There's more to this than simple supply and demand economics. People take into account significantly more factors than raw pay when deciding to pick a job (and especially when leaving one).
Working conditions are especially horrible in pretty much all the cases of "nobody wants to work anymore" that I have seen. Even if you paid me a good wage, I might not want to work at a terrible employer. It doesn't help that the terrible employers also usually pay below-market wages.
So, I am advisor to several startups at different stages. One of them is pretty well bootstraped and has had a good Seed round not long ago. (All this here in Mexico)
Talking with their head of Engineering he was asking my advice on how to better hire Android devs; apparently they are having problems of candidates rejecting their offers at the end of their long hiring process.
The reason is because they are avoiding giving the law benefits: some companies in Mexico pay you the minimum in a "straight " manner and the rest they pay in different ways, all this to avoid some taxes.
When he explained me those reasons I straight told him: I'll give you 2 answers: as a person and as your advisor. As a person I would never work for your company, because what you are doing is shady. Even if it doesn't directly affect me (it actually does affect employees in several ways, but not many know), if you are open to that, what else are you open to.
It's crazy how little companies value their employees.
Recently went to get a vaccine shot. Making talk with the pharmacist she let the mask slip, working conditions are horrible. The problem with supply and demand is like everything from economics[1] it acts as if only money is important. And discounts things like being able to hold up psychologically. When your pharmacists are at the breaking point where they're going to up and quit at the first opportunity because they can't stand the job anymore, your system is sick indeed.
[1] First rule of economics, humans are robots obsessed with money.
It doesn't and it is generally acknowledged that working conditions are a part of the pay that gets factored in when you do supply and demand. But the example from Ford where he did nothing to improve the working conditions, but made 5 usd/day the standard is also famous for a reason: double the pay and you get the kind of people who care primarily about money.
Yes and economist's also think the risk to the workers physical health and safety is part of the pay that gets factored in and the government should mind it's own beeswax too. That's generally part of economists reflex to look the other way when the free market creates a race to the bottom.
Just pretend that workers have a choice between working at a coal mine that exposes them coal dust for higher pay or one that doesn't. Same as pharmacists have to choice between working for companies that put them at risk for burnout, PTSD and panic attacks for more money and ones that don't.
It's a pro social job where you are responsible for something important. But the MBA's that run pharmacies have stripped pharmacists of all power and are overworking them relentlessly.
> Every position is hire-able if the you pay for it.
I completely disagree with this. I have a friend who recently turned down a job that would have been a significant pay increase because he didn't like the sound of the working conditions (which would have also included relocation to a new place).
Many of the times that I recall when friends have left their jobs, the reason they left is not necessarily because they weren't being paid enough, but because they became tired of their job, or something changed at their employer that made working there less tolerable.
People want to be happy. Once a person's financial needs are more-or-less met, it will be very hard to convince them to leave, even for substantially more pay, if they know their new job will make their lives materially worse for ~8h/day.
We wrote host (and a bit of embedded) image processing pipeline software. Color correction, distortion correction, demosaicing, etc.
Also, a fair bit of device control stuff.
[EDIT] Oh, I just realized that you meant what kind of manager stuff.
It's a bit complicated, but, TL;DR, I insisted on treating each of my team as an individual. I learned about them, understood their personal priorities, learned what type of coding they were best suited for, got them involved in as much of the lifetime of the project as possible (not a little silo).
I also did not burn them out. I actually did stuff that the company HR people wouldn't like, like let them flex hours, and gave them slack, when they were going through personal stuff.
I also never lied to them; or to my bosses. It's entirely possible to keep secrets, without lying.
This would not work for many teams. I was fortunate, for having the types of employees that I did, and my company basically supported me, and gave me a fair bit of agency.
The reductionist reply to this is that the employment offer didn't meet your friend's threshold for "pays enough". Theoretically, if they offered your friend $1,000,000 USD per year, he would have accepted the job. The economic viability of that pay is a different topic.
Some years ago, when my name and association with amzn were still sort of hot, a wall st. company offered me "7 figures+" to go work for them for a year or so. I lived in Philadelphia at the time, was just starting up a new relationship, was raising my daughter as a stay-at-home parent by choice ... I said no. I think there was no amount of money you could have offered me at that point in time which would have been enough to make me say yes.
To generalize: I think there are situations where no amount of compensation will make the offer worth taking. How common they are ... that's a different story.
I think the argument is that there is a salary at which there would be someone taking the job, assuming the market is large enough. That someone doesn’t need to be specifically you in your situation.
Of course, it’s still conditioned on the mentioned assumption.
