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Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

economist.com

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Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#251

Post by adventured »

southphillyman wrote: post #189
ransom1538 wrote: post #108

>> "Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of showing up on time (or at all)" Don't kid yourself. Those new hires are at other jobs making more money. I am booked for a roofer in feb 2018 (fingers crossed - friend of a friend). Blue skills are in extremely high demand. And those guys are working extremely hard making really high incomes (400k+). These guys are highly paid and are not…

Where can one go to learn these "blue collar" skills? As a recent home owner I'm learning first hand how valuable these skills are by way of my wallet. Seems like most people I meet who do these kinds of jobs were "born into it", and learned by helping a family member who was already in the industry. Are there IIT type schools which teach these kinds of things on a part time basis?

My suggestion is two fold. First, personal experimentation on an inexpensive basis. You can buy a lot of basic, cheap materials and tools, and practice specific types of work. You can teach yourself very easily with weekly practice, how to do any type of household work, from drywall to plumbing. Most of it is not difficult, it requires practice and mental effort over time. You get better and better at it. The point is to practice on things you can destroy at low cost, rather than feeling intimidated working on your actual property and fearing causing a big bill via error.

The second is, find people you know that do blue collar work, whatever it happens to be (whatever you're wanting to learn). For example, I know a few guys that work as unlicensed handymen, most of them are quite skilled at what they do, they just frequently work under the table. Pay them for their time to speed up your learning process on specific tasks.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#252

Post by SilasX »

tzs wrote: post #154
bkohlmann wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about manufacturing jobs is that they often involve operating heavy machinery. Drug use and intoxication drastically increases the chance of death or dismemberment - for the inebriated, or often, others around them. As a pilot, I seriously don’t care if you show up to work high or not - unless you’re doing maintenance on the jet I’m supposed to fly.

Drug tests don't test for intoxication. They just test test for something that correlates somewhat with having been intoxicated sometime in the recent past. Better is to use impairment testing. An impairment test is a test of cognitive function, alertness, reaction time, hand-eye coordination and similar objective things that actually correlate well with how well you can do your job now , instead of sometime in the p…

That sounds like a much better idea; any reason this hasn't caught on as a replacement for drug testing? It opens up for a lot of good workers who'd otherwise be rejected, and it is more robust against the thing you actually care about preventing.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#253

Post by ErikAugust »

danielvf wrote: post #9

I worked with small / medium manufacturers in the prosperous part of the Southeast. Hiring is brutal currently. Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of sho…

I have a friend who is a general manager that deals in part-time, odd hour unskilled labor who spoke of a similar story.

What do you think, time to build and monetize a solution to solve this problem?

I think I have some ideas to help with this type of worker onboarding and retention, personally.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#254

Post by ataturk »

opportune wrote: post #136
ransom1538 wrote: post #108

>> "Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of showing up on time (or at all)" Don't kid yourself. Those new hires are at other jobs making more money. I am booked for a roofer in feb 2018 (fingers crossed - friend of a friend). Blue skills are in extremely high demand. And those guys are working extremely hard making really high incomes (400k+). These guys are highly paid and are not…

I always read these ridiculously high salaries and laugh. Your average HVAC worker is not making $400k. I do know people in construction/HVAC/plumbers/electricians and it's the bosses making that money, not the grunt workers. The people on the front lines still make good money, for some easily approaching $100k/year, so there's not really a need for embellishment. That isn't to say that it's unattainable, but it's ak…

I'll never see 400K, not even if I do tons of overtime through my own S-Corp. If you can do that, I'd like to know how. 200K is hard enough and not easy to maintain.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#255

Post by grasshopperpurp »

moduspol wrote: post #199
opportune wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but personal responsibility is learned/cultural. It could take a while for people to break the cycle when they grew up seeing their parents make poor decisions, who also grew up seeing their own parents make poor decisions, etc. Not saying that all poverty is a result of poor decisions but that the two feed on each other

They do--but this (a difficulty in getting lower-paid workers to even show up) is a new phenomenon. We've always had lower-paid workers and poverty, but something else has changed. My concern is that the "something else" might be counter-effective but well-intentioned policies intended to help.

How new do you think the phenomenon is? And, which policies are you referring to?

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#256

Post by adventured »

gjem97 wrote: post #231
hyperion2010 wrote: post #107

I had a long talk with a guy getting his general contractor's license yesterday. He told me that down in San Diego they are continually short on construction workers, so much that one of his friends said that there is 10 years worth of construction that needs to be done and no one to do it. Wages at ~$45/hr, and probably rising, some projects paying perdiems for commutes from Orange County. Strange.

