Where have all the workers gone?
I’ve certainly noticed it, and you probably have, too. There’s a labor shortage that is affecting quite a number of businesses – in particular, restaurants. In my neighborhood, some restaurants have closed and some have gone to just takeout, and as an explanation they say they just can’t find help.
That’s also true for therapists, incidentally. The ones I know are all full up, and some people who are looking for therapy simply can’t find it.
So I read this article with interest, hope to find out what’s going on. But it didn’t really answer the question to my satisfaction.
Take a look and see what you think. In particular, it follows a few people who have dropped out or cut back working and seem to be earning less or nothing. So, how are they surviving, particularly with inflation?
“It is clear there are large swaths of the population who are still unemployed [since the lockdown], and these are low-wage workers who lost their jobs in precisely the places where high-income people cut back so sharply a couple of years ago, ” [economist] Chetty said.
Well, I definitely don’t live in a “high-income” area and yet there’s a big worker shortage where I am. I don’t get it.
Some have other jobs, but what of the rest? Are they now on some sort of welfare or getting other benefits? Have they moved in with relatives? Have they OD’d on Fentanyl? Have they left the country?
The article contains passages such as this one:
…”[T]he US has never had a comprehensive labor supply policy” to bring more workers onto the job, said labor economist Kathryn Edwards. Child care subsidies, paid sick and family leave, and the right to part-time work would lower the job barriers for parents and other caregivers, older workers and people with disabilities.
Divided control of Washington makes any major changes unlikely for the next couple of years.
Excuse me but – WTF? I’m not a labor economist like Kathryn Edwards – in fact, I’m not any kind of economist at all. But where is this money going to come from? And where has a “comprehensive labor supply policy” ever worked as planned? Why must one turn to the federal government? That last question is rhetorical; the answer is “To elect Democrats in hopes of getting more benefits.”
Some labor shortages are the result of vaxx mandates, as in the case of airline pilots, nurses, and first responders (see https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-police-firefighters-are-fighting-vaccine-mandates-and-what-that-means-for-their-jobs). Around here, the major shortage is of pharmacists: many pharmacies around southern New England have cut back on the hours they are open (they close at 3 p.m., close on weekends, etc.) because of staffing problems. I see a lot of online complaints about the pharmacy cutbacks in my area. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of workers affected by mandates have simply moved to Florida.
Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy has talked about the seven million men between 22 and 54 who have dropped out of the work force.
Here’s an article about that:
https://theweek.com/articles/659245/mystery-americas-missing-male-workers#:~:text=More%20than%207%20million%20men%20between%20the%20ages,age%20was%20either%20working%20or%20looking%20for%20work.
One bullet point:
“Who supports them?
Their families and taxpayers. About 57 percent of men outside the workforce received some form of disability benefits in 2013, according to the Census Bureau. Overall, the number of Americans receiving disability has doubled to 8.8 million people since 1996, costing the federal government $260 billion per year. The U.S. now spends more on disability insurance than on food stamps and welfare combined. For others, especially younger men, it’s often relatives who pick up the slack. Some 70 percent of lower-skilled men in their 20s who didn’t have a job lived with a parent or close relative in 2014.”
Disability has been used by many to drop out and still get paid. Some may be working “gig jobs.” Some may have gotten used to being on unemployment. (I knew a fellow who would work until he qualified for a round of unemployment, then run that out before getting another temporary job. It was his lifestyle.) Some maybe making money online. Some women may have found that they like being homemakers more than working full time. If the husband makes enough to pay the bills, why not?
There’s certainly a manpower shortage in the building industry here. Before Covid, I could hire a painter, fence builder, landscaper, carpenter, etc. for $15 -$25 an hour. Now they all want $100 per hour and it’s not easy to find one that can come when you need them. There’s just more work than workers.
Will it change? The beginning of people looking for work is just starting. Massive layoffs are being announced nearly every day now. This coming recession may be deeper and worse than anyone’s predicting. A lot depends on government policy. If the Fed overdoes it, and the government can’t rein in spending, it could be bad.
