
There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There, America - hourislate
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/there-are-plenty-of-jobs-out-there-america
======
twoquestions
As someone else has already said, the biggest shortage is skilled labor, not
unskilled.

Trouble is, it's unwise to dedicate months/years of training for a single job
that may not be there when you graduate, and it's unwise to train someone when
they could get poached by the next company not willing to shell out for
training.

I also wonder how sticky their wages are. If a business can endure not filling
a position until they can find their person willing to work for peanuts, why
offer more? It's amazing how little bargaining power workers have even in this
extremely tight labor environment.

I'd be shocked if the Republicans that now control most layers of government
will be willing to step in and help this situation, and I doubt they'd know
what to do to help even if they were willing.

Does anyone here know a good way out of this situation?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Case in point: my employer has a vacancy that has been unfilled for the better
part of a year now because they want to hire a full-time Database
Administrator and not pay more than $65k.

My theory is that they're intentionally low-balling it so that no one will
apply and they can hire an H1B.

~~~
toyg
_> a full-time Database Administrator_

Do those even exist anymore, in the US? In the UK I very rarely encounter UK-
based DBAs, 99.99% are offshore.

~~~
pragmatic
I've mostly encountered them in banks where there is regulation or a strong
desire not to let developers access production data/systems (Sarbox or
something, I forget). However their use seems to be declining in most other
industries.

------
patrickg_zill
You can check this kind of stuff out by looking on your local Craigslist
postings.

Machinist wanted (with decent level of understanding multiple machines,
reading blueprints etc.) - 5 years experience - $25/hour in the Denver/Boulder
area. e.g.
[http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html](http://boulder.craigslist.org/trd/5902683986.html)
(and you have to supply some of your own tools) ... this is not a cheap area
to live in BTW. $50-60K is barely middle class for this area.

We've been praising the guy who hires 10 plumbers and then automates his back
office (he is scaling), while looking down on the plumbers who do the actual
work. Then we wonder why it's tough to find plumbers...

~~~
sgnelson
I sometimes see job placements come in for machinists which demand almost
every machinist skill one can have. Manual machining on every available type
of machine, CNC machining on every type of machine, CNC programming, CAD and
CAM Design in all the main software, GD&T, Blueprinting, etc.

And for a list of requirements that takes up a full page, and frankly
sometimes even requires skills that you would earn with a bachelors in
mechanical engineering. All for $10/hour. And they wonder why no one has taken
them up on their offer. And this is also in a major Southern city, with an
ever increasing cost of living.

------
niftich
I'm trying to reconcile these two quotes:

> _a few good auto-glass installers, no experience necessary_

and,

> _commissioned a study of company shortages. Energy, water, and land came up,
> but the No. 1 answer around the world was skilled labor_

Perhaps no experience is necessary for the auto-glass gig, but the metal
stamping and machining? Are these all trades one can pick up on the job, by
walking in from the street? Because if so, potential workers are leaving money
on the table.

More likely, they have stopped looking for work altogether. Unemployment is
often discussed, but the Labor Participation Rate is less so, which fell
greatly [1] after 2008.

[1]
[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000)

~~~
zhivota
Draw that graph back further before 2006 and you'll see that labor
participation was lower from 1948-1984, almost 40 years. It appears to have
peaked between 1990 and 2008, but even today it's not quite as low as it was
during a time of pretty solid prosperity (50s and 60s).

Even today's rate is only 3% or so lower than the 2006 rate, so if you add it
to the unemployment rate it's still not very bad.

Just another perspective on this as it seems to be something that comes up
over and over in these discussions.

~~~
madengr
I assume the low rate from 1948-84 was due to 1 person working in a married
household. Then it increased as both persons worked to maintain middle class,
followed by recession. So low labor participation with high prosperity back
then, and low participation with low prosperity now.

------
pc2g4d
The mismatch between available jobs and the skillsets of the workforce has
baffled me. Is it just that autoglass installers aren't in sufficient demand
for people to train to become autoglass installers? And so would it be
economically inefficient for the government to subsidize the education of more
autoglass workers?

But maybe it's not a question of insufficient demand for these skills. Maybe
it's a question of matching up job opportunities, workers, and the capital
necessary to train the workers for the jobs.

Imagine this: a site/app where employers post job openings with certain skill
requirements, and where workers apply for jobs. These sites already exist. But
add to it an element where workers can say they want to work a certain type of
job but need additional training to do so. Then investors can put forward the
money to train the worker, in exchange for 10% of the worker's future earnings
until the loan is paid back plus interest.

Microfinance not as foreign aid but as grease for the labor market.

