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Staffing Shortages

Everywhere you turn - health care, hotel restaurant and tourism, retail, manufacturing, its seems that industries are facing horrible staffing shortages.

I have a simple question - where did all the people go?

All of the sales clerks, nurses, carpenters, painters, waiters, etc, can't all be sitting around spending COVID money. Its been too long.

What gives?
They’re being paid more to not work
 
Thats exactly why we need it.
Still nope. The solution is there's no such thing as unemployment. You get laid off, fine, ish happens, I understand that and I'm sympathetic. So you go to the Public Works Dept, and you get assigned a task to complete, and you get paid as soon as you're done. You can do that as long as you like, but it's on a day to day basis. You might be a garbage man one day, a painter the next, and an errand boy the day after that, but there are plenty of easy jobs (and plenty of out of work people) to get everything done.

You can't work one day because you have a job interview or two lined up? Great! That's the whole idea! You go get yourself a job, but you don't get paid because you didn't do any work. But it will pay off in the end when you get that full-time job.
 
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Still nope. The solution is there's no such thing as unemployment. You get laid off, fine, ish happens, I understand that and I'm sympathetic. So you go to the Public Works Dept, and you get assigned a task to complete, and you get paid as soon as you're done. You can do that as long as you like, but it's on a day to day basis. You might be a garbage man one day, a painter the next, and an errand boy the day after that, but there are plenty of easy jobs (and plenty of out of work people) to get everything done.

You can't work one day because you have a job interview or two lined up? Great! That's the whole idea! You go get yourself a job, but you don't get paid because you didn't do any work. But it will pay off in the end when you get that full-time job.
That’s racist
 
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$15 an hour seems like a lot in the surface, but in Greenville county where I live that is about 57% AMI for a household of one. In other words, you would qualify for low income housing. It’s also just barely above the poverty level for a household of four. Combine that with inflation and the rapidly rising cost of housing in the southeast and you can see why those jobs are not as attractive as they used to be. I really don’t see this as a function of laziness, at least not in my experience. It’s simply that workers have more opportunities in a growing economy and are taking advantage of those opportunities.
THIS is what I don't understand. Why is it that a person making the minimum should be trying to raise a household of 4. You should be raising a household of one and probably even be having a roommate. That is what is wrong with this country. We have a generation that doesn't prepare themselves for their future and jump in and have kids and then complain to everyone else that they can't cut it. Prepare yourself. Grow your skillset, start earning a living wage and THEN start a family.
 
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What Are y’all hiring for?
Everything. Entry to senior level.

Want to hear some thing crazy, we are paying BDRs, very entry level roles that typically move into small business sales roles or marketing roles, packages of over than $70k and we still can’t get them or keep them. Another software company is offering $100k for the same role. Can you imagine a recent college grad making $75k-$100k and complaining about it. It happens every day.

Not to be the old man, but I made $29k in 04 when I got out of college and lucky about that because I knew people who made less.

DM me if your are interested. We have a great platform and culture.
 
THIS is what I don't understand. Why is it that a person making the minimum should be trying to raise a household of 4. You should be raising a household of one and probably even be having a roommate.
Not everyone is able to choose the situation into which they are placed in life. Even so, let’s assume you are married with 2 young children, high school diploma and technical skills training, wife has similar education. If your top earning potential is $15/hour, then another household wage earner (wife) at similar or less wages won’t even scratch the surface of child care for those two kids. Are you saying that people in this income bracket shouldn’t have a family? If I had waited until I was financially stable to start my family it would’ve never happened haha.

Again, single person at $15/hour is just over 50% of the average median income for Greenville county. And that’s from 2020 which doesn’t account for about 20% inflation. This is a real problem for many.
 
But to add to points made in here, we haven’t seen shit yet. Diesel prices through the roof, also facing a potential shortage. Ports are no where close to being caught up. And yet, there is nothing going on to fix it. That’s what happens when no one (both parties) in Washington ever accomplished anything and don’t care to now that there in office.
Charleston is finally caught up though. Thank God!
 
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Would be. It is very possible to make a significant income as a blogger. In a blogging group I belong to, lots of my peers, when asked for inspiration by a fellow blogger, reported their best ad-revenue income month in ranges from $20k to as much as $140K.

Man...when I started teaching it was a 30-year commitment. For some reason, the state reduced it to 28 about halfway through. So grateful to be out. Don't miss a thing.
140k? good lawd that's nuts. I'm going to start blogging about something, haha.

Yeah, I have a good friend teaching high school, who as long as I've known her has enjoyed teaching. But, with the way things are now, she's getting to the point of being miserable with it, and she's a hippie- laid back art teacher at a nice high school. Can only imagine the morale at some of these dumpy schools.
 
Everywhere you turn - health care, hotel restaurant and tourism, retail, manufacturing, its seems that industries are facing horrible staffing shortages.

I have a simple question - where did all the people go?

All of the sales clerks, nurses, carpenters, painters, waiters, etc, can't all be sitting around spending COVID money. Its been too long.

What gives?
Unemployment is at just under 3.7 percent, just shy of the high of 3.5 for the last fifty years. Kind of mind boggling. It seems that the really "bust ass" jobs are hurting at finding employment. I would like to see what trade school and community college enrollment is doing. Maybe some are getting retrained so they can get a better job, and maybe the older folks decided that life is too short.
 
1 million people over the age of 75 dieing did effect the work force lol
I wondered that as well, did a lot of people get Covid related disability, or did we just have that many people who were working that could have retired if they chose to? It's really crazy that the whole country is desperately searching for more workers and can't find them. Maybe it's that people who once had two jobs now can afford to only work one because they are making so much money at this point.
Are our immigration numbers down ?
 
Yep. Unemployment rate, total employment, and those on employment insurance are at or near pre-Covid levels.

Just not enough bodies. Need to loosen immigration policies (short term relief) and start having more babies (long term).
The labor participation rate is about a percent below where it was right before the pandemic, but had been increasing over Trumps term which had not happened in the last couple of decades.
 
First of all some back story here.

I'm an IT guy and since I do some maintenance at night after business hours, I have an office at home that has an identical setup. When COVID hit and the University shut down, I lost about 20 mins of work... The time it took me to leave the office, drive back home, and start working again. And since I'm salaried anyway, I guess I really didn't lose anything. Over two years later, I'm still working from home. I'm pretty old and have always had good jobs with benefits and expectations that I should work 40 hours a week. I try and get in somewhere around 45. When something breaks or we have a crunch time situation, I work as many hours as I need to to get the job done. I've turned down a lot of potential jobs over the years with higher salaries b/c there's an expectation that you work 50+ hours a week. And there's nothing wrong with a business expecting that if they are up front about those expectations. But personally, I don't see it as an improved salary if I'm making 50% more and working 60 hours a week. I'm simply working longer hours and getting more money because I'm working more. So in short I take my job seriously and try to give good value for a good salary, make no mistake about it... I work to live, I do not live to work.

Here's what I think is going on and this is totally my personal observations: I know a good many folks (my wife included) that are what I would call "workaholics". In spite of the name, I don't consider it a bad thing. Folks like this pour themselves into their work and generally perform exceptionally well. A lot of their self worth comes from their satisfaction with their jobs and doing a really good job above and beyond what's expected of them. NOTHING wrong with that. Now that COVID is (mostly) in the rear view window, about 1/2 of those folks are back in the office and it's business as usual. BUT about 1/2 of them really had something of an epiphany (including my wife). Sitting at home watching lots of people die kind of put things in perspective for them. They say that they realized that they'd rather be spending that time with their family and have less money than working long hours at something that they don't even love doing and chasing promotions and more money.

Now these are not hourly workers... this is a solid white collar group, but couldn't that apply to hourly workers as well. Kind of like, I didn't like this job when I was doing it for $9 an hour and I STILL don't like it now that I'm making $15 an hour. I'm going to try and find or do something different or maybe I just won't work the number of hours that I did. If I don't like this job, I'll just move on to the next one.
 
The Democratic Party's 50 + year old plan is paying off.
1. Cannot get enough voters from middle America so
2. Pander to every one % there is" LGBT, ethnic minority, transgenders, students with debt, illegal aliens, etc. etc. to create a "majority" .
3. Give # 2 above something free to buy votes and keep them on the government teat, keep stoking the fire with propaganda aimed at dividing the country.
4. Control the media. Heck, create a "Ministry of Truth" to control thought and opinion. Cancel all who express different ideas to theirs.
5. Open the borders. Let illegals in. Give them health care at the expense of citizens. Let them vote.

Hell of a plan isn't it? And it's working.
I dont think the fifty year plan included a pandemic. lol. Our economy is a post pandemic, post lockdown economy. I am surprised we got back to operating as quickly as we did but we still have a long ways to go. People just got used to not working or working from home. Developed new habits.
 
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The labor participation rate is about a percent below where it was right before the pandemic, but had been increasing over Trumps term which had not happened in the last couple of decades.
It was fairly static under Trump prior to Covid. Look at the 10 year view.


But you’re right in that it has not rebounded. I wonder how many jobs 1% translates to…..1.6 million?
 
Everywhere you turn - health care, hotel restaurant and tourism, retail, manufacturing, its seems that industries are facing horrible staffing shortages.

I have a simple question - where did all the people go?

All of the sales clerks, nurses, carpenters, painters, waiters, etc, can't all be sitting around spending COVID money. Its been too long.

What gives?
We tried to put together a crew to renovate our new lake house. ALl that showed up was a bunch of white boy ex/cons. Made a mess of the house , pulled bogus permits, little carpentry skills, just complete frauds. Finally found a whit guy with four mexicans and they are doing a A1 job. These mexicans will work and the women will cook and their daughters drive me in my cadillac . We need more immigrants. White boys cant keep up with them mexican boys and white girsl wont cook and drive.
 
Damn I love capitalism. People exercising their freedom to be selective in