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LOL, I have read the headlines. But it aint matching what I am seeing unless we are talking about some small rural town that was losing population even before Covid-19
Not in my area.
Where do you live, Utopia?
Anyway, you asked for sources, not anecdotes. I gave you sources, not anecdotes (MORE sources, I might add). Now you're just giving anecdotes, which is all I've seen from you anyway. "Not where I live." OK. Can you possibly think outside just your very small location or mindset? IT'S A NATIONAL PROBLEM. It may be a global problem, who knows?
(By the way, I don't live in "some small rural town that was losing population even before COVID 19.")
Now the UE benefits are ending many will return to these jobs.
Maybe.
A lot of these people saved a lot of money up, or found some other job.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grlzrl
They gave $300 a week in additional unemployment. To put it in perspective, after the 2008 financial crisis, Obama gave $25 additional per week.
It was probably warranted for about a year. After that, things began opening back up again. We've been in this labor shortage mode since at least the spring.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
The goal was for people to control the pandemic, isolate so as not to spread the virus, and to not cause a collapse of the economy when we forced its shutdown because of the virus.
It'll take some time for Humpty Dumpty to be put back together again.
In retrospect, we did too many pandemic restrictions too widely and indiscriminately. There should have been regional shutdowns as needed and clearer protocols of what level of restrictions were needed for what intensity level of covid spread. But we all freaked out.
I live in Northeast TN. When the shutdown happened last year, our cases were generally in the single digits every day. We didn't have a somewhat substantial number of cases until last summer. The shutdown back in spring 2020 "shot the wad" for people here. There was nearly no virus here then.
Inpatient counts are now far above any previous peak, but there's no appetite locally for any restrictions.
Is there anyway the Bureau of Labor Stats can guarantee these "available" jobs are really an urgent must hire now guaranteed long term job and not just a fishing proposition? Will the employers be punished for false reporting?
"Available" is an ambiguous term. It may be available, but not urgent, and employer can sit on it until literally the perfect person or right situation calls for it.
I remember when I got out of college, I looked through Dept of Labor sponsored websites for available jobs. I am sure these websites and Bureau of Labor Stats are connected in some way through the Dept of Labor. Lots of listings abound. I must have sent out 100s of inquiries but no one ever responded to me. They were all just fishing propositions.
I work for a hospital system's IT department. We're in a small city, so pay is not going to be competitive with bigger cities. Hospital systems also generally do not have very good benefits.
Pre-COVID, staffing was our biggest issue. You're simply not going to get a highly skilled IT professional from a Raleigh or Nashville to move to a small city with far fewer amenities, lower quality of life, and a big pay cut.
We've been permanently remote since COVID and there are no plans to return to the office. Buildings are being sold or rented out where we can.
Most IT job postings are now marketed as fully remote. We had a level 2 analyst position open up a couple months ago. We had three total applicants. Pay is $55k-$60k - not big city money, but not bad for the local area.
Do you have something more definitive like an article from some life science magazine? What company at least? Is your company willing to pay for all the training?
Maybe the $15/hr was for for H1B visa cheap labor, and priced out all the Americans years ago. Anyone with that education likely cant pay back their student loans anyways. So either they never went that route, or found something pays more. Hence not enough people.
LOL more anecdotal stories of "WOE is me, worker shortages abound"
What is the name of your govt lobby?
Tell me specifically where is the labor shortage then. Why didnt you state where? Give yourself some credibility. I have not seen this labor shortage anywhere I go.
Many fast food dining rooms are still closed due to staff shortages. Most schools in my area don't have the recommended school nursing coverage. Bus drivers? Ha. First day of school here was an exercise in frustration due to not enough bus drivers, and that will continue unfortunately. I have a contract with a landscaper to put in a paver patio, and that was signed in May. He lost 2 employees in June and still has been unable to find two replacements and he pays $25/hour. $25/hour to pick up a damn shovel.
Talked to the manager of one of the largest brewpubs in my town. His whole front end staff could be counted on your hand, made up of a few overwhelmed high school students and one more experienced waitress maybe around 30. Pre-covid there were double or more that amount of front end staff at this location. I witnessed the manager talk down one of the high school girls from quitting on the spot after a customer insulted and verbally abused her. She looked about 45 seconds away from throwing her apron down and walking out if he hadn't calmed her down.
