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It depends on the situation. For example, you can qualify for food stamps, section 8 housing, and free healthcare but only if you make less than 10 dollars an hour. The minute you make more than that, you're immediately disqualified from receiving benefits. Given that healthcare also is extremely expensive now adays, sometimes it's worth it, depending on your situation, to not work so you can get the free healthcare. Healthcare costs are spiraling out of control and some plans range anywhere from 300-600 a month. So if you work let's say for 9 dollars an hour part time you're probably making about 200 dollars in net each week. If you can get free healthcare alone which has a value of about 500/month in premiums, why go to work in the first place?
I never applied to 9 dollar an hour jobs because it would not pay my bills.
I never applied to 9 dollar an hour jobs because it would not pay my bills.
I know that's a little to the extreme but I was just using that as an example. But it's not that far from reality. 50% of all new job openings in the US pay less than 18/hr.
It's especially annoying and frustrating too when you're doing a job search now adays and can't even find anything that's worth it to apply for. Run a basic search on LinkedIn or Indeed and the open available jobs are all customer service sales sales customer service retail customer service sales admin sales customer service you get the picture.
I was on U.I. for 4 months and it amounted to $10.75/hr if I did a 40 hr work week, which is more than minimum wage. And in my state, if you work 4 days, even for an hour, you loose all benefits. So, while you are on U.I., you're better off looking for something significantly better not only in terms of money but hours as well.
It depends on the situation. For example, you can qualify for food stamps, section 8 housing, and free healthcare but only if you make less than 10 dollars an hour. The minute you make more than that, you're immediately disqualified from receiving benefits. Given that healthcare also is extremely expensive now adays, sometimes it's worth it, depending on your situation, to not work so you can get the free healthcare. Healthcare costs are spiraling out of control and some plans range anywhere from 300-600 a month. So if you work let's say for 9 dollars an hour part time you're probably making about 200 dollars in net each week. If you can get free healthcare alone which has a value of about 500/month in premiums, why go to work in the first place?
It depends on the situation. For example, you can qualify for food stamps, section 8 housing, and free healthcare but only if you make less than 10 dollars an hour. The minute you make more than that, you're immediately disqualified from receiving benefits. Given that healthcare also is extremely expensive now adays, sometimes it's worth it, depending on your situation, to not work so you can get the free healthcare. Healthcare costs are spiraling out of control and some plans range anywhere from 300-600 a month. So if you work let's say for 9 dollars an hour part time you're probably making about 200 dollars in net each week. If you can get free healthcare alone which has a value of about 500/month in premiums, why go to work in the first place?
It really doesn't work that way for most people, especially if they don't have kids. I work with people who get subsidies (I'm an OT in SNF rehab). I have a woman now who came up to NJ after losing everything they had in Katrina, her husband left a year or 2 after they got here and she had no place to go. This woman gets a subsidized rent apartment, and $16 a month in food stamps...$16 a month. She has Medicaid thank God, but it's not nearly as good as standard health insurance or Medicare. This notion though that you can just opt not to work and bring home as much as if you did is total BS.
P.S. The good paying jobs are lost to automation, not to our debt. There are going to be many more jobs lost to automation over the next few years. The jobs of the future, those in green energy and technology, we are losing to China and other countries who don't turn their noses up at any industry that doesn't involve coal or oil.
P.S.S. more coal jobs have been lost to automation than the lower number of coal plants. Even if they open 10 new coal plants tomorrow in WV, they will be low wage jobs now, not the high pay jobs of the past, as machines do a majority of what men used to do to extract the coal.
I'm trying really hard not to take the bait and go political on this forum where it seems all but one of us here knows is NOT appropriate, but the misguided foolishness I see in some of the posts is making it hard.
It really doesn't work that way for most people, especially if they don't have kids. I work with people who get subsidies (I'm an OT in SNF rehab). I have a woman now who came up to NJ after losing everything they had in Katrina, her husband left a year or 2 after they got here and she had no place to go. This woman gets a subsidized rent apartment, and $16 a month in food stamps...$16 a month. She has Medicaid thank God, but it's not nearly as good as standard health insurance or Medicare. This notion though that you can just opt not to work and bring home as much as if you did is total BS.
P.S. The good paying jobs are lost to automation, not to our debt. There are going to be many more jobs lost to automation over the next few years. The jobs of the future, those in green energy and technology, we are losing to China and other countries who don't turn their noses up at any industry that doesn't involve coal or oil.
P.S.S. more coal jobs have been lost to automation than the lower number of coal plants. Even if they open 10 new coal plants tomorrow in WV, they will be low wage jobs now, not the high pay jobs of the past, as machines do a majority of what men used to do to extract the coal.
I'm trying really hard not to take the bait and go political on this forum where it seems all but one of us here knows is NOT appropriate, but the misguided foolishness I see in some of the posts is making it hard.
I would say that automation does contribute to the loss of well paying jobs but I don't think it's the number one reason. There's a variety of factors. One big factor is that our economy has turned from a producer economy to a service economy. We still build things and stuff, but manufacturing is not what it used to be. Innovation is at a 10 year low and Mod cut.the White House keeps talking about infrastructure but there's no future plans to actually follow through on that.. We've turned into a service economy or "customer service" economy. Hence why 90% of all new jobs being created are all in customer service, sales, and call centers/receptionists. These so called full time office jobs pay horribly and are similar in line to pay at fast food and retail businesses. When you combine this, along with automation as you mentioned before, combined with virtually no labor unions and extremely weak employee protections, you get disastrous effects. Also add in the fact the social safety net is one step ahead of China and India.