While I realize it is anecdotal. Two instances really drove this issue home over the summer.
In the area I am in. Contractors are usually fairly easy to come by. I needed both and arbor and a bricklayer for separate projects.
I must have called 7-8 tree services and was constantly put off. We will call you back…no call. We will be out on X day. No show. I finally had someone who just started his business (I was the first customer) give me an estimate. I ended up going with him as he was the only person I could ever find do remove one tree.
As for the bricklayer? I managed to have 3 out of 6 even call me back. One was clearly a scammer as he wanted 15,000 for a job I had a soft quote on last year at 3500. Another wanted 11k for the same thing. After weeks chasing a contractor I have regularly used in the past. I finally had to show up at their office and speak the the manager in person to get a quote. And that was still at 5500. As the job needed to be completed before winter I used them.
I was happy with the jobs both did. Yet simply getting anyone to even call you back was a massive several week chore. Where in years past I would have quotes for both jobs in a matter of a couple of days.
I live in a prime tourist area, with more than a million visitors streaming into the area each year.
Prior to COVID hitting it was commonly printed that there were more than 600 restaurants in, say, a 25-30 mile radius, and our food was a very great attractor.
Well, this Sunday my wife and I went looking for a place to eat and, to our very great surprise, of the 10 or 12 local, independently owned restaurants we swung by–all of which I believe would normally have been open–only one place to eat, and that was a Cracker Barrel–was open as usual.
So, yes, it looks like there is a tremendous shortage of people to staff restaurants.
I’m not seeing a labor shortage in my area… yet. However, I’m not seeing a replacement workforce being developed. They are being convinced they should demand paid sick leave and family leave (even for minimum wage part time jobs), but they don’t provide any value to the business whether at work or not. I’m not saying young people aren’t like we were, because there are many of them that work damn hard and don’t complain. There just isn’t as many.
Sure, some companies are upping their perks and benefits to attract the few qualified go getters. However, those businesses going out of business are doing so because they can’t both give workers everything they want and still sell the goods and services at a price consumers will pay. That’s especially true for the service industry when the service sucks.
Lots of businesses around here have shuttered after covid. Many have signs out front offering $18/hr. to start on a basic job. Some restaurants have eliminated some or all wait staff.
A couple months ago I saw an NYC restaurant owner on financial news claiming that many of his prospective new employees want to be paid under the table while collecting unemployment, which he refuses to do. Though he says many of his competitors will do that. Also bad for him, is that the hiring of restaurant workers in the Miami area is white hot. So many potential NYC workers are just gone.
I have also heard that the ever since the covid business snap-back began, many workers have taken the opportunity to move up the job ladder to higher incomes. Frequently, that process entails a little longer time unemployed before they snag that better job.
I wonder the same thing. I have kids in their 20s, and they and their friends all work, but there is a huge difference in the number of employed teens and 20 somethings prior to COVID and now. And I have no idea where they all went, or how they are eating or paying their rent.
This topic comes up often with people I know, including people in different regions of the country. We all see the same thing and I have not heard anyone explain where the missing workers went. Every service related business has help wanted signs. I see some even investing in fancy, permanent-ish signs and huge banners to advertise their perpetual demand.
Where are the workers? It is a true mystery.
I have a small, one man business doing house repairs, painting, fences even some yard work
I have generally started charging more. I realized there were people giving me tips above what I asked for. I also broke thru the psychology of our times that had been hanging over me telling people who work with their hands and actually produce tangible products that they are less than liberal arts majors working office jobs . ( I even have quiet a few college hours from decades past, a lot of it in the sciences, plus military experience in two fields and law enforcement academy. I can walk circles in conversations around most liberal arts college graduates.)
I find myself charging more and more.
There are a lot of bad things going on right now, but there is one thing that is going back in the right direction. People are finally being forced to acknowledge society’s need for more than 4 year liberal arts degrees with little real world application.
