Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 531 posts

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

#411

Post by lightning19 »

DethNinja wrote: post #199
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.

Mechanical Engineering is a very saturated field and it is very hard to open your own company. If you want to become self employed in that field then you need good connections more than talent. I would recommend switching to software engineering. Not that software engineering is much better but at least self employment will be a bit easier.

Agreed, I'm a mech engineer by education. Saw the writing on the wall half way through my degree and learnt how to code in my spare time. I'm an SWE now, it has literally changed the course of my life, had I stuck with engineering my household would not have an income worthy enough to pay for basic needs + internet. Some of my friends from university are still unemployed, it's so bad that I know someone with a MSc in Engineering working in a mall as a salesman.

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

#412

Post by bigbob2 »

f0xytr0xy wrote: post #309
hellbannedguy wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just head this same rap from a blowhard senator who's state is loaded with Covid. "The self-respect that comes with working." Read this like you are nursing a hangover. Americans are fed up with lousy jobs that treat them like crap.

Most likely that senator is from a net-taker state like kentucky or arkansas, one that would be bankrupt without california and new york overpaying the fed to subsidize poor republican states.

There is also more affluence in California and the Northeast vs Middle America. Regardless of politics Middle America is not going to be granted the same economic opportunities as coastal regions.

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

#413

Post by robocat »

DrewRWx wrote: post #379
derefr wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say we haven’t evolved in thousands of years. We’ve become slightly more lactose-tolerant!

And the appendix became seemingly useless.

1. If the appendix was both useless and deadly (before procreation), there would be a strong evolutionary pressure against it, so it likely is unobviously useful

2. Western diet possibly causes problems with the appendix - "Appendicitis is uncommon in rural Africa and Asia"

3. Anatomy involved with immune function or microbiome is hard to understand function.

From links:

The peak incidence occurs in the 15- to 24-year-old age group. However older individuals are more likely to have complications and die from the malady. Symptoms of appendicitis in older people frequently are not as clear-cut as are symptoms in younger people.

People with acute appendicitis often think they would feel better if they just could move their bowels. To encourage a bowel movement, they take a laxative. This is a serious mistake, one that may lead to rupture of the appendix.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1987-04-14-87012404...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-funct...

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

#414

Post by Telemakhos »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #196
heurisko wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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. This is the primary trick that journalists use in these stories: They find a couple examples of people doing something, interview them, and then pretend those people are a sample of a much larger movement. They don’t cite statistics or numbers, however easy to find, because putting a…

Before COVID there were between thirteen and seventeen million empty homes in he US, many due to foreclosure. There were (and likely still are) enough homes to house everyone, including the homeless, only the distribution is skewed so that there are few empty houses where jobs are (cities).

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

#415

Post by lkrubner »

Let's set aside, for a moment, the very poorest people, who are just struggling to survive. Let's talk about every family (emphasis on family and not individual) that is above poverty.

The people in the family work to achieve a certain standard of living. If they want to afford 2 weeks in Bermuda every summer and 2 weeks at Vale every winter, then maybe they work a little extra to afford those things. Maybe they work longer hours, or pick up an extra job.

Indeed, consider that in the USA male wages were stagnant or declining for most of the period 1973-2000 and yet family income rose steadily until 2000. That's because women were entering the work force, and their additional income more than made up for their husband's losses.

We just had 18 months where people's standard of living was reduced by government edict. Some people have grown used to the new, lower standard of living. Others plan to raise their standard of living, but plan to be strategic about it.

It is well known that the lockdown affected women more than men. But as things get back to something like normal, there will be no repeat of the somewhat casual way that women picked up low-wage work during the period 1973-2000. To the extent that women rejoin the workforce, they are going to be more strategic about it.

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

#416

Post by jfk13 »

nicoburns wrote: post #385
bobthepanda wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that 11 US states by themselves are larger than the entirety of the UK; Oregon, for example. I don't know if tax is assessed differently for say Scottish rather than English residents, and 32 US states are larger than England. This is going to be an issue if you move anywhere within a country with a federal system of government. For EU residents I imagine this also gets tricky for people who decide to WF…

Yeah, that was kind of my point. There's plenty of room to move within a US state without running into these issues. FWIW I believe the income tax system is the same across the UK. There might be different local taxes in Scotland, but your employer wouldn't need to concern themselves with those.

No, Scottish income tax is different, so the employer does need to deal with it. (Though I imagine most UK payroll systems have such options.)

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

#417

Post by gruez »

stiray wrote: post #303

I think that people started to realize, that they can live much better with lower amount of money. What corona crisis did to me was suddenly figuring out that just, from the pure fact of not leaving home much (or I would rather say, not going into the consumers world any more - I rather went to a forest, hills, rivers, lakes,...), there was an overhead of 500 euros left on my bank account each month. Same life but th…

> I think that people started to realize, that they can live much better with lower amount of money.

I might be able to buy this argument if the person in question is making 6 figures, but what about the median person making $36k/year? If you can barely make rent, reducing your working hours because "can live much better with lower amount of money" isn't really an option.

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

#418

Post by throwtheacctawy »

I believe there are more types of jobs, and jobs that allow people to set their own terms.

Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Rover, Wag, Onlyfans, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok, Etsy, Amazon FLex, drop-shipping with a Shopify storefront - there are countless (new) ways for kids to make money now. And many of these jobs allow people to define when they work and how they approach work.

They simply don’t have to work the same type of entry level jobs we all had available to us. Plus the proliferation of jobs involved in the supply chain & warehousing has to be mentioned. What wants to interact with fussy and aggravating customers all day in a hot and smelly fast food restaurant?

We can’t forget - population growth is leveling off in many developed economies, while service sector job growth continues.

Toss an aging population, reduce immigration, and it is a recipe for the current situation.

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

#419

Post by coryrc »

bluedino wrote: post #264
rossdavidh wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

What rich bubble do you live in where kids go to summer camp?

"summer camp" is also "day care outside during the summer" not only "sleepaway camp".

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

#420

Post by bawana »

Handouts and ubi are bad. Raising minimum wage is good. Consider iceland. Most of their lower pay workers were immigrants who returned to their countries when covid hit. And they are still in debt from the 2008 crash. Unlike the US, they cannot print more dollars to bail themselves out. Yet Iceland's minimum wage is $19/hr and healthcare is free. How can they manage to treat their people so much better than we treat ours??
Post reply on HN