It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
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Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#2It's amazing how business seems to understand the free market when it's selling to customers, but can't seem figure out the free market when it comes to hiring labor.
Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#3It's amazing how business seems to understand the free market when it's selling to customers, but can't seem figure out the free market when it comes to hiring labor.
They totally understand but they also know that lying and propaganda work extremely well and are cheaper.
Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#4It's surprising businesses haven't turned to automation.
At the very least, most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready, and using robots to prepare more of the food. they can do lattes with art all by themselves now.
A lot of these businesses just can't survive if they meet the wage demands of people who have benefitted from substantial stimulus over the last 2 years.
Automation would increase the quality of their service and reduce costs in the long run. I keep hearing about how much workers hate these jobs, so they should be happy to see them go away.
Edit: every example I gave above has been observed successfully in action. They just haven't been widely deployed enough to become a norm.
Other jobs that can be replaced:
- host -> seat yourself sign
- server -> pager, bus your table, ordering tablet (with just ordering, don't put ads and games like they did 5 years ago)
- barista -> robot/dispenser tech can manage several facilities simultaneously
- retail/grocery -> see what Amazon is doing
- cleaning/janitorial -> robots and more innovative cleaning apprpaches could save a lot more effort. Japan has self-cleaning public toilets.
Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#5It's amazing how business seems to understand the free market when it's selling to customers, but can't seem figure out the free market when it comes to hiring labor.
They likely do understand, but are just waiting for the extra federal unemployment benefits to end. The smart choice (from an employer's standpoint) would be to make it past September 6th without significantly increasing wages, then evaluate. If they give workers a higher wage now and it turns out to be unnecessary once the extra unemployment ends, it'll be pretty much impossible to take that back without replacing the entire staff at once.
Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#6It's amazing how business seems to understand the free market when it's selling to customers, but can't seem figure out the free market when it comes to hiring labor.
Business does understand the free market. It is also strongly incentivised to exhibit perpetual exponential growth. Perpetual exponential growth is impossible even on relatively short duration spans (decades), see the parable of the rice and chessboard. Business tries to maintain the illusion of perpetual exponential growth by making cuts everywhere it can: worker compensation and product quality.
https://purposefocuscommitment.medium.com/the-rice-and-the-c...
Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#7Or maybe it’s a government-benefits surplus. That’s the only thing that’s actually changed.
Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#8This is so visible even in the tech industry.
If your company has trouble hiring, it's a signal that something is wrong with the hiring process and the company needs to change it. Maybe stop leetcode nonsense, maybe offer more equity. Your managers should spend time to figure out the root cause and fix the problem. If your management cannot figure it out, fire them first.
If your company has trouble retaining engineers, it's a signal that something is wrong with the work environment. It could be pay. It could be lack of promotions. It could be a lack of recognition for the amount of work they are putting in. Once again, it is the management's job to figure out the root cause and fix it. If they can't, fire your management first. Hire/promote people who can do something different.
It is quite clear that in a hot economy, a lot of employers will need to reevaluate if they have the right decision makers in the first place.
Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#9It's surprising businesses haven't turned to automation. At the very least, most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready, and using robots to prepare more of the food. they can do lattes with art all by themselves now. A lot of these businesses just can't survive if they meet the wage demands of people who have be…
Might this be happening already? It seems like ordering at the counter is becoming more popular compared to full service, even for somewhat upscale food. Also, food trucks are popular.
Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage
#10After doing absolutely anything and everything possible for the past 18 months to create a dysfunctional economy, it is laughable to contribute the current five-alarm fire in the US labor market to bad pay and shifting worker expectations.