There has been something going on in our society for a couple of decades or more. The idea is that white men who work with their hands are to be looked down on, but Hispanics who work with their hands are to be praised as necessary to keep society going . Some, or maybe a lot of this, comes from the “Educators” and the media. We should not be surprised that a lot of white guys have dropped out of the work force.
Some workers have dropped out of employment in retail because of the upsurge in violence from shoplifters: “Of the more than two million assaults reported to the FBI by law enforcement agencies across the country in 2020, more than 82,000 — about 4 percent — occurred in a retail store. Despite the risk of assault, retail workers have little room to fend for themselves or their stores. Workers can be fired for intervening physically or sometimes even confronting potential shoplifters.”
https://thecrimereport.org/2022/07/01/retail-workers-fear-holiday-upsurge-of-violence-thefts/
This is a very deceptive article. It appears to lean heavily on the research of Raj Chetty, a highly respected economist; but there are no references to any of Chetty’s papers, informal publications, or even interviews. Instead, the author of the Bloomberg article, Ben Steverman, summarizes a small part of the data compiled by Chetty and his colleagues. Steverman then proceeds to pad his article with quotes from people who’ve lost their jobs. This is all to support the view that we need more massive government programs. As I said, this is deceptive, but it’s typical for mainstream American Marxism.
By the way, the Bloomberg article is behind a paywall. Those without a subscription can read it at archive.is.
It’s also worth noting that Steverman claims that his conclusions are based on Chetty’s data, which can be found here: https://opportunityinsights.org/small-biz-revenue-zip-map/
This small subset of Chetty’s data is called “Small Business Revenue Zip Code Map.” Anybody can search the data by zip code, or by the name of a city or town. The results will display the change in local small business revenue since the pandemic started.
Neo’s question is one that any of us would have. Sure, maybe the job losses are worse for low-wage workers from wealthy zip codes, but what about the job losses and missing workers in my area? The answer is probably pretty straightforward: Steverman’s article is meant to mislead us. The problem of job losses and missing workers is widespread, and there is no single cause or single explanation. Unfortunately, starting a huge government program without a clear grasp of the problem ensures little but more government spending, and more employment for the grifters that make up the new American nomenklatura.
Finally, I want to emphasize that Raj Chetty has done some amazing work, and shouldn’t be blamed for this awful article. Furthermore, Chetty has taken the extraordinary step of making most of his data available to the public.
The main page for Chetty’s data is well worth a look. Here’s the URL:
https://tracktherecovery.org/
I live on Cape Cod. Most of the restaurants were only open 5 days a week last summer when they are normally open 7 days. It was because they were short handed just being open 5 days. The supermarkets are starting kids at $18.00. There is a shopping plaza in my town that has sat empty for years.
Neo asks,“where is this money going to come from?”
The World. The UniParty raises the debt ceiling and counts on the world buying up our debt. Betting that the party won’t end while the current traitors are in office. The BRICS group plans to end that shell game and when they do, America will be forced into Sovereign Bankruptcy.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” Alexis de Tocqueville
therapists? I think you mean like PT therapists. The other kind are too busy with TDS to take on more patients.
Shortages are not just in low skilled jobs; white collar professions are also effected. An example: here in W. Washington (at least outside King County), it is very hard to establish care with a decent GP or pediatrician. I have very good private insurance, accepted by most providers, but it’s still a challenge finding anyone taking new patients.
My sister-in-law is a pediatrician; she was offered a $100K bonus to join the staff of a mid range hospital here. She declined, as she’s in L.A. and wants to stay there.
But yeah, waiters and food service especially seem to be in short supply. My favorite local brewpub ceased food service in December, not for lack of business but because they couldn’t keep staff. Fortunately, the tap room remains open.
Food service is a job that is both relatively low paid and absolutely cannot be done from home. In the post Covid world, many have come to expect a telecommute option or to be well compensated if one isn’t possible. Hence, food service is not an attractive career choice.