~~~
insickness
The problem with this is that its often difficult to tell whether a person is
suited for a job or even would like a job until the person starts training in
it. You could decide you want to go into HVAC because there's a lot of money
in it. But six weeks into the training you hate it or you realize you suck at
it. Who foots the bill for that failure?

~~~
aharrison3
The debtor would. They can choose to stick it out until their loan is repaid
or find another way to pay it.

------
lkrubner
Let's do this experiment: let's have all businesses double whatever wage they
are currently paying. Is there still a shortage of workers? No? Ah, in that
case, we have solved the problem.

~~~
moxious
You miss the point. Labor is inelastic. If you double the wage, it might take
the market years to respond if the skill in question is not quickly acquired.

Buying high skilled workers is not like buying gumballs, where prices and high
demand can quickly stimulate supply, and the two meet in the middle.

Gumballs don't have to sell their house and move. Gumballs don't have to take
care of their kids while going back to school.

~~~
mason240
True, but this OP's scenario is very similar to what happened during the ND
oil boom in 2010. Guys with certain skills (heavy equipment operation, truck
driving, ect) could make two or even three times what where in their current
jobs.

What was the result? A flood of workers coming in how left their families,
homes, and everything to live in trailers (or even the truck cabs) for the
opportunity.

If the this had happened near a real city like Sioux Falls SD with available
housing and had been long term (like the OP's scenario), people absolutely
would have moved their families and put down roots.

------
hkon
Can't find workers means: can't find cheap skilled workers.

~~~
shams93
Exactly, there is a shortage of people with 20 years experience and a master's
degree willing to work for $14/hour.

------
onion2k
If we're generous and say that the auto-glass installer job pays a bonus of
$10,000 a year that leaves $60,000 earned at $12/hour ... which is about 96
hours a week. I can think of plenty of reasons why you'd have trouble finding
people to do that job.

~~~
brianwawok
I doubt the 70k makes $12 an hour. Likely a supervisor making say $20 an
hour.. comes to a base of 42k.

Other 28k he would make in 17 hours of overtime per week (Remember you get
time and a half for overtime), for a total of 57 hour weeks.

Not out of the question hours in a busy factory. I did some of those in
college summer days...

~~~
mturmon
But now you are working 57 hours a week in steady state to make that $70K and
it does not sound like such a good deal any more.

~~~
brianwawok
It's not a good deal! Thats why I code.

But that is how some working class people make enough to sound their kids to
private school. Working their tails off.

~~~
diyorgasms
I see that they have to do that as a moral failing of capitalism, both that
public schooling is insufficiently good for their children and that a worker's
base wage is insufficient to provide for that worker's child's education.

~~~
brianwawok
I mean your child gets an education either way, its do you get top 5% private
school or public school? You can't give everyone free access to a top private
school, or it is no longer a top by definition ;)

------
jwtadvice
America recently redefined what unemployment means.

It used to mean "the amount of people currently capable of working, who are
not employed in work."

The new definition is "the amount of people who want a job, but can't find
one".

Basically the difference between structural unemployment and transitive
unemployment. America used to track transitive unemployment, but through a
series of reforms have narrowed in on measuring structural unemployment.

Originally if you were not employed you would be unemployed. Slowly this was
altered so that if you were not employed and hadn't found a job in a month you
were unemployed (because you were looking and not finding, and therefore there
was no job for you). Slowly that got moved out. I don't have the most recent
numbers committed to memory, but an not employed person is not considered
unemployed unless they've been looking and have not found for a large amount
of time.

This article hits on that theme. The argument/opinion it expresses is that the
jobs ARE there - that structural unemployment is low - but that workers aren't
finding good work ("transitive unemployment is high").

There's been huge moves in the labor market as middle skilled jobs are
disappearing. The only move for the labor pool is down to low-skilled labor
jobs, work that masses of the labor pool are not only overqualified for, but
will be compensated significantly less for and which represent much less
socioeconomic mobility.

~~~
madengr
It seems like now binomial, people are making <$20/hr or >$60/hr. The middle
has been sucked out.

------
swolchok
I feel like I've seen a lot of articles about people who can't find jobs or
who are worried about their increasingly-outdated jobs going away in the short
term. This article says we also have a lot of jobs that can't find people.
What's the missing piece? Re-training? What does that actually look like for a
30- or 40-year-old person who has a family to support and doesn't much care
for government handouts?

~~~
goodcanadian
It's speculation, but my take would be that there are two missing pieces:

1) Inadequate pay.

2) Unwillingness to train.

If you don't have the exact skills that the company wants, they won't hire
you. But they will complain that they can't find anyone even though they are
really only offering unskilled level wages.

~~~
caseysoftware
And location.

If you're 30/40, odds are you have a family, roots somewhere, and maybe a
mortgage. Your ability/willingness to move - especially after being out of
work for a while - is near zero.

