Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone? • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by veltas » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #183

ipaddr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Our local pizza places have raised prices dramatically in the last 6 months (16” pizza went from ~$10 to ~$15). 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.

What you actually need to do is keep your prices the same while everyone else raises their prices and collect all their business, then you can afford to pay your workers more. But the end effect is the same, less work for people.

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

#252

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

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.

In many families, summers are typically full of "summer camps" that are actually "themed daycare for older kids". Those were mostly closed as well during the pandemic lockdown phase, and some still haven't come back (in the US, anyway).

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

#253

Post by hibikir » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

peakaboo wrote: post #42

oblio wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will stop, at some point. IT is still growing but we're reaching the point where IT workers are a decent percentage of all workers, so they are starting to become representative of the population at large. Larger and larger cohorts of IT workers are aging and recent graduates will stop being enough even for the top companies. Also, salaries are lower in general but I get the impression Europe is better in this reg…

Salaries may be lower but work/life balance seems much higher in Europe.

This is something that is very difficult to see at a distance: Just like in politics, it's very easy to get an unrepresentative picture of the world online.

I am a Spaniard who was fortunate to qualify to a US visa, so I was able to come over. I have many friends who went into CS, but didn't have the chances to come over as I did. As far as Spain goes, what I am able to make in the American Midwest pays for an entire team of developers in my hometown, who don't get more vacations than I do, and often work far longer hours.

And it's not just Spain. A local company here has started a Polish development center, because despite the language barriers, and the time difference, it's hard to pass up a total cost per employee of about 1/4th the equivalent developer in Missouri, and those Missouri developers get a month of vacation, and nobody works more than 40 hours a week.

If the concern is just places with bad work/life balance, we can find them on both sides of the Atlantic. My brother in Spain works 60 hour weeks more often than not, just like some people I know at very large online retailers. Those kind of situations can happen anywhere: But in some cases someone gets to choose it because they like the RSUs that come with it, and in others, it's just that the local market really is that bad.

So if I were you, I'd look in detail, as a generalization on work life balance might be very different than you think once you are on the ground. Take a look at "The trimodal nature of the European software market". There really are very few jobs in the top tier, the second tier is quite a bit worse than the US's second tier, for similar work/life balance, and the third tier is so far from the US, you might as well be comparing working conditions of Software developers with Uber drivers.

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

#254

Post by username90 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #218

stripline wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because American's can't afford vacations without more money.

Americans have far more disposable incomes than Europeans. It's not even close. Average household consumption in the US is 65% higher than Germany.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...

That measure is wrong, it was designed to make USA look better. Read this part about the measure, it misses government subsidised healthcare etc:

> Household final consumption expenditure (HFCE) is not an exhaustive measure of the goods and services consumed by households. The general government and non-profit institutions serving households (NPISH) often provide goods and services to households for their individual consumption free of charge or at reduced prices. Examples are health services provided by governments or reimbursed by a social security fund, education services, the part of service provided by public museums, concert halls, operas, swimming pools that is not financed by entrance fees, aid for social housing etc. By adding the general government's and NPISHs' individual consumption expenditure to household final consumption expenditure one receives the actual final consumption of households.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_final_consumption_ex...

Edit: Also another way to interpret that value is that is how much households has to spend to uphold decent way of life in that country. So it is really expensive to live in America so people have to work hard to survive. Of course you can't say for sure what is true, but if an American has to spend 50% more to live the same quality of life as a German person then of course he will be less willing to take vacation instead of the money.

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

#255

Post by yhoneycomb » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

bserge wrote: post #3

I literally can't find a job in any kind of engineering. Applied for dozens of cleaning and production positions and couldn't get a job. You know what the media has become? A cesspool of bullshit unworthy of any trust. No wonder so many people mistrust actual experts, it's hard to even tell who they are.

The worst is when they say "experts say" and then just say whatever their own opinion was.

Sure, you can find "experts" to say anything. I'm more interested in who exactly you're talking about, or what data you're referring to. "Experts say" is just such a lazy and often misleading statement.

I've seen way too more articles that claimed "experts said" something which was NOT at all the consensus opinion.

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

#256

Post by 100-xyz » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

beebeepka wrote: post #153

BlissWaves wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, on top of it ageism in tech can appear as early as late twenties!

That's nuts but I can believe it. My own experience is that if I am being interviewed by a 20 something, I am not getting the job no matter what. Not a single exception in a decade now lol. It's real

Strongly agree. Has been my experience as well.

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

#257

Post by RobertKerans » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #183

ipaddr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Our local pizza places have raised prices dramatically in the last 6 months (16” pizza went from ~$10 to ~$15). 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.

Is this a joke comment? I'm starting to lose the ability to see sarcasm I think. Why would you have expected them to have been busy in the last six months?

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

#258

Post by ryanobjc » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #164

whall6 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Why would I seek a job if the unemployment benefits pay me nearly as much to do nothing?

And the employer perspective: Why would I try to compete with unemployment benefits that are ending in a few months? The situation is temporary and has obviously causal factors that are coming to an end soon (unemployment benefits, school out for summer). Journalists seem to be going out of their way to ignore these and pretend that something else is happening.

Are you sure?

Those states that cut people off unemployment didn’t see a boost in employment rates. Sooo now what?

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

#259

Post by kktkti9 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #214

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…

Anecdotal but...can we mention burn-out? as a "blue collar" worker i dont think anyone mentions it enough. I have a coworker who left a 9-5 body shop making decent money as a painter for a medical billing job that was closer to her father in 2020. she came back to that body shop just two weeks ago because she was pulling non-stop mandatory overtime in a salary position that treated her like trash. she never even gave…

Turns out a “services based” economy is a euphemism for austerity based economy.

Adam Smith claimed that “…landlords' role in the economic process is passive. Their ability to reap a revenue solely from ownership of land tends to make them indolent and inept, and so they tend to be unable to even look after their own economic interests".

Look at dollar rich rent seekers destabilizing their value store.

Dead guys already had human economics figured out.

Humans haven’t literally evolved that much in 200 years.

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

#260

Post by bumby » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

cbushko wrote: post #91

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could probably go to the Web sites of at least a dozen successful IT companies, and go to the "Meet the Team" page. They are invariably a large group of smiling -young- faces. There may be one or two greyhairs in the picture, but a quick shufti of the "Leadership" page often shows them to be C-suite or Board. Yeah, I'm a cynic.

When you are old, everyone looks young. =) I see 35 year olds and think "that guy is just a kid"!

This made me chuckle as it reminded me of an older employee referring to another employee as “one of the good interns”. Except the guy he was talking about was in his late 30s and had been with the company for over 5 years :-)