The Great Labor Shortage

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Abradolfus_Linclerson

Abradolfus_Linclerson

Corona Coofmander
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Oct 2, 2018
Note to the jannies: if this is being discussed somewhere else, merge/delete and tag me where to go plz kthx.

For you business savvy Kiwis, some observations from the peanut gallery...

Currently in central Wisconsin. The hospital department I work for is comically shorthanded, as are basically all the departments. I presume (but cannot confirm) that this situation is an ongoing problem for the rest of the healthcare network my hospital is part of based on staffing issues I overheard being discussed at some facilities acquired this time last year from another provider. I figure if the place I'm working (a flagship regional hospital with all the bells and whistles you could hope for in a small town/rural-ish hospital) can't find staff, the smaller satellite facilities (in progressively smaller, even more rural towns) are likewise personnel-strapped.

There's not a business I pass in town, it seems, that lacks a "Now Hiring!" banner or two, from fast food to manufacturing to healthcare to furniture stores to auto shops. I think maybe the banks aren't strapped for people. (Maybe. Or maybe I just don't pass many in my usual route, or I don't pay attention to them because I don't bank with them. Dunno.)

I know to some degree, it's self-inflicted in the form of WuFlu vaccine mandates (such as the healthcare network I'm part of) and people not wanting to jump through that particular hoop. That doesn't explain all of it, though. We had record low unemployment just two years ago, before the lockdowns all started, and not every business has instituted vaccine mandates. I was under the impression the Trump/Biden Bux for enhanced unemployment had run out some time ago.

So, TL;DR...

1) Is this labor shortage just a regional phenomenon?
2) How big an obstacle are vaccine mandates to recruitment?
3) Are the enhanced unemployment benefits still a thing?
4) WTF is going on with the job market?

Thanks in advance, business Kiwis.
 
Every time I leave my hovel I hear one or two more whispered voices of discontent about the "general state" of our Banana Republic. People are waking up to an extent, but no one is suffering enough to act on it.
 
I only have anecdote from speaking to several people who you could call neets. but my personal theory is that the combined past +10 years has completely shattered the social contract for many. this phenomenon was already present in statistics like the amount of young people opting to be single or depression/suicide rates. not to mention this has already been happening in inner cities and rural areas for decades. now a previously productive segment of america is disenfranchised too and the media notices bc this country has no soul beyond the stock market.
might be helpful to flip the question as, if someone is ok with a lower standard of living, what entices them to take any of these jobs? the carrot is gone and they don't feel the stick anymore.
 
its not a labor shortage its a cheap labor shortage, i've been following it in my area since covid began, not a single place is offering more than 25% of minimum wage. the only ones i could find were the usual labor jobs or commission ones. anything that was surpassing my threshold was the usual "masters degree plus decade experience plus these dozen licenses and certs" style jobs.

If you are unemployed right now your best shot is trucking, those places are well over a dollar/mile for owner operators and will take literally anyone that has a clean driving record. so if you are have no direction in life just do that. they are all offering huge bonuses because of how bad that labor shortage is.

obviously nursing is another huge one, depending on the position i've seen up to $100/hr. enhanced unemlpoyment stopped around this time last year unless your governor decided to extend it, but even that would have run out.

I think the problem with the job market is the unemployment benefits proved to people how much their time was truely worth, once they figured that out they really didn't want to go back to work when they were already used to A. surviving on a smaller budget and B,were already on the dole and didn't want to lose on that to work for some shitty company for only a few dollars more and C. they're used to the leisure time covid gave them and working in a post-covid environment isn't worth it for them

I will admit that recently i've been seeing jobs offer more, but its only summer season type jobs like at wineries or resturants, nothing that crazy, the neat part is seeing how many jobs clearly didn't keep up with inflation, like you could be a waitress at red lobster or be a dental hygenist or eye doctor.
 
Dyn said:
Well have they considered offering higher pay?
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except it's not just fast food joints hurting. many of these vacant jobs are also decent paying. like you can hand someone a map of where to go learn a trade and they will be indifferent.
when people can't imagine a career path/a house/a family then they will choosing sleeping in every weekday over a pain in the ass for other shit they don't really need.
 
Kaede Did Nothing Wrong said:
except it's not just fast food joints hurting. many of these vacant jobs are also decent paying. like you can hand someone a map of where to go learn a trade and they will be indifferent.
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The whole "learn a trade" is very nuanced. There are a lot of reasons why people don't chose them. Trades can be very hard on the body and have risks to you health. A broken hand or injured back, knee, hip, etc. can leave you without income for months. They can have high pay as a balance to it but as you age you will face direct bodily limitations and usually a lot of pain. And there's nothing to suggest that tech or globalization in the next 20 years might not make your trade useless. So it's not really an easy sell to people.
 