So one problem is - service jobs SUCK now. The public is considerably nastier to deal with and people don't want these jobs unless they have no other choice. I've witnessed people threaten retail workers with bodily harm over masks; there's no way I would sign up for that.
Problem two - He said many of his prior staff had stories similar to one of his line cooks. After the March 2020 layoffs it was months before they could hire them back. This particular one got on unemployment and moved in with his parents, then later into a house with 4 other guys. Because everything was shut down he didn't spend much. He saved about 14k, most money he's ever had in his life. He can live on that 14k for months even with u/e cut off. He is vaguely looking for jobs, preferably better than the one he had, and will only go back to line cook of he has to.
This is kind of a feedback loop.
Girlfriend and I went to a marina for lunch on Labor Day. The place has seating for probably fifty and another ten or twenty at the bar. There was one waitress and one bartender. No one was busing tables - they were too busy. It's Labor Day weekend. It's a holiday. The weather is perfect. It's a bar at a marina. It is going to be extremely busy.
The waitress was clearly doing her best, but a lot of people are going to be ticked with the slow service, not tip or chew the waitress out, which is going to make those workers want to look for other jobs, etc.
Like you said, I've seen people explode on service staff for the smallest of reasons.
The flip side of that is the service most places I go is completely terrible. There is a locally owned restaurant/bar that reopened the first they legally could back in April 2020 - I have a picture of me at a dining table in that restaurant on 4/29/2020. They reopened with the same crew they shut down with.
Even that place is having trouble retaining staff. There have been new bartenders the last few times I've been there. I'll pop my head in to make sure it's one of the two "good" bartenders before eating there now.
My cousin was in the "too much money so he saved it up and didn't come back" camp. He went from making $10/hr or so to making $45k a year teaching martial arts. He moved from small town TN to Atlanta. His girlfriend is an RN, so that's in demand. He's now doing better than either of his parents ever have.
Many fast food dining rooms are still closed due to staff shortages. Most schools in my area don't have the recommended school nursing coverage. Bus drivers? Ha. First day of school here was an exercise in frustration due to not enough bus drivers, and that will continue unfortunately. I have a contract with a landscaper to put in a paver patio, and that was signed in May. He lost 2 employees in June and still has been unable to find two replacements and he pays $25/hour. $25/hour to pick up a damn shovel.
I can't imagine where you live that you don't see evidence of these every day. I certainly do. The Help Wanted signs are EVERYWHERE.
The whole fast food dining thing is a mess.
Around here, it seems to be an "open for two weeks, shut for one, maybe open/maybe closed" thing. Between staffing, higher minimum wages, and outbreaks, it's a tough environment.
A lousy labor market report is being blamed on a “labor shortage”. Also, ‘lazy Americans’ and ‘the delta’. But the real problem is that businesses will not pay a market-clearing wage to hire the workers they need. Why not? Because the economy is lousy and fake.
The most reliable indication of labor demand is the price for labor. There’s no need, never a need, to get creative in order to “lure” potential employees.......just pay them what they want. And if you can’t pay them what they want that’s not a labor shortage. It is a fake boom with a few fake and misleading numbers.
In a real boom, no rational business owner is going to be held back from expansion by continuing to offer less than a market rate for the labor needed to go after opportunity. The more certain the opportunity, the less prime attention any employer will pay to what’s being paid for workers.
A business owner operating during a fake boom can and likely will post more and more online advertisements for low-paying work they can never seem to fill and do so repeatedly while each time complaining to their Fed contact or the news media about their struggle with an indolent workforce which refuses to engage for the next-to-nothing the company is only ever offering.
Yes, there’s a legit labor shortage somewhere right now just like there always is. This just doesn’t mean nearly as much as it has been repeatedly made to seem lately.
this "fake" economy has been going on for 10 years.
People will go back to work when they get hungry and need a roof over their heads.
Actually it has been going on since 2001. The FED has been faking economic growth for 20 years now.
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