That is one of the arguments here, certainly. But there's another also being discussed that concerns whether there is always a salary level high enough to get a particular individual to take any job.
A particular individual? Definitely not. Not everyone can be motivated by money.
But there's no way that a position cannot be filled with high-enough pay, provided the position isn't extremely unsafe or something like that. If you offer $1 billion per day for a job, someone will take it. This doesn't guarantee competency though, or that they'll come back the next day.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would not take $1M/yr in blood money to work for companies they see as immoral (Google, Facebook, Raytheon, Philip Morris, etc.). Obviously you can find plenty of people who will, but money isn't everything to everyone. Especially people with in-demand skills who can find good jobs elsewhere.
What about $1B/day? Surely people will take jobs at immoral companies for that much money. After a short time, they can simply take ownership of the whole company and run it in a more moral manner.
So you'd rather let immorality continue indefinitely, rather than work for a day (or should I say, "work" for a day), take your billion in pay, and then buy the company? That seems like extremely short-sighted thinking.
I'm not sure about this. I think it easily met the threshold for "pays enough" in an absolute sense, but so often the whole sentiment of "pays enough for what they're asking from me" goes unsaid. And sometimes people value whatever personal thing they might be giving up (like being able to live with their loved ones) more than even a very large amount of money.
He factored in the cost right. Different people factors it in differently. And that is how market rate is decided. I refuse to believe that the company can't find another candidate who is willing to take the job if the pay is good.
Assuming you need some level of competence, if you have sufficiently bad working conditions and wanted to rely solely on pay, then at some point you'd have to pay enough that someone could quickly retire, which means it'd be impossible to find experienced hires.
Average wage of drain cleaner in US is $52,930[1] and for mining machine operator which is among the riskiest job it is $81,741[2], not exactly a quickly retiring wage.
Sure, there's a supply component as you say. If you need some level of competence (i.e. you can't just hire whomever), that strategy isn't going to work.
If someone can make six figures already as an electrical engineer or programmer or something, then even if you offer $1M/yr for your totally crappy job like another poster said, the best you'll get is that they'll do it for 6-12 months and quit. Try to put golden handcuffs on, and they'll just start coasting once they've gotten enough. Try to prevent that (e.g. have a clawback if you fire them), and they won't take the deal because they don't trust you not to screw them.
On a similar note: assuming that a business is run rationally and only hires people it needs for the business to run, eventually the inability to fill the position should lead to the business collapsing.
In this sense, on long-enough time scales, positions that cannot be filled no matter what compensation is offered don't exist. (QED/s)
Keep out the immigrants. Stop any and all attempts at building affordable housing. Make it untenable for younger generations to have children. Saddle anyone capable of going to college with $100k in debt.
Wonder why no one wants to make me a dollar menu burger for $5 an hour anymore!!!
The notion that immigration is needed to fill underpaid manual labor is in itself rather shady. Immigrants do not want to work those jobs either, they are often forced because they have to and compared to the past, their hard work does not offer upward social mobility anymore.
I actually fully agree with this, no one should have to do these jobs for shitty pay. Just relating the reality though, the reason fast food and produce has been so cheap is because of underpaid immigrant labor.
Once theres no competition a customer needing help becomes a burden. These companies then usually outsource customer service to the most clueless people and have extra long wait times.
I've seen these signs. I stop patronizing the places displaying these signs. I'm not giving business to liars. I saw one of these kinds of signs, at a Dairy Queen no less, and contacted DQ with a photo of the sign. Lots of people stopped patronizing the locations owned by that franchisee and they had to sell to new owners.
When it comes to restaurants, I'm absolutely 100% in control of those with whom I do business. Show me you're a liar or an asshole and I'll stop doing business with you.
Some businesses' economics simply don't make sense if their labor costs grow X%. Maybe they can charge more to make up for it, but it's actually not as simple as "this business owner is being cheap."
Yeah, the larger symptom is there is less money to go around after buying necessities. Inflation stings twice, cost savings on necessities will include shifting purchases from less-efficient local businesses to more-efficient global mega corps. And the slice of income that goes to desires will shrink which also reduces spend on local businesses.
So the local businesses get hurt from both ends. Their costs of inputs also rise, and the demand for the services decrease. The only businesses who can keep or lower prices and also pay more for labor are one's that have large profit margins.
And then even if there's enough profit margin to survive the hair cut, that may lead to a situation where the business owner's time and effort could be better spent on other opportunities. So even profitable businesses may close if the owner thinks they could do better.