“Why must one turn to the federal government? That last question is rhetorical; the answer is “To elect Democrats in hopes of getting more benefits””
Yes. To which I would add: also to expand the personnel in the already bloated federal bureaucracy, creating more individuals whose livelihood depends on government spending and who will overwhelmingly contribute (either directly or through union dues) to Democrat politicians or liberal PACs.
The Democrat Party: Made possible by your tax dollars since 1933.
@ PA Cat > “It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of workers affected by mandates have simply moved to Florida.”
Could be.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/19/more-new-yorkers-moved-to-florida-in-2022-than-any-year-in-history/
At the moment, we in the west Denver Metro are not doing too badly. Lots of restaurants are still doing well, even though some hours are curtailed. We don’t eat out unless going with friends (very seldom even then), so I haven’t got a lot of data to work from, but the steakhouse closest to me has cars outside all the time.
In the personal anecdote (singular of data) department:
We are fortunate to have an excellent tree crew that’s been doing our yard several years now and have reasonable rates; no problem getting them to come. Had a fence done two years ago and hired the same guy & his helper to do our son’s – the lumber was higher but not his labor cost. Did a driveway project last fall as well and the contractor was outstanding, and reasonable. The bricks for the retaining wall were pricy; there is a supply shortage and we had a choice of one type, which was good enough for the project.
On the downside, my longtime plumbing and HVAC guys retired, which was a real bummer. They were reliable and reasonable. We’re working on a relationship with a new plumbing company — it’s just as important as the doctor and dentist.
One place I did encounter long lines and bad service was the Xfinity storefront in our area. We moved to their phone service to get a cost savings, and had to massage phones including a new device. We didn’t know enough to go online and make an appointment, so had to wait around until we got to the head of the queue.
The counter clerk was very rude, very brusque, and not at all what we are used to. A customer coming in after us came within a hair’s breadth of hitting him over the head with the equipment she wanted serviced.
However, he did our job himself and was competent enough.
My guess is that the geeks are doing double duty because they can’t get enough staff.
Never put a tech geek on the front desk.
Since everybody has a minimum standard of near-fatal boredom, you’d think some folks would want to get out of the house….with getting paid as a bonus.
Would lengthy periods of unemployment look good on a resume’?
There is a good restaurant near us which has a rep outside–we do some tourist–and lunch is pretty busy, from the times I’ve been there. It would not be hard for a table of four to bill $80, not including drinks. My wife and I, by ourselves, might bill $35. A waitress covering four tables, for example, could do pretty well in a couple of hours. The fact that we’re there means they have staff. Others, not so much.
Fabricating plants offering $18 and up. Big signs. Thing is, those places were going just fine before Covid. Their employees, more or less, disappeared.,
@ JJ > “Here’s an article about that:”
To clarify, Mike Rowe is not cited in that post from The Week and it was written in 2016, but it did include some information that might be relevant — kind of along the lines of “if this goes on” which it did, bumped by Covid, cancel culture, and other social & economic changes.
Warning: includes the obligatory dig at conservative voters, despite the reality that most of the contributing factors are Democrat policies (although sometimes abetted by the GOP more than they should be).
I read Orwell’s book The Road to Wigan Pier about 1930s Britain, and he remarked there that laid-off coal miners almost never helped their wives with house work or child care. They sat around reading the papers or went to the pub, which isn’t a lot different from what happens now.
I think some attention needs to be paid to that last quote.
No idea how or what, but there’s clearly some need that should be addressed.
How many businesses in the 1970s stayed open seven days a week? Remember the blue laws? There was a time , only a few decades ago, that you did not expect a clothing store to be open seven days a week. Now we think it strange that they are not open seven days a week. How many potential workers are just doing college with student loans and not working? What percent of the young people are in college compared to 1950? There are a lot of things going on all at once here.
Go back to 1970 or 1950. How many retail businesses tried to stay open past 8 o’clock during the week? Maybe in some places.
COVID era certainly changed some things. Thinking about the stores staying open seven days a week before COVID, you might think that in the scope of American history, those couple or three decades may have been the abnormal and things are being set to normal , with less than 24/7 convenience. It takes a lot more employee hours to run a store 24/7 than to run one 14/6.