I always find it a bit strange when people talk about shortages of non-price-controlled goods and services. When you say that the industry is "short on construction workers", there's an implicit "who will work for what we used to pay them." It seems to me like it's someone who hires in that industry trying to entice more talent to come help lower the price again, rather than an accurate description of the state of th…

You can't just create 100,000 new construction workers in San Diego because you raise wages from $45 to $60 per hour.

Labor availability + skill + time + market awareness = it takes a helluva lot longer than months or 2-3 years to meaningfully boost a skill trade.

Labor availabity means: how many people - heavily influenced by the unemployment rate - are interested in putting in the time to go retrain themselves to do a new job. Many people will not kill themselves to do so, if they're making $45/hour and you tell them the upside is $60/hour. A deep level of comfort sets in for a large percentage of the population once you get to $30-$45 per hour.

Skill means: it takes years to train someone to an appropriate level at being a professional anything, whether we're talking roofing or plumbing.

Time means: well, it simply takes time to rotate large numbers of people into blue collar jobs. The whole process takes a lot of time, from start to finish. There's only so much that can be done to speed that process up.

Market awareness: it can take years for people to believe that blue collar work demand is going to be sustained (history say otherwise, and people know that such work is often inconsistent; and they know that the downturns are brutal). It can take years to get the word out in just a mid-size city like San Diego, that there is high demand. It requires new entrants to take risk, which most people do not like doing. To be convinced to take a life change risk if someone is even remotely comfortable, the reward has to be extreme in most cases.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#257

Post by billmalarky »

lostlogin wrote: post #250
danielvf wrote: post #9

I worked with small / medium manufacturers in the prosperous part of the Southeast. Hiring is brutal currently. Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of sho…

I hate the drug testing bs. How is that relevant? If the worker is present, is sober, and not hungover what business is it of the employers what the employee does on their own time? The drugs that are readily detectable are mostly the ones that don’t matter too, while the ones that are more concerning (to me anyway) are either not tested for or are not detectable fairly fast. And alcohol is ok to abuse. Why? It would…

It is BS, but I was under the impression it's more a CYA strategy for liability if a worker has an accident that puts the company at risk. IE imagine a roofer drops a shingle on someone's head, accidents happen and the roofer was sober but if they can't pass a drug test the company could be in serious hot water in a negligence lawsuit. BS runs downhill, so to speak.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#258

Post by opportune »

moduspol wrote: post #233
opportune wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don't think we should be incentivizing people to show up to work under threat of homelessness/starvation like we did in the past, even if it may be more effective. If people want to live their lives in the "comfort" of SNAP and SSI, I'm personally ok with it. The market will adjust and maybe those blue collar jobs will begin paying even more (or people will adapt)

Nobody questions your personal ability to voluntarily provide for them, though. The question is how much the rest of us are involuntarily having to provide for them, and more relevantly, whether or not society is even really being improved if the result is an increasing number of people so unable / unwilling to contribute to society that they can't even be bothered to show up for an interview. It is very easy to spen…

Well ok, but that's up to our votes to decide. You may vote one way and I will vote my way. If you don't want to provide for these people under these circumstances, vote for someone who will roll back welfare. The system wouldn't work if taxes were voluntary (how many people were poor before welfare when charity was the only way people got help?) so I see no moral hazard in coercing people who don't want to support the poor to do so

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#259

Post by Ascetik »

lostlogin wrote: post #250
danielvf wrote: post #9

I worked with small / medium manufacturers in the prosperous part of the Southeast. Hiring is brutal currently. Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of sho…

I hate the drug testing bs. How is that relevant? If the worker is present, is sober, and not hungover what business is it of the employers what the employee does on their own time? The drugs that are readily detectable are mostly the ones that don’t matter too, while the ones that are more concerning (to me anyway) are either not tested for or are not detectable fairly fast. And alcohol is ok to abuse. Why? It would…

Because they are a liability if they come to work high, or they have illegal drugs on them at work.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#260

Post by mac01021 »

gjem97 wrote: post #231
hyperion2010 wrote: post #107

I had a long talk with a guy getting his general contractor's license yesterday. He told me that down in San Diego they are continually short on construction workers, so much that one of his friends said that there is 10 years worth of construction that needs to be done and no one to do it. Wages at ~$45/hr, and probably rising, some projects paying perdiems for commutes from Orange County. Strange.

I always find it a bit strange when people talk about shortages of non-price-controlled goods and services. When you say that the industry is "short on construction workers", there's an implicit "who will work for what we used to pay them." It seems to me like it's someone who hires in that industry trying to entice more talent to come help lower the price again, rather than an accurate description of the state of th…

If it takes 3 years to become good at construction work, there can definitely be a 3+ year shortage in qualified construction workers.
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