Yes, of course, but it's not workers' responsibility to make sure business owners have sustainable businesses. If your business model relied on getting timber for half the market price, that's called running a business badly. If you then started crowing on "What's wrong with you people? Why won't you lazy businesses sell me bloody timber?!" You'd rightly be considered deranged.
This is one of those things people want to be true but is not. Labor participation is down significantly in those ages <25. 63 -> 51 and 47 -> 30 for teenagers in 10 years. Wages are slightly up adjusted for inflation over that time.
College enrollment increased between 2000 and 2010, however it's been basically flat or slightly down since then.
If you look at the monthly stats, the labor force participation rates for the younger groups seems like it goes down sharply with recessions and doesn't recover much. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1bBX7
The monthly data also makes it clear that this isn't a smooth trend over decades.
> my opinion is if rent was cheaper, a lot more people would be willing to do these service jobs of it meant they could live independently.
This is 100% it. The housing market in the Anglosphere is the root of all problems. At least in the UK, I'm anticipating a single issue party to form in the coming years, like UKIP but solely for housing and renting reform. It would have the potential to steal votes from both the left and right and become a formidable power.
I think you hit the nail on the head here: "if rent was cheaper"
The jobs that that people "don't want to work anymore" no longer pay a living wage. Between rent hikes squeezing the low end, high interest rates squeezing the middle class, and every major company from oil down to Kellog's raising prices but not wages, people can't _afford_ to take menial, minimum-wage jobs anymore.
Oh, and a bunch of people died because of COVID, so supply has been affected too.
"I interviewed a Japanese bespoke shoemaker last month and asked why are there so many craft-based businesses in japan, like bespoke tailors. He said rent is relatively low in Tokyo, so if you have a passion for making suits and you only have a few customers, you're fine"
Isn't Japan's population decreasing dramatically, so the demand for housing is not increasing like in USA? They also have a very strict immigration policy, opposite of USA.
That's at the country level, but _Tokyo_ was also seeing a rural-to-urban migration that ran from the 1950s to a peak in 2019 or so, and maintained relatively low rents between housing and transportation policies compared to major US cities.
Population in the cities is constantly growing; it's just the towns and smaller cities that are dying out.
Immigration to Japan is much, much, much easier than the US, as long as you have a job offer here. Immigrating to the US is an expensive nightmare for most. The big difference is that the US prioritizes family members, so it's easy to bring your 2nd cousin after you've gotten in. In Japan, there's absolutely no preference for relatives, except spouses and minor children of course.
I was exaggerating about the 2nd cousin bit, but check out preferences F3 and F4: you can bring over your married adult children and your siblings too.
Can't readily find it but there was a pretty good Odd Lots podcast on the interaction between labor supply and restaurant design. California raises wages, and less labor intensive counter service measurably replace table service. As is typical for the show, it went into nuanced dynamics of the industry, wish I could find it again.
I think this has far less to do with poor worker sentiment for the prevailing wage than the massive and unabated increase in the cost of living, particularly housing.
Very few young people have housing security. You simply cannot live on your own anymore (and yes, I'm counting having roommates) without paying huge amounts of money in rent. There is no financial cushion to be had; at least one roommate must personally make 3x rent, or know someone who does and is willing to cosign. You must pay for an automobile and repairs, gas, insurance on top of that, Uber when your car is in for repairs, because public transit is laughably poor if it exists at all, and the cost of groceries and eating out are so high that we're starting to reduce total food consumption.
These aren't inevitable problems; they are self-inflicted political own-goals. Cities inflict insane restrictions on land, causing rents (commercial and residential) to skyrocket, and underfunding public transit, forcing everyone to spend huge amounts of money on automobiles + insurance + now high interest rate loans.
The vast majority of this problem would be solved if only we had an abundance of cheap and amenity-rich housing, as well as functional public transit. Our society is culturally much poorer, and we have far fewer artists and creatives, because the amount of work, effort, and money required to not go hungry or go out on the streets increases every year. By making housing more abundant and cheap, we can reduce the cost of living directly, since people would no longer have to pay 80% of their income in rent, and meals+groceries would be cheaper since commercial rents would go down.
Half a million Americans are homeless, largely due to the cost and scarcity of housing.
And who is served by this status quo?
There is a large voting constituency of homeowners who want to see the value of their property and the price of their rents continue to increase. Not to mention the very large constituency + lobbying arm (Oil&Gas, Auto industry) supporting the one-person:one-car model of transportation. Politicians do not want to rock this boat, not only because it would be very unpopular and cost them campaign contributions, but because the vast majority of them are well-to-do and benefit from rising housing prices. As the saying goes, it's difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary (or net worth, in this case) depends upon them not understanding it.