It's happening everywhere.
I currently have a job I love but it only pays my bills right now so I need another for other expenses.
It was never this easy to jump from job to job.
I sometimes just walk into a place and ask if they're looking for someone and most times, the answer is: "Yes we're overworked, wanna join?"

Why is this happening?
Because in developed countries during the lockdowns, people got welfare for 18 months and they got used to it.
They see now that it's much easier to get 70% of minimum wage doing nothing than slaving away doing something you hate, just so you can buy a car you don't need.
 
Idiotron said:
They see now that it's much easier to get 70% of minimum wage doing nothing than slaving away doing something you hate, just so you can buy a car you don't need.
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This can't explain the shortage. Unemployment bennies don't last forever.
 
Justtocheck said:
The whole "learn a trade" is very nuanced. There are a lot of reasons why people don't chose them. Trades can be very hard on the body and have risks to you health. A broken hand or injured back, knee, hip, etc. can leave you without income for months. They can have high pay as a balance to it but as you age you will face direct bodily limitations and usually a lot of pain. And there's nothing to suggest that tech or globalization in the next 20 years might not make your trade useless. So it's not really an easy sell to people.
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listing only the (exaggerated) negatives sounds like rationalizations to me. regardless there's not an explanation for good paying jobs to be abnormally vacant outside of people feeling disenfranchised.
 
Another key thing to remember is that a ton of baby boomers retired during/shortly after the pandemic. This (potential) labor shortage was something in the works for awhile but never occurred because they hung on to their jobs. That lake house bill doesn’t pay itself!

OP asked if this is regional and it is not. Many of the factors other Kiwis above pointed out are also contributing factors, I just wanted to add my above observation as well.

Weirdly, I think something like 4% of young people polled said they made bank of crypto and weren’t returning to work for that reason.
 
Kaede Did Nothing Wrong said:
listing only the (exaggerated) negatives sounds like rationalizations to me. regardless there's not an explanation for good paying jobs to be abnormally vacant outside of people feeling disenfranchised.
Click to expand...
Pay a visit to 10 people who work trades daily who are older than 35. Ask them "How are you dealing with back pain?" And then "What's your pain medication stack?" and report back to me. Carrying, pulling or pushing heavy shit all day or working in awkward positions like plumbers or welders will be hard living.

By the way, what the fuck is a "rationalization" supposed to mean in this context? -"Hey man join the infantry for 20 years? It's a great job!"--"But they will make me carry heavy shit for miles; my knees and back will be ruined and I might get shot and blown up."--"Hey man, cool it with the rationalizations. Using you thinking capabilities is for fags."
 
'It's the same where I live. Everyone's desperate for employees. A lot of businesses have reduced their hours because they can't find people. At my job we need at least two or three more guys. We're having trouble keeping up with the amount of work we have. All the trades in town are swamped with work because they're short on guys. They have literal children working at one of the grocery stores here.

We've also got a problem with housing here. There's almost nothing available and what is available is going for way too high for someone working a low paying job to afford. People are living in trailers in the backs of people's properties or parking them up back roads and stuff. But the regional district's been cracking down on those too forcing people to move their trailers or rv's. Meanwhile, the local government keeps bringing junkies here from the city and giving them free housing. But they inevitably end up roaming the streets. Robberies and thefts have gone up ridiculously.
As far as I knew the covid money's been done for a while so I have no idea how people are affording to live.
 
PFM said:
Something I was just thinking: what is the age breakdown of the unemployed? I could see a large majority of the unemployed being millenials that were forced to move back in with parents during covid and ended up just saying "fuck it, mommy and daddy will take care of my ass"
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Anecdotal to my experience, but hospital support staff such as myself are overwhelmingly brushing retirement age, with a handful of middle-agers or thereabouts, and a sprinkling of 20-somethings. Age distribution for nurses seems inverted to that, while docs seem to run a fairly normal distribution of olds, youngs, and in-betweens.

As to 'lol pay them more,' it's a freaking hospital system that does business as a non-profit, meaning everything they make either covers expenses or is re-invested to ensure solvency for the next fiscal year. They bumped up the pay for n00bs like me to what it had taken some of the staff a few years to earn to get applicants. That compression of wage scale naturally pissed the longer-term types off and I know a handful of them quit over it, and possibly some other issues.
 
There is a large skills mismatch in a lot of industries. There's lots of people with masters degrees working at starbucks because they studied philosophy and not math or a trade.

The restaurant and minimum wage jobs are shitty and dehumanizing. Most people can't get ahead or even off of welfare doing them, so it's better to be poor and unemployed than poor and overworked.

You really can't pay restaurant workers more. Prices are about as high as they can be raised before consumers start noping out. Profit margins are already thin and the cost of supplies is rising. These jobs are soon to be automated out of existence for the most part.
 
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