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There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

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Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#91

Post by whybroke »

cbdfghh wrote: post #83
whybroke wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or maybe the job their trying to fill isn't worth that much to them (the employers, that is)? Just imagine the businesses that suddenly become profitable if employers could provide nothing beyond room and board and employees weren't allowed to quit!

>employees weren't allowed to quit In the US you can quit and look for another job, the same way how MS can exit the OS market. The same way MS doesn't leave the OS market (too lucrative), most people don't walk off on their jobs.

non-compete clause

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#93

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

cbdfghh wrote: post #80

The issue is that US workers now compete with the whole world. Until the 70s, the US really had no competition. To compete, you need a stable (legal) system - No one would invest money in a country where it's not far-fetched that someone will overthrow the government, nationalizes your company and throws you in jail. Oh, and because of geo-politics, one couldn't invest in USSR friendly countries (both from the US sid…

US workers are having to deal with reality itself after an entire history of avoiding it.

"Free land" from genocided native Americans. No equivalently armed and organized opposition from Virginia to California.

"Free labor" from slavery.

Poverty wages during the gilded age; easy-to-access industrial fuels like lumber and coal, and later oil. Again, all available on stolen land.

Early 20th century, Europe was beating itself up so often America became a superpower by pure virtue of being the only power not bombed to shit by 1945.

Through mid 20th century, America artificially suppressed the domestic cost of living at home through economic imperialism by, among other things, overthrowing other regimes - including democracies - that threatened America's economic dominance and control of natural resources, like Guatemala for food and Iran for oil (although the U.K. started it).

So this is the first time the US has ever had to compete on anything close to an even footing.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#94

Post by antisthenes »

logfromblammo wrote: post #89
moxious wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no fast way out of the situation. Training and education is ultimately the answer, but to fill today's jobs, that needed to happen 2-4 years ago. So today, I think we're up a creek in any case. Still, best get to training and educating people ASAP, because 2 years from now is coming sooner than most people think. We could complain about how much it costs to do this, or we could just shut up, do it, and then e…

People aren't stupid. They don't just want jobs ; they want careers . Training makes sense for a job that has a career path. If you learned to drive a road tractor, you started by working for a transport company until you save up enough to buy your own rig, then you were a contractor for one of those companies until you got an agent to get you the loads you wanted on the routes you liked. Maybe eventually you got off…

Generally people don't give a shit whether you call it a job or a career as long as it helps them achieve their life goals.

The reality is that unless you're doing something related to IT or got a cushy management job through nepotism, or getting massively subsidized by your parents, you're unlikely to progress to major life goals, like house ownership and starting a family, both of which require the ability to save a decent portion of your paycheck.

People just want jobs that leave them with something after rent+food+healthcare and the reality is that the pool of these "good" jobs is shrinking by the year and requires multiple years of expensive education and at least above average intelligence, because you're competing globally against the upper middle classes of other countries as well.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#95

Post by MarkMc »

maxsilver wrote: post #42
michael_h wrote: post #6

I'm always baffled by the people in these articles. From the anecdote at the beginning: he's having trouble hiring people for $12/hour (up to $70K/year with bonuses, etc). I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are just lazy and don't want to work.

So this job pays $12/hr. Which is $1,555.05/month after tax, assuming 40hr work week. And the average 1-bed apartment rents in North Charleston, SC is roughly $1100/month (according to Zillow), leaving the employee $450/month to cover all food + medical + debt + transit + utilities and any other expenses. I can't imagine why no one is taking the position. It sounds like a fulfilling opportunity to install auto glass…

$12 per hour is somewhat less than the median personal income in the US [1], so I would not expect the auto glass worker to pay median rent. There may also be an option to live in a cheaper area outside North Charleston.

I agree it's not a fulfilling job, but I wouldn't characterise it as "living on the poverty line". The job pays $24,000 per year but for a single person the official poverty line is $11,770 [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite...

[2] https://aspe.hhs.gov/2015-poverty-guidelines

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#96

Post by madengr »

zhivota wrote: post #72
niftich wrote: post #2

I'm trying to reconcile these two quotes: > a few good auto-glass installers, no experience necessary and, > commissioned a study of company shortages. Energy, water, and land came up, but the No. 1 answer around the world was skilled labor Perhaps no experience is necessary for the auto-glass gig, but the metal stamping and machining? Are these all trades one can pick up on the job, by walking in from the street? Be…

Draw that graph back further before 2006 and you'll see that labor participation was lower from 1948-1984, almost 40 years. It appears to have peaked between 1990 and 2008, but even today it's not quite as low as it was during a time of pretty solid prosperity (50s and 60s). Even today's rate is only 3% or so lower than the 2006 rate, so if you add it to the unemployment rate it's still not very bad. Just another per…

I assume the low rate from 1948-84 was due to 1 person working in a married household. Then it increased as both persons worked to maintain middle class, followed by recession. So low labor participation with high prosperity back then, and low participation with low prosperity now.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#97

Post by [deleted] »

zhivota wrote: post #72
niftich wrote: post #2

I'm trying to reconcile these two quotes: > a few good auto-glass installers, no experience necessary and, > commissioned a study of company shortages. Energy, water, and land came up, but the No. 1 answer around the world was skilled labor Perhaps no experience is necessary for the auto-glass gig, but the metal stamping and machining? Are these all trades one can pick up on the job, by walking in from the street? Be…

Draw that graph back further before 2006 and you'll see that labor participation was lower from 1948-1984, almost 40 years. It appears to have peaked between 1990 and 2008, but even today it's not quite as low as it was during a time of pretty solid prosperity (50s and 60s). Even today's rate is only 3% or so lower than the 2006 rate, so if you add it to the unemployment rate it's still not very bad. Just another per…

[deleted]

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#98

Post by madengr »

jwtadvice wrote: post #58

America recently redefined what unemployment means. It used to mean "the amount of people currently capable of working, who are not employed in work." The new definition is "the amount of people who want a job, but can't find one". Basically the difference between structural unemployment and transitive unemployment. America used to track transitive unemployment, but through a series of reforms have narrowed in on mea…

It seems like now binomial, people are making $60/hr. The middle has been sucked out.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#99

Post by madengr »

zhivota wrote: post #82
jellicle wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than the 3% of all workers who have become permanently discouraged workers in the past decade, you mean? http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 It's only 5 million people or so, so I guess you're saying that's not "big".

Expand the graph back to 1948, where it starts, and you'll see labor participation is higher now than it was from 1948-1984. So it's not that simple, unfortunately.

Back then, 1 income could raise a family. The participation was not needed.

Re: There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America

#100

Post by secabeen »

antisthenes wrote: post #94
logfromblammo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't stupid. They don't just want jobs ; they want careers . Training makes sense for a job that has a career path. If you learned to drive a road tractor, you started by working for a transport company until you save up enough to buy your own rig, then you were a contractor for one of those companies until you got an agent to get you the loads you wanted on the routes you liked. Maybe eventually you got off…

Generally people don't give a shit whether you call it a job or a career as long as it helps them achieve their life goals. The reality is that unless you're doing something related to IT or got a cushy management job through nepotism, or getting massively subsidized by your parents, you're unlikely to progress to major life goals, like house ownership and starting a family, both of which require the ability to save…

You do make a good point that while you can live on $12/hr, it's not a wage at which you can save much money.
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