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

Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 385 posts

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#81

Post by jenscow »

fergie wrote: post #55

The labour squeeze is placing upward pressure on wages, which is pumping more money into the economy which is in turn exacerbating the labour squeeze. Wages have been stagnant in the UK for too long. In the last decade or so certain sectors of the economy (hospitality, agriculture, nursing) have been too dependent on a vulnerable "serf class" of easily exploitable workers. That workers have got more money to spend is…

But if there aren't enough workers to give the pay increase to, then what?

Reducing the pool of workers (Brexit) doesn't sold the wage problem.

If a production line requires 30 people, and there are only 20... increasing their wages won't help.

It won't encourage additional staff, as company B to Z is doing the same, and people aren't out of work because the wages are too low.

Increasing minimum wage is the better way to do it.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#84

Post by tonyedgecombe »

retube wrote: post #40
have_faith wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked at the data but I imagine foreign tourists mostly go to London and a few venture out to nearby hotspots. People within the UK seem to be branching out to every half-beauty spot we have in every corner of the Isles.

Clearly you have never been to Oxford, Bath, York, Edinburgh, Lake District, Cornwall etc etc which are teeming with visitors from the US, China, Japan and many other countries during the summer...

Not this year nor last. I live just outside Oxford and visit Bath regularly and both have been quiet compared to normal.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#85

Post by mmarq »

tomp wrote: post #62
mmarq wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no opposition to gaslight, the vast majority of the population believes the myth of immigration reducing wages, while there’s no evidence of it being true (you are welcome to provide some). This vast majority is not the opposition, but the force that elected the past 3-4 conservative and euro-skeptic governments that gave us the “hostile environment for foreigners”. In the UK, EU nationals earn more than the…

The proof is in the pudding: "we can't find local workers willing to work for these low wages so we'll import them from abroad". A lot of EU immigrants come to London to work in tech/finance because they offer higher wages than pretty much anywhere on the continent (I was one of them). But the working class is pretty far removed from the effect of professional-class immigration. The UK has many other structural probl…

> The proof is in the pudding: "we can't find local workers willing to work for these low wages so we'll import them from abroad".

Everywhere in world there are labour shortages, because we just ended lockdowns 3 months ago. In other places they are blaming the shortage on the young being lazy or on unemployment benefits, with the same scientific rigour. So I’m still waiting for a proof (not a pun or an anecdote) that immigration reduces salaries.

> A lot of EU immigrants come to London to work in tech/finance because they offer higher wages than pretty much anywhere on the continent (I was one of them).

Which means that EU nationals living in the UK earn more than the locals, so they can’t be driving salaries down. Unless you hypothesise a fantasy counterfactual where Jack deChav, who’s now an underpaid bartender, would have become a software developer and would be earning 6 digits if only Carlos de Perros, S/W developer from Malaga, didn’t steal his job.

> But the working class is pretty far removed from the effect of professional-class immigration.

Whatever the working class is in the UK, if they believe that immigration reduces salaries, they are far removed from any modern notion of truth.

> The UK has many other structural problems so collapsing the whole Brexit discussion into one dimension is a bit of an over-simplification, though if you asked me to do the PCA, I'd say the main cause was "protest vote". (Pre-BJ governments weren't Euro-sceptic.)

I’m not collapsing anything into anything. I’ve read a false statement “immigration reduces salaries” and I replied to it. Incidentally the UK has been playing with “hostile environments”, euro-skepticism and Brexit and yet real salaries are still below 2008.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#86

Post by CuriouslyC »

mschuster91 wrote: post #65
api wrote: post #17

Good. Wages must be forced up. You can’t have a modern economy without a capitalized middle class. Real estate is so ludicrous we need quite a bit of inflation to make it reasonable again. The alternative would be a deflationary crash where real estate crashes and obliterates everyone’s home equity, but that is far more painful to virtually everyone.

> Real estate is so ludicrous we need quite a bit of inflation to make it reasonable again. Alternatively, we could invest in rural areas and other left-behind areas ("flyover states" in the US, Eastern Germany in Germany). Right now, the infrastructure there is flat-out unable to sustain quality modern human life unless you're Amish and fine with travelling on horseback: no high speed internet, no public transport,…

Rural areas aren't so bad off. Satellite and boosted cellular internet are a thing, and that covers the education, entertainment and business opportunity categories. Health care and shopping are infrequent things that you can drive for as needed.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#87

Post by vxland »

Europe has evaded classical market economy by importing more people who'd work for lower wages at the slightest hint of any labor shortage.

Pre-immigration such people would be called scabs.

Now that you have Brexit, raise the wages. That's why people voted for it in an unusual recognition of their self-interests.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#88

Post by spywaregorilla »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #25
ndr wrote: post #11

"We advertised locally for 70 fruit-pickers and we had nine applications. On follow-up, only one was still available... in terms of recruiting locally, we failed completely," says Ali Capper, the owner of Stocks Farm in Suckley and chair of British Apples and Pears. At her orchard, harvest has just started. It must be done quickly and requires many pairs of hands. Ali had to turn to specialist recruitment firms and h…

Lorry drivers getting 40% higher pay: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-... In fact I can see this happening across many industries, and if you are one of those people working minimum wage can only be a good thing? The import of cheap labour does push down the wages of the working class - so the middle/upper classes get to buy cheaper fruit... I believe farmers will have to work with this ne…

A guy driving a truck might enable 10,000 burger sales in an hour. A cashier might enable 100. It's easier to raise the truck driver's wage.

Raising wages and prices can be done, of course. But if you're planning to export those goods to other countries, you've just made your products more expensive. If your goods are fungible, you may not be able to raise the price at all. Higher wages might simply make your business not viable in the context of international trade.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#89

Post by throw84848 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #83

If only there were people willing to move to your country from their current bad situation, so eager for citizenship they’d take on any job.. it’s almost an arrangement too good to be true

> so eager for citizenship they’d take on any job

You disgust me for wishing we were exploiting people like this.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#90

Post by Levitz »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #32
api wrote: post #17

Good. Wages must be forced up. You can’t have a modern economy without a capitalized middle class. Real estate is so ludicrous we need quite a bit of inflation to make it reasonable again. The alternative would be a deflationary crash where real estate crashes and obliterates everyone’s home equity, but that is far more painful to virtually everyone.

What prevents landlords from simply soaking up the wage increases then?

What prevents landlords from getting any arbitrary amount of money from their tenants?

I think this is a different problem regarding housing.

Post reply on HN