If you were looking at American history from the 20,000 foot point of view, was the last few decades of soooo many restaurants to choose from normal or abnormal? Did not more people eat at home as recently as the 1980s? I hear people saying how when they were young, their family never ate out or maybe once a month. But these last two or three decades, how much has that changed?
Jon Baker makes some good points.
It might also be relevant that the college graduates remaining unemployed while they look for the perfect job are woefully optimistic about their suitability for that job.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/01/the-daily-chart-dumbing-down-college.php
“This coming recession…”
Coming?
Keep in mind that the usual suspects will keep redefining “recession” to mean “not a recession” for as long as they have to (which will probably mean for quite a while…)
(OTOH, maybe they’ll agree there’s a recession when the depression arrives…)
To be sure, they could always use the current round of the debt-ceiling chickenfight to blame the GOP for tanking the US economy. (I mean why not? Always take advantage of a crisis, etc., etc…)
File under: Yellen (and pissin’) into the wind….
Our demography is not as far into a state of collapse as that of Europe, Russia, or China, but the Zoomer generation entering the work force is significantly smaller than the Boomer generation that officially retires this year as a cohort. Add to that the issues of workplace refusal due to “other options” covered above and you arrive at our current impasse.
Do a quick search on “Peter Zeihan demographics” and take a look at the population by age charts – look at the difference between Mexico and say, Germany. When you urbanize (especially quickly) kids turn into expensive smelly furniture rather than free farm labor in an apartment block. Human behavior is pretty predictable across geography and time. The results are playing out over our lives as I type and you read the results.
I still see signs all over for Help Wanted and they are not menial jobs always, but a lot for younger workers to learn some skills.
Expected a Marxist will always say if they run everything it will be all peaches and cream
Welp, it would employ more social workers and NGO parasites.
You might want to consider the fact that the white population of the US is actually declining in number, as deaths exceed births. Whites are a minority in the under 15 year old cohort.
Whites make up most of the labor pool and are especially common in the skilled labor and professional categories. So that’s one reason for worker shortages.
Enrollment in college is also declining, and again, college kids are mostly white.
Lots of reasons: extended benefits for non-workers…people who have gotten degrees of questionable value & won’t take jobs they think are beneath them…a lot of young men, especially white young men, are demoralized by the constant attacks on their gender. Fewer men married or hoping/expecting to get married and attempting to live a laid-back lifestyle instead.
Many jobs are structured & managed in a way that sucks out meaning & satisfaction…see Zeynep Ton’s book The Good Jobs Strategy, which I reviewed here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60771.html
But also: “..in my current research, I have been thinking about the role of technology on labor supply. This line of inquiry has received less attention from academics….When making our work decisions, we compare the benefit of work—the wage—against the cost of working. What is the cost of working? We give up leisure. The more attractive our leisure time, the less we’ll want to work, holding wages fixed. Is it possible that technology has changed the value of leisure?” (The writer’s answer is YES, he cited Video Games, using his own son as an example)
Link and discussion at this blog:
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/09/19/the-young-males-path/
While I was working in the kitchen, I overheard a statistic from some show my hubby was watching in the living room. Didn’t see what show it was so I can’t really vouch for it.
Supposedly though 70,000 people died of fentanyl overdoses last year. If this is true, and as one would suppose most were of working age, that seems staggering to me.
I could be wrong, but I would think that has some effect. Certainly more in some areas than others.
Also I would consider the massive number of homeless invading our cities in the last half decade to be part of this as well. The vast majority of them are of working age but because of addiction or mental illness issues,, they are not working. This group has skyrocketed in numbers also.
This labor shortage is created by the government – first they (the government, not your personal doctor) took over your healthcare by mandating covid vaccines; then they (again, the government and its scaremongers like Fauci) arbitrarily shut down schools/businesses.
If you are in a workplace that gets shut down without notice you will look for work that is more guaranteed to have an income you can rely on.