In California, we see this coming to a head where the state is finally stepping in (at least on housing) due to being much further along than the rest of the country in facing extreme living costs. They are slowly battling the powerful layers of vetocracy and bureaucratic cruft that has accumulated over the past 60+ years, but it is paying off. Granted, most housing being built remains automobile-dependent or exposed to noise and sound pollution due to proximity to highways, but it is progress in a state where 50 year old shit shacks sell for $1,500,000.
We see from Tokyo that the current state of the west is neither permanent, nor inevitable. By simply legalizing housing and mixed-use (retail) development, we can have much better and cheaper urban areas. They also have a huge high speed rail network, which makes a huge amount of land available to commuters. Highways clog and get congested during rush hour, which reduces speeds drastically. Trains run the same speed all day, every day.
>We see from Tokyo that the current state of the west is neither permanent, nor inevitable. By simply legalizing housing and mixed-use (retail) development, we can have much better and cheaper urban areas. They also have a huge high speed rail network, which makes a huge amount of land available to commuters. Highways clog and get congested during rush hour, which reduces speeds drastically. Trains run the same speed all day, every day.
Slight nitpick from Tokyo: the commuter trains here aren't "high speed rail", they're just trains and subways, and are pretty slow since they usually stop at every stop. There is high-speed rail (called shinkansen), but it goes between cities, it's not something for commuting unless you're really rich; it's not cheap at all.
However, what you see here in Tokyo isn't really workable in America anytime soon. It's not just housing and mixed-use development: you need to get rid of cars too, or else you just won't have the density you need for all those trains/subways to work and be economical. To get density, you need to build everything very close together, and to do that you need to get rid of parking lots, as well as most automobile traffic. There's simply very little parking here, and what parking there is is usually expensive (and probably not all that convenient). So taxis are very common since they're usually faster than trains, and don't need to park and so can take you directly to your destination, but they're expensive too. Trains are cheap, but usually require some walking since lots of places aren't that close to train stations. A 15-minute walk to the station is pretty typical for many people's commute. Many people end up riding bikes to their nearest train station to save time; many stations have large bicycle parking garages for this (expect to pay 100Y/day for this).
The trains really do work like clockwork here, but it's really hard to imagine that ever being the reality in America, or most other places to be honest. It's not normal in Europe, even though there are lots of trains there.
I've only been to Japan briefly, but I do remember there being express commuter trains in the Tokyo/Yokohama area.
One little-known fact about the US is that we used to have a widespread streetcar/commuter rail network. Many of these right-of-ways still exist in the form of current roads and bike paths. Some would have to be reestablished, but it's not like the ISHS doesn't habitually eminent domain people's property to build even more and wider roads.
I've also thought for a while now that many communities would benefit from (at least) a corner store. Most housing and apartment developments have space that could be used for this purpose (a vacant ground-floor apartment or two, a section of the parking lot, a house).
In general, Americans need to start getting used to in-fill development and purpose-shift renovation, because we can't afford new and sprawl anymore.
>I do remember there being express commuter trains in the Tokyo/Yokohama area.
Those are express trains, not "high speed rail". HSR means bullet trains. Express commuter trains simply skip stations; they're not especially fast.
>In general, Americans need to start getting used to in-fill development and purpose-shift renovation, because we can't afford new and sprawl anymore.
It's not going to happen anytime soon, because too many Americans love their zoning laws and suburban sprawl and SUVs. The ones with the most political power are all NIMBYs who don't want more development or walkability.
I didn't say they were. I was replying to the assertion that there were no alternatives to slow trains that stop at every station, as far as regular people and their commutes are concerned.
>It's not going to happen anytime soon, because too many Americans love their zoning laws and suburban sprawl and SUVs. The ones with the most political power are all NIMBYs who don't want more development or walkability.
I'm not exactly optimistic, either, but there are definitely places making an effort. The problem extends beyond NIMBYs to a large swath of people who profit from the pain. Pensioners with auto and energy blue chips in their funds' portfolio, REIT investors, zero-tolerance nature lovers who have no hope of stopping existing industry and so focus on nascent projects, etc. We are far beyond NIMBY; a lot of people don't want anything in anyone's backyard.
This is partly why I think in-fill and purpose-shifting is important. If you really need a parking lot there, build it under the economically-useful structure.
>I was replying to the assertion that there were no alternatives to slow trains that stop at every station, as far as regular people and their commutes are concerned.
