[HN Gopher] Job Openings Are at Record Highs. Why Aren't Unemplo...
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Job Openings Are at Record Highs. Why Aren't Unemployed Americans
Filling Them?
Author : harambae
Score : 11 points
Date : 2021-07-09 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| monocasa wrote:
| A bunch of service industry people I know (and focusing on the
| good workers) used the stimulus to help break them out of the
| cycle of service industry work. A lot of data science
| certificates and real estate licenses were earned in that group
| over the past year, and they don't plan on going back to the
| service industry.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| If I could do a 4-day workweek, and not have to wear a mask, I'd
| happily work in an office again.
| salawat wrote:
| Because people realize all the money is in starting a businesses,
| and the prevailing wisdom is to invest in your worker's as little
| as possible.
|
| Until that changes, and the Jack Welch school of thinking is
| abandoned, that'll probably be the way things go.
| perl4ever wrote:
| >Because people realize all the money is in starting a
| businesses
|
| I wonder what sort of life experience teaches you that.
|
| Because mine taught me that all the best scams involve starting
| a business, that it's really easy to get trapped (as an owner)
| making less than minimum wage or just losing all your money,
| and that small businesses are mostly run by irrational people
| engaged in a "race to the bottom", which is why they fail in
| bad economic times.
|
| But my image of a startup isn't the SV image, or even a
| software business. It's the other 99%.
| jenkstom wrote:
| Paywalled article.
| harambae wrote:
| https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/ma...
| s09dfhks wrote:
| https://archive.is/eA8ND
| [deleted]
| jokoon wrote:
| As a chronically unemployed 36 y old, this doesn't surprise me at
| all.
|
| The way people pursue work and careers is weird when food and
| shelter are easily available.
|
| It's not just about the economics of labor and "earning a love",
| it's about what people do of their lives and time.
|
| This is an eternal debate about Diogenes, but I'm surprised how
| do many individuals can freely and willingly give so much of
| their time for work. It's a mix of belief system, markets, social
| hierarchy and sociology, psychology and other things.
|
| I know I'm an odd ball, but the pandemic was great for making
| people realize those things.
| ideashower wrote:
| I completely agree and have felt this happen to me personally.
| I maintained employment throughout 2020 but have felt quite a
| strong pull towards reconsidering how I spend my time and
| energy, and how much of it goes to "work."
|
| Out of curiosity, do you know any literature that I could read
| to understand the eternal debate about Diogenes that you
| mention? I'm trying to understand the more philosophical
| questions around work and our modern culture finding itself in
| a quite a jolting self-aware realization about work, time,
| attention and our liberties -- and I'd love to read some of the
| existing foundational lit in this space.
|
| I studied comp sci, so really just doing this out of a deep
| curiosity and an understanding that I didn't get the
| opportunity to study any of this in college.
| mikewarot wrote:
| We've all seen how quickly our lives can be upended. I suspect
| the decades long decline in savings will be permanently reversed.
| We're all looking for security in our lives, and working for less
| than a living wage isn't going to be acceptable any more.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Did they consider adding an equity comp on top of the wages they
| are advertising?
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Proximity certainly is an issue. Not every job needs a physical
| presence but many employers simply refuse to let go of the
| paradigm of having people gathered in a centralized physical
| location. Hard to feel bad for them when they refuse to adapt. To
| make matters worse, some that relent decide it's a smart idea to
| kick their employees in the mouth for pushing things in this
| direction by charging them $20k, $30k, $50k or more for the
| privilege of not commuting into a physical location each day. So
| those employees leave. Maybe going to a competitor. Maybe getting
| out of the industry. Maybe taking some time off. Wherever they're
| going, penny proud, pound foolish thinking is destroying many
| company workforces.
|
| For other industries such as truck driving, it's understandably
| frustrating to increment compensation up and still not be able to
| fill all of the empty positions. I suspect there's simply too
| much money washing around through unusual channels right now,
| which is hiding some of the inflation that needs to happen to
| account for the rapid increase in the money supply. People are
| finding ways to make ends meet that don't involve a fulltime
| commitment to an employer.
| cheezymoogle wrote:
| My sister went from making $11/hr at a book store to $20/hr
| staying at home on unemployment. She didn't spend any of it on
| anything but rent and utilities (we were already providing food
| for her). She went from being in debt to having about $9k in the
| bank. She plans to live on this until it runs out and then return
| to work as a service worker. She moved in with my mother to make
| that runway longer--she figures she can make it last somewhere
| between a year or two.
|
| I don't think she's unique in this. A lot of millenials were
| poorly educated with job skills and personal finance.
| Accordingly, they dug themselves into debt with student loans and
| credit cards that obligated them to take shitty service jobs with
| no prospects. COVID-19 and extended unemployment benefits let
| them dig themselves out of that hole by doing nothing, but they
| still don't have an internal motivation that money and assets are
| good things to acquire.
|
| They work to live, not live to work. They won't go back into the
| workforce until their personal circumstances force them back into
| the workforce and I don't blame them at all.
| deviledeggs wrote:
| This seems to imply millennials are lazy. They're the most
| educated generation in US history, and at the same time, the
| poorest in at least 60 years.
|
| COVID relief funds are only paying them more than their normal
| wage because they got paid so badly to begin with. All older
| generations have averages incomes significantly higher than
| what COVID unemployment pays. And that's despite Millennials
| being more educated than all of these prior generations.
|
| It's finally given many of them the freedom and agency to
| choose their jobs rather than take the first thing they can
| find to avoid going broke. Many of these people looking for
| jobs were also the first laid off at the beginning of the
| pandemic. Why should we feel bad for companies that treated
| these people as disposable?
|
| There's not a "worker shortage". Companies are complaining that
| they have to raise wages to attract talent because workers are
| shopping around and getting counter offers.
|
| This is not unprecedented. The same phenomenon happened after
| the Spanish flu, and was arguably a big factor in the collapse
| of the fuedal system during the black death.
|
| Wide scale destruction of jobs followed by increased demand
| gives workers leverage. You have a huge group of people not
| afraid of being jobless because they already have been.
|
| We have to remember that 600k people are dead too. A decent
| chunk of available labor is gone forever.
|
| COVID restrictions blocking employers from hiring foreign labor
| is also a factor. There's increased competition for American
| workers because it's harder to import cheap labor
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
|
| 474,000 of those deaths are to people aged 65 and older, so
| probably out of the workforce already due to retirement.
|
| And the rest would be those with existing serious health
| conditions and so also likely to be not working.
| machinehermiter wrote:
| I mean I love to work now but there have been times in my life
| when I was younger I could have made the stimulus money last a
| long time listening to mp3s and drinking natty ice or red dog.
|
| A year easy. Maybe 2 or 3 with a little creativity and my parents
| not kicking me out.
|
| I don't think this is exactly rocket science to figure out.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| ahh, the glorious "welfare queen" myth emerges again, this time
| as a lazy alcoholic millennial.
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