is also why the salaries are increasing, they try to get one of the few good ones.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#250

Post by lumost »

heurisko wrote: post #159
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #146

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?

anecdotally, I think there is a fairly widespread belief that people can move to the country side for X years during covid then switch the property to AirBnB afterwords.

I'd also bet that many individuals are making long-term bets that they can continue working remote even if it means (slightly) less pay.

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