There are no alternatives, for many, many lines. Anywhere inside the Yamanote line, there are generally no express lines; all the Tokyo Metro lines stop at every station. It entirely depends on which line you're taking; some lines have express trains, many don't. There are over 120 train lines in the Tokyo metro area; you can't make generalizations like that about them.
>This is partly why I think in-fill and purpose-shifting is important.
In-fill is necessary if you want America to have the kind of density needed to make public transit economically viable, but it's almost impossible to do as long as car culture is so important and parking requirements exist.
Personally, I just gave up on the idea of America being a nice place to live within my lifetime, and moved to Tokyo. Why bother pining for the kind of lifestyle I wish existed in America, when I can just move to a place where it already is the norm?
>Anywhere inside the Yamanote line, there are generally no express lines; all the Tokyo Metro lines stop at every station.
That makes sense, because it's the ring line surrounding and regular lines serving historically dense portions of Tokyo. Express trains to what count as suburbs in Japan are efficient. The point is to keep commutes less than an hour each way (which is more tolerable than the ~30 min in America since you're not driving).
>but it's almost impossible to do as long as car culture is so important and parking requirements exist.
There's been movement on that front. But, again, the problem isn't the rules themselves, but the benefit people get from them being so widespread (essentially forcing other people to subsidize their lifestyle). The true culprit is that so many Americans profit from impoverishment (of their neighbors and municipalities).
Yeah, this is all correct. But hour-long commutes from outside the Yamanote line aren't uncommon, once you count the different trains you have to take and the total time it takes to get door-to-door. But you're right, it's a lot better (less stressful and dangerous) than driving for 30 minutes.
And agreed: too many Americans profit from making things worse for others. Though it's kinda hard to see how it's really better. Sure, in terms of absolute USD it's profitable, but in terms of healthy lifestyle, a safe society to live in, etc. it's terrible. I guess if all you care about is having a huge house to stay inside all the time, it's better.
>They also have a huge high speed rail network, which makes a huge amount of land available to commuters.
Express trains are not high speed rail. The bullet trains do NOT make a huge amount of land available to commuters; they cost a lot to ride on, so no one who isn't very rich could afford to commute on one every day. Not many people can afford USD$100-200 per day for commuting.
Well, I suspect many of the people who would normally work as waiters or blue collar jobs became rich on Dogecoin, dealing drugs or other social scheme. The social aspect of blue collar work has delivered financial opportunities.
And many people who studied for years and used to work as honest engineers or scientists are now out of jobs don't want to work as waiters or do blue collar work, especially for such a corrupt system. Is it bad though? You want them to spit in your food?
Consignment shops and a tailoring appointment should get you going for 10-30% of the suit’s retail price. It’s worth getting the tailor’s opinion on modifying your current suits, too. It’s usually free to have them take a look.
The supply for labor depends on the marginal benefits versus the marginal costs. If leisure gets cheaper, taxes go up, or jobs get worse, people on the margin will choose to work fewer hours or exit the workforce. There’s nothing wrong about this! It’s how a free market is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, in our capitalist system, people are demonized for choosing to work less or not at all. It’s viewed as immoral not to work, because the institutions view humans as cattle that must be milked to the maximum. I expect new policies will be created beyond the ones already in place to force people to work. We should resist this, so I support the sentiment of the blogpost even though it’s misleading on a factual basis.
Both camps are right. Some jobs don’t pay enough, but also many jobs don’t really deserve more pay… if the government didn’t hand out cash like it was candy it wouldn’t have been a problem and we wouldn’t have had runaway inflation
It's funny how the jobs that "don't deserve more pay" are the ones that make everyone else's life so much more convenient. Why do people eat fast food or get their groceries delivered? Because it saves them time, effort, and money.
I would suggest getting a little perspective and more importantly, compassion for your fellow humans. Things like food are actually one of the things you need to stay alive.
Those are the jobs that already started to get automated and I’m happy about it. Even McDonald’s has more kiosks than humans. It’s just a matter of time
I love when people say this. Why do you get to decide what someones time is worth? Just because you like $2 cheeseburgers doesn't mean someone has to toil in the kitchen for $7 an hour for you.
Trump handed out cash like candy to the already wealthy, not sure what that has to do with low wage workers. Or are you claiming that people getting $1200 once a few years ago is keeping them out of the workforce today, because that's hilarious.
Working conditions are especially horrible in pretty much all the cases of "nobody wants to work anymore" that I have seen. Even if you paid me a good wage, I might not want to work at a terrible employer. It doesn't help that the terrible employers also usually pay below-market wages.