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It's housing. Get housing costs down or get salaries up. Those are your choices.
When I started in education in 2010 we got over 100 apps for every single open position. For the saturated fields like English, over 300. For ONE teaching job.
It steadily declined. By 2016-18 the applicant pools got much smaller.
Then covid happened, and housing prices rose 90% in 1.5 years. We had 6 failed searches for the 2022-23 year. By far the most ever. The candidates were quite honest and candid with why they turned the jobs down. "I can't ever buy a house on that income, or even rent a decent apartment." They would ask if we could pay 10-25k more. We can't.
The fix is easy - give a 20k raise. They can't live on 2012 wages in 2022. That simple.
You can throw a dart at the map of the US and almost anywhere in 45 States you can get cheap rent. Entitled people don't want to move. The "teaching shortage" isn't just large cities, it's all over the Country.
You can throw a dart at the map of the US and almost anywhere in 45 States you can get cheap rent. Entitled people don't want to move. The "teaching shortage" isn't just large cities, it's all over the Country.
I'm originally from Texas. Check housing prices there, LOL! Not cheap. Not anywhere there are jobs. Dying towns, yes, it's cheaper. I was actually shocked to discover that the 1400/mo for a 2br I pay in Oregon is pretty much the norm everywhere. If not WORSE in markets like Florida!
Maybe you've owned your house for a while and are not on the market. But let me assure you, the housing market is batcrap crazy out there and it's all over the country.
Also "just move" is easier said than done, especially with something like teaching for which you start the job only 1x per year.
I wish it was that simple. It's not. I did start looking for jobs in other states. Pretty much everywhere I looked I found an inflated housing market. The only exception were parts of the midwest where there are not jobs. They're not hiring for teaching jobs in markets where there enrollment is declining because the towns are in terminal decline.
I don't really agree with that line of reasoning for other industries aside from education. The market pays what the market pays.
However, the problem with education is an internal one. I mentioned earlier in this thread that inflation spending per student has doubled over the past thirty years or so, but teacher pay has only increased in the single digits. What happened to the difference? It went to the bureaucrats and consultants in the middle, that's where.
So as a result, education is an institution incapable of learning. Not the teachers, who are absolutely heroes in my book, but rather the people over the teachers who are always asking for budget increases without ever improving the quality of the education their charges receive.
At some point, teachers don't even need that much stuff. They try to overload schools up with bells and whistles. Apps that do all this b.s. They don't need that! All I need is a classroom wired for internet, video and sound... I need a document camera, and I need to be able to make copies. It's not that expensive.
We need to pay decent salaries so people WANT to do the job. I hear from candidate after candidate that turns down teaching jobs that they need 60-65k or they walk. Well walking is what they're doing. They can make 40-50k as a bartender... or more even. They don't need all the stress of teaching for the same money.
At some point, teachers don't even need that much stuff. They try to overload schools up with bells and whistles. Apps that do all this b.s. They don't need that! All I need is a classroom wired for internet, video and sound... I need a document camera, and I need to be able to make copies. It's not that expensive.
We need to pay decent salaries so people WANT to do the job. I hear from candidate after candidate that turns down teaching jobs that they need 60-65k or they walk. Well walking is what they're doing. They can make 40-50k as a bartender... or more even. They don't need all the stress of teaching for the same money.
In this country public school costs largely come out of local or state property taxes. Better high performing suburban school districts (areas of Long Island, New Jersey, Conn, etc...) in my neck of the woods also have insane property taxes. People vote to approve those school budgets because one reason they moved to area was for its high performing schools.
Happily NYS publishes all state and local employee wages so it's easy to see who's making what.
Stocks slid, and Treasury rates climbed as everyone braces for what will surely be more rate increases by Fed.
Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride! [/quote]
It's good to be optimistic, you.
There is a shortage of workers because they were laid off for covid and are now choosing not to go back to work. The uptick in hiring is strong; those positions have to be filled like right now.
It's maddening that governments will say they added/created jobs but they don't tell us that it is far short of recouping losses. But I guess it is better not to hear; "We have to add 9 million more jobs to make up the difference" 'cause it's a bummer.
There is a shortage of workers because they were laid off for covid and are now choosing not to go back to work. The uptick in hiring is strong; those positions have to be filled like right now.
It's maddening that governments will say they added/created jobs but they don't tell us that it is far short of recouping losses. But I guess it is better not to hear; "We have to add 9 million more jobs to make up the difference" 'cause it's a bummer.
If you look at jobs, 6.4m were "created" in 2021 according to Bloomberg with 3.6m jobs under pre-pandemic levels. Many people did not return early because they lived comfortably as a single income family for some time or awaited their industry of choice to be stabilized. For instance, some parts of Walt Disney World are just now seeing reopening, that being the Five Diamond Victoria and Albert's restaurant on the Grand Floridian Hotel. We finally are above the February 2020 private sector payrolls.
Kitty if what you said was true when you said people are not returning to work, we would not be back to pre-pandemic levels of private sector payrolls. We cannot have both be true. I do think people held out as long as possible. I do think we saw people hang out until they got highballed. I do think that we saw people wait out being in the same job unless highballed or they simply didn't like what they did anymore.
COL is high but this isn't new and certainly not a surprise. At some point you have to figure out a way to make it happen. There are plenty of opportunities in the USA and sometimes it requires terrible sacrifices like moving to a cheaper area it need be. You must also take responsibility to build your skillset so that you can continue to build your income and career.
I know nothing about you personally but just from reading your reply above, it sounds like you do well enough to live just fine but choose to live in an area that cripples your finances.
I have figured out a way to make it happen, but also keep in mind that many jobs are concentrated in cities. I would have to take a 50-60% cut for similar jobs (which are nonexistent outside of cities and mostly concentrated in Boston, NYC, and SF) and even more for other jobs in my skillset in other industries. And then I'd also have to travel regularly for medical appointments since specialists who handle my care are generally based in a handful of cities. I can't even find specialists here in the Boston suburbs!
And at the end of the day, cities need nurses, EMT workers, bus drivers, cashiers, truckers, teachers, and social workers to keep moving. Given the teacher shortage across the US, it's not just an urban problem that teachers are deciding to move on because they can't afford to live on their salary. It wasn't this bad a decade ago when many of my friends went into teaching. Few remain, and many are making 6 figures in other fields so they can actually entertain home ownership and kids.
Far short of recouping losses? Unemployment rate is down and jobs filled in private sector is higher now than it has ever been. People not wanting to return to the labor force is only thing holding back the recovery. Should we force people to go back to work?
I don't care about aggregates, though. I care about my field, my city, and the places I've worked, and all of that amounts to people basically having to be shoved out the door in their 70s. I think that's why they did the "compensation benchmark survey" I've complained about in other posts. It's a way to get highly paid people who are retirement age to actually retire, and then they can look outside the organization to bring in replacements who don't know any better for a third less money. People will hang in there as long as they think they can keep making more, but tell them they're never getting a raise again for some nebulous "until the market catches up"---which may not happen for 10 years---and there's nothing more to get, so they go.
Far short of recouping losses? Unemployment rate is down and jobs filled in private sector is higher now than it has ever been. People not wanting to return to the labor force is only thing holding back the recovery. Should we force people to go back to work?
Funny how the law of supply and demand seems to be lost on employers. My salt is showing again, but they need to make it worth people's time to come back, and after workers have worked at home for two years, these employers aren't going to lure anyone back by forcing them to work onsite when they can telecommute, offering a crappy two weeks of vacation per year, not offering paid maternity/paternity leave, asking for employees to contribute $100 or more per paycheck toward health insurance, and offering mediocre wages. Don't complain that good help is hard to find when you treat workers like that, and then also do crap like stalk their social media because you think they "represent" you and you own their lives, and you disrespect their humanity by expecting them to read and respond to email off the clock and be accessible to you 24-7.
People have had enough of the "American work ethic" that grinds them down to a nub and treats them like robots while the people at the top have second homes in the Hamptons and the corporations post record profits. It's about time.
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