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

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

#281

Post by LurkerAtTheGate » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #200

nicoburns wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine a lit of these people have gotten permission and made arrangements with their employers in advance.

That being said, this is not necessarily easy even for large employers, because until now there wasn't a need to clarify if workers were subject to the income, payroll etc. taxes and employee protection, health insurance contracts of their working or resident state. It is totally possible to be a large Fortune 500 company in the US and not be set up to do paperwork in, I don't know, Alaska or Wyoming or Idaho.

As someone navigating this right now - it's a mess. Business is in a no-income-tax state, I moved to 4% state, and it was deemed easiest to be personally responsible for paying quarterly estimates so the business isn't on the hook for paying business taxes to a state it doesn't do any business in. Some states, however, decided now was a good time to declare a single remote worker in their state means that company has a nexus there, and thus owes all corporate taxes to that state.

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

#282

Post by RobertKerans » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #274

RobertKerans wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry, it just seemed a bizarre comment: you said it was less busy when you visited it, at a point in time when everywhere was less busy, nothing to do with overall sales Edit: sorry not OP

I’m not the original poster, but I would expect sales to correlate with “busy-ness”. To your point though, I guess if everyone was doing takeout, sales could still go up and the place could be empty. Where I’m located though, it seems like businesses have been open for dine in for months and people are filling the dining rooms

Yeah, fair as does depend on country (and region)

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

#283

Post by bumby » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #276

bumby wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a market economy there is no such thing as a "shortage" of workers. Certainly there can be a lag effect though. If there is a shortage of doctors that won’t be remedied overnight by simply increasing incentives because of the amount of time to gain the necessary skills, licensing, etc. Unless you are willing to lower quality substantially, there absolutely can be worker shortages in a real pragmatic sense

Except the discussion here is truck drivers (lag: 60 days) and restaurant workers (lag: ~ 0 days).

The comment I replied to didn’t mention truck drivers. They brought up a hypothetical widget factory as an analogy for the economy at large

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

#284

Post by UnpossibleJim » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #146

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…

> 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…

I can't speak to statistics at large, but anecdotally, my wife was laid off and we needed someone with our son during "home schooling" anyway, so she just continued on to get her degree since many universities have an online option at the moment (which should continue and expand). With the variant, we have this same option next year, though no unemployment and we'll just be a single income while she finishes up her last half year or so.

In our case, it wasn't the "refusing to go back to work to make a better life" narrative that's getting pushed; it's more the, she had to stay home with our son while he's in school, but what does she do while he's in school all day? You only have to be sort of involved. You might as well be productive, but you have trouble being productive enough to really work.

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

#285

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #74

benou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that but keep in mind the job market is very different from one location to another and from one sector to another. The BBC is talking about truck drivers in the UK and it is hardly a surprise: UK used to rely heavily on eastern Europe workers in that area, and they vote (Brexit) to prevent exactly that. They got what they asked for. If anything, we can complain that the BBC article title is too gen…

In a market economy there is no such thing as a "shortage" of workers. You just don't want to meet the market price of the workers with that skill set. You could imagine a widget factory whose economics rely on paying employees X, it doesn't mean there's a "shortage" of workers, but the workers demand a wage that makes your work unprofitable. The fact is a lot of people are paid not to work through generous covid-rel…

> In a market economy there is no such thing as a "shortage" of workers

That's...not true. If you make a bunch of Econ 101-level simplifying assumptions, like that supply and demand curves are continuous, of infinite range, and monotonically increasing and decreasing, respectively, with price, it is a natural conclusion, but those “assume a cow is a perfectly thermoconducting sphere” kind of assumptions don't hold in real market economies.

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

#286

Post by aix1 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

dazc wrote: post #236

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 currently many more licensed UK drivers not working in the industry than there are vacancies. Maybe ask why so many people have chosen to do other things such as amazon delivery or other such jobs that pay better, have better conditions and don't require regular medicals and certification, etc paid from one's own pocket?

> There are currently many more licensed UK drivers not working in the industry than there are vacancies.

Do you have data to back this up (specifically for HGV-licensed drivers, which is what the post you replied to was talking about)?

I briefly looked for stats around valid HGV licences out there, but couldn't find any recent figures.

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

#287

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#288

Post by gwright » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

dazc wrote: post #219

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?

One of the UK employers currently moaning about a lack of workers had a policy of only employing people for 16 hours a week since this was the optimum hours a person could work whilst still receiving tax credits and housing benefit. Around 10 years ago I was in the labour market willing to do pretty much anything and these kinds of jobs accounted for most of what was available. Since I wasn't 'on benefits' I was at t…

This is a great example of perversive incentives driven by ill-conceived benefit rules.

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

#289

Post by rantwasp » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

kktkti9 wrote: post #259

nimbius wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alre…

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

You’re being generous. I would say we haven’t evolved in thousands of years.

I mean sure, the tech is better but we’re the same self absorbed, careless bipeds we’ve always been.

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

#290

Post by bumby » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

bruce343434 wrote: post #85

xwdv wrote: post #69

Don’t know about UK but in the US former employees are sitting at home collecting juiced up unemployment benefits thanks to COVID and not paying rents. But the free ride is finally coming to an end and the evictions are starting soon. These people will be living on the street for the foreseeable future. Many companies do not hire homeless.

This massive destabilization/bubble you are describing is not a good thing by the way.

I know the commenter you’re referring to may come across as venting but I’ll try to be generous to their take:

In my laymans understanding of game theory, one of the things that becomes apparent is that the best outcomes come from cooperation but only when freeloading can be kept below some threshold. Once freeloading reaches some tipping point, the system destabilizes and collapses.