* I'm late 30s with all of the above.

~~~
dabockster
> If you're 30/40, odds are you have a family, roots somewhere, and maybe a
> mortgage. Your ability/willingness to move - especially after being out of
> work for a while - is near zero.

This is also true for someone like me as a recent grad with an older vehicle,
a student loan to pay off, and lack of sufficient savings to move too far away
from my hometown. One of the large issues of the education crisis that I don't
hear being discussed is that a lot of students, like myself, often spend
literally everything we have to get the degree after constantly hearing about
success story after success story in the K-12 system. In these cases, it is
implied that college is the _only_ way to get ahead in life and we need to get
there _by any means necessary_.

I mean, how the hell am I supposed to magically relocate halfway across the
country (or even commute >50 miles away from my house on a daily basis) when
the infrastructure doesn't exist and/or no benefits are offered besides "you
should be glad that we're even paying you"?

But hey, I'm just a whiny millennial brat who should be glad that
spanking/belt whipping is illegal.

~~~
falcolas
One important thing to add to this, is that in the US, halfway across the
country is somewhere around 2,000 miles, which can easily result in $2-3000 in
moving costs alone. I just bring this up since I had a conversation about a
very similar topic with a friend in the UK - where halfway across the country
can mean a leisurely 4 hour drive.

------
sien
This is a bit weird.

US unemployment is at 4.6%

[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000)

US growth is about 2%

[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locati...](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=US)

That's really pretty good. Most developed countries would be happy with that.

~~~
toomuchtodo
2% growth is very low. Jobs =! well paying secure jobs.

~~~
sien
What developed country has sustained better growth?

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?year_h...](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?year_high_desc=true)

Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Iceland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand,
Spain, the UAE, and Israel (although there are more depending on your
definition of a developed country).

~~~
sien
What definition are you using for sustained? 10 years? 20 years?

I didn't include this either. Just curious.

------
cbdfghh
The issue is that US workers now compete with the whole world.

Until the 70s, the US really had no competition. To compete, you need a stable
(legal) system - No one would invest money in a country where it's not far-
fetched that someone will overthrow the government, nationalizes your company
and throws you in jail.

Oh, and because of geo-politics, one couldn't invest in USSR friendly
countries (both from the US side and the other side)

So no one would invest in the USSR, Africa, the Middle East, China or India,
Europe and Japan were in shambles. So who built up industry? The US.

After the 60s, different countries started stabilizing. First Japan, then
China, now most of the world is actually quite stable, so now the average US
worker has to compete against all of India, China, Bangladesh, etc.

You have more supply and the same demand (the world).

And the problem is nothing can really be done about it.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
US workers are having to deal with reality itself after an entire history of
avoiding it.

"Free land" from genocided native Americans. No equivalently armed and
organized opposition from Virginia to California.

"Free labor" from slavery.

Poverty wages during the gilded age; easy-to-access industrial fuels like
lumber and coal, and later oil. Again, all available on stolen land.

Early 20th century, Europe was beating itself up so often America became a
superpower by pure virtue of being the only power not bombed to shit by 1945.

Through mid 20th century, America artificially suppressed the domestic cost of
living at home through economic imperialism by, among other things,
overthrowing other regimes - including democracies - that threatened America's
economic dominance and control of natural resources, like Guatemala for food
and Iran for oil (although the U.K. started it).

So this is the first time the US has _ever_ had to compete on anything close
to an even footing.

------
michael_h
I'm always baffled by the people in these articles. From the anecdote at the
beginning: he's having trouble hiring people for $12/hour (up to $70K/year
with bonuses, etc).

I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay
is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are
just lazy and don't want to work.

~~~
maxsilver
So this job pays $12/hr. Which is $1,555.05/month after tax, assuming 40hr
work week. And the average 1-bed apartment rents in North Charleston, SC is
roughly $1100/month (according to Zillow), leaving the employee $450/month to
cover all food + medical + debt + transit + utilities and any other expenses.

I _can 't imagine_ why no one is taking the position. It sounds like a
fulfilling opportunity to install auto glass while living on the poverty line.

It's like employers don't even attempt to think about anything from the
employee's perspective -- _even after_ they've struggled to fill their own
positions. "Cheap business owners" couldn't be a more accurate byline.

~~~
MarkMc
$12 per hour is somewhat less than the median personal income in the US [1],
so I would not expect the auto glass worker to pay median rent. There may also
be an option to live in a cheaper area outside North Charleston.

I agree it's not a fulfilling job, but I wouldn't characterise it as "living
on the poverty line". The job pays $24,000 per year but for a single person
the official poverty line is $11,770 [2].

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

[2] [https://aspe.hhs.gov/2015-poverty-
guidelines](https://aspe.hhs.gov/2015-poverty-guidelines)

~~~
falcolas
Personally, I'm not sure I'd like to live in a 1 BR apartment where the cost
was around half[0] the going rate. Something would have to justify the lower
cost - poor condition, a poor neighborhood, a large commute...

[0] Based on the recommendation your housing cost you around 30% of your gross
income.

------
logfromblammo
I wanted a _career_ , but all they were offering was _jobs_.