If you are a working mother with elementary-school aged kids you will quit your job to find something that allows you to still look after your kids when the schools shut down.
After finding work that is more suitable/guaranteed hours why would you go back to the previous unpredictable work?
Lastly, first-responders/healthcare workers went from being called heroes working on the front lines without protection to being called selfish because some have refused to get an experimental drug jabbed into them. With that kind of attitude why continue to work in healthcare? (Hospital nurses/aides and home health aides number are down 30% of pre-covid levels)
The politicians created these worker shortages and now they expect us to believe that they can solve it? Sadly, many voters will believe them.
My thoughts;
– More single earner households due to children not in public schools.
– Fewer teens working.
– More people used to ‘not going out’ all the time (eating at home more due to costs and habits changed during covid, not going to movies, etc).
– Getting used to doing with what we have (not chasing the new, bleeding edge).
Some cynical thoughts:
– Less need for extra income since the .gov killed off older folks that needed care by children / grandchildren.
– Businesses being more careful about who the hire (a lot more concerned that the employee meets the value add of the pay). I predict future ‘impressive’ improvements in productivity (earnings / worker).
– Too easy to not work (all kinds of support for no income and super high income, painfully little for the middle).
I think the other thing going on is that younger people seem to be short sited — of the ROI (of time and sweat) is not almost immediate, fuhgettaboutit.
When I was in college, wait staff at this one restaurant in town made on average $50K. (Forty years ago, that was a very good salary. The Measuring Worth Calculate, calculated it’s present dollar value at about $190K. Even after you figure that they weren’t getting PTO or insurance, the leftover is still damned good.) But to land a job at this restaurant, one had to have worked their way up from diners and cheaper restaurants. (Most of the people I knew who waited takes at high end restaurants starting waiting tables in high school.) They paid their dues, earning crappy tips to eventually getting hired at a place that paid quite well.
I hear people expecting to get a great paying gig right out of the gate.
I’m down in Ft Myers for the winter. Hurricane recovery is ongoing but most restaurants are open and seemingly adequately staffed. There are help wanted signs everywhere of course. Servers we speak with mostly have two jobs and are here for the weather.
Down here the usual landscape workforce is Hispanic. Most skilled labor is Hispanic. They’re here because there is work for them. I don’t know anything about their living situations. Our general contractor is from Mexico and speaks English really well. His crews mostly don’t speak English. Our GC finds the jobs and gets his guys and gals steady work. They want to work and I think most of them send money back home.
My wife says our GC undercharges so we always over pay him (a tip?). His work is good but not great. That doesn’t matter so much for us. Every time we’ve gotten an estimate from a non Hispanic contractor it’s always been twice as much as our GC.
You think the labor market is distorted/bad now, wait until automation combined with AI starts to replace workers in more and more low skilled jobs–things like store stockers, fast food workers, various clerical workers, delivery people and truckers, etc.
See, for instance, this https://www.swisslog-healthcare.com/en-us/products/pharmacy-automation/pillpick-automated-packaging-and-dispensing-system
Vax injuries may be having some impact.
Snow on Pine…”You think the labor market is distorted/bad now, wait until automation combined with AI starts to replace workers in more and more low skilled jobs–things like store stockers, fast food workers, various clerical workers, delivery people and truckers, etc.”
But automation has been replacing workers…and not all of them low-skilled…since the late 1700s, and especially over the past century. For some perspective on this, see my series of posts Attack of the Job-Killing Robots:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60616.html
David Foster–My impression is that this replacement will not be a gradual one, that it will be coming along in the near future, say, in the next 2-4 years, and that it will ultimately end up putting many millions of low skilled workers out of a job.
@Jon baker – COVID era certainly changed some things.
Certainly did. In Washington the Governor declared an ’emergency’ (it’s still on), and shut down a big swath of small businesses, particularly restaurants and small-proprietorships. Then the State turned loose a flood of unemployment cash, which together with the Federal version, made non-work a luxury vacation for months. The State’s version was so badly monitored that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars disappeared into various scammers. Also there’s been a major assault on the gig economy, with the political object of forcing former self-employed earners into dues-paying union servitude, the better to buy legislators. Combined with the lavish layoffs by Microsoft and other Big Tech orgs, this is a strong signal that the Golden Age is over – the real estate market is making an abrupt turn for the worse.