Also might I add, as baby boomers retire, employers are hiring college grads saddled with debt who they know will work for peanuts. They can get away with paying them 35-40k a year when in reality those people that previously worked in the same position easily made double. Why pay someone a high salary when you can find anyone with a pulse to do the same job for half the rate? Kind of makes sense from a business perspective. Good for the businesses pocket, bad for the employee and the economy. Your experience and qualifications mean nothing now adays. Businesses rather hire a newb who doesn't know anything rather than pay someone a higher salary who knows how to do the job.
Last edited by PJSaturn; 08-29-2017 at 05:28 PM..
Reason: Save political name-calling for the Politics forum.
I would say that automation does contribute to the loss of well paying jobs but I don't think it's the number one reason. There's a variety of factors. One big factor is that our economy has turned from a producer economy to a service economy. We still build things and stuff, but manufacturing is not what it used to be. Innovation is at a 10 year low and [snip]the White House keeps talking about infrastructure but there's no future plans to actually follow through on that. We've turned into a service economy or "customer service" economy. Hence why 90% of all new jobs being created are all in customer service, sales, and call centers/receptionists. These so called full time office jobs pay horribly and are similar in line to pay at fast food and retail businesses. When you combine this, along with automation as you mentioned before, combined with virtually no labor unions and extremely weak employee protections, you get disastrous effects. Also add in the fact the social safety net is one step ahead of China and India.
Also might I add, as baby boomers retire, employers are hiring college grads saddled with debt who they know will work for peanuts. They can get away with paying them 35-40k a year when in reality those people that previously worked in the same position easily made double. Why pay someone a high salary when you can find anyone with a pulse to do the same job for half the rate? Kind of makes sense from a business perspective. Good for the businesses pocket, bad for the employee and the economy. Your experience and qualifications mean nothing now adays. Businesses rather hire a newb who doesn't know anything rather than pay someone a higher salary who knows how to do the job.
The bolded above I believe is a great point. There WAS no middle class before Unions there just wasn't, and I'm not sure there can be one for long without them, as we see now. I admit there were big problems with corruption at the top of some of the big ones, but politicians somehow made regular middle class people believe the Unions were the enemy of regular people instead of their only protector in the workplace. To our detriment. They are still doing it, and even with all the complaints about how there are fewer and fewer jobs to make a living, you will find threads arguing teachers unions should fold and we start paying them $15 an hour, too. Rich people love this idea, which makes sense. It never made sense to me that poor or middle income folks would also be on the side of the stingy rich when it comes to protection and pay for employees. Good bye Unions = Good bye middle class.
Unions in the US are corrupt organizations that steal from working class employees and helped destroy the US economy. They never objected when the US car companies moved to Mexico, as the democrats OKed it. They were OK when NAFTA was passed by Bill Clinton and now millions of jobs have gone overseas. Before unions came along, one spouse's salary could support a family in the US, which is no longer true for the average household.
Unions in the US are corrupt organizations that steal from working class employees and helped destroy the US economy. They never objected when the US car companies moved to Mexico, as the democrats OKed it. They were OK when NAFTA was passed by Bill Clinton and now millions of jobs have gone overseas. Before unions came along, one spouse's salary could support a family in the US, which is no longer true for the average household.
Maybe unions in the US are corrupt but in other countries they do a great good in protecting workers.
I somewhat agree. Yes unemployment is down but one has to ask what type of jobs are being taken now when you where previously unemployed? Most likely it is a low wage >15$ an hour job. So yea making 13$ an hour is better than being unemployed but you aren't really "getting ahead" on 10-15$ an hour. Yes working at staples is better than unemployment but 9-10$ an hour isn't much to write home about.
So yes unemployment is down- on the surface this looks great. But when you start to look at what jobs are being taken then its not to great.
As many have mentioned already it is the death or near death of the entry level work. We are in a situation where entry level usually means "2-3 years experience in X" needed, "degree in Y strongly preferred". But what happens if you don't have a degree in Y or 2-3 years experience? If your lucky you will get some data entry, customer service, bottom of the totem pole office job. Now bear in mind these jobs are usually paying 12-15$ an hour and can be surprisingly competitive (keep in mind you are competing against all the LA grads looking for work, people looking to get out of retail/ fast food) , they are far from guaranteed.
Now if you do land the 12-15$ an hour data entry job, hopefully in a few years you will climb out of the data entry role into something more specialized, more fulfilling and more money. HOWEVER many of the "better" office roles generally require a specific degree. I.e... your 2 years of excellent data entry experience and your history degree is not going to get you that Accounting position that requires an Accounting degree- no matter how many years of data entry, customer service experience you have. To be clear that is not to say that "you will never climb out of the data entry/ customer service" but it can be tough especially if the better position wants a certain degree.
Now lets say worse comes to worse, you apply like crazy to every data entry, customer service, bottom of the totem pole type job and you get nothing. Well then you are applying to the retail, the fast food i.e... jobs you had in high school. As sad as it is to say retail and fast food is no longer the domain of the teenage worker. A decent number of 20, 30+ age people are doing the retail/fast food gig long term because he/she can't get into the entry level work.
So yea unemployment is down and the recession is over, but on closer look are we really that much better off?
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