The missing ones are those that have dropped out. Philadelphia has a new drug on the street animal tranqualizers. Makes user act like zombies.
Late to the party, but I will give you my one anecdote and you can take it for what it is.
I retired at age 65 back in May 2019 – pre covid. I do pretty good combining my SS and a moderate pension with investments. I did not need a job. However, in early March of last year, after seeing “Help Wanted” signs everywhere I went, I decided to give it a try and go back to work. Specifically, I had never worked retail before and all of the big-box stores were begging for customer service/floor help, so I thought I would give it a try. I applied for and was hired at a local Ace hardware. I found out that I really enjoyed interfacing with the public and because of my knowledge of plumbing, electrical, and general handyman stuff, I was actually pretty good at it.
I quit after three months. Why?
1 – Because of knee and ankle problems, I found that I could only stand to be on my feet on their concrete floor about two hours before I had to take a get-off-my-feet break. That didn’t set well with the bosses even though they themselves mostly worked behind a desk.
2 – About half my coworkers were high-school and young adult aged kids. The other half were mostly old codgers like me. I tried to mentor the young folks as much as I could, and I actually enjoyed working with most of them. Most of them were enthusiastic and worked very hard. A lot of the old codgers, however, wanted to treat the kids as no-load shirkers regardless of how hard they worked. And indeed. After awhile, they decided to treat the new guy – *me* – the same way. NO! “Eff” that! I’ve put way too much time in the trenches of life to put up with bad treatment like that!
3 – The pay was low – above minimum wage, but just barely – and there were no benefits like paid time off or medical insurance at all. I accepted the wage and benefit terms going in just to see if the job would be a good fit. It wasn’t. After the drawbacks became apparent, I did the math and saw that my wage, after adjusting for inflation, was actually lower than what I had made when I was 16 years old back in… 1970!
I didn’t bitch and complain about it. I just decided that the loss of my retirement time and the drawbacks of the job, including the additional wear and tear on the old body simply wasn’t worth it. So, I gave a two weeks notice and quit when it was up. Most of the young people that came and went while I was there didn’t give any notice at all. They just failed to show up one day. (One of the younger guys, Jack, in his twenties. was a very good worker. He was always willing to help out no matter what and he would gladly do the hardest part of the job – horsing around heavy bags of cement. One day, Tom, one of the bosses, and a 70 something old grouch, was giving him a hard time right there in front of everyone for something really stupid mistake. Jack interrupted him in mid rant and said: “Tom, I have the solution to this problem.” Tom said “What?”. Jack took off his red vest, handed it to Tom, and walked out the door, never to return.)
So, I told you all of that just so you might see one side of the labor shortage. Nobody works for free. (…or the ones that do are a vanishingly small subset of the workforce.) The wage and benefit package, not to mention the working conditions, has to be worth it to the individuals involved.
PS: Almost all of my physicians lately have either retired or quit their practice. When I asked them why, *ALL* of them told me it was because government regulations put in place by the Obama-Care regime has made the independent practice of medicine much more difficult, if not impossible, at the hours and rates they were used to getting. So they too – quit!
I sure do wish there was an edit option. I saw a lot of silly mistakes after I hit the “post” button.
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I’ll second but with a slight objection the comment about the Boomer retirement vs Zoomers.
We are passing through the retirement of the peak Baby Boom years (approx 1957-1959), and remember that what walks out the door with a 65-year old retiree is about 40 years of work experience. That means you probably have to hire 2 (or more) under-40 year olds to get an equivalent amount of work experience. We don’t have sufficient employees to do all the tasks that we’ve programmed into the system as the Boomers were working their last few years into retirement.
Related:
“Where Did All The Workers Go?”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/where-did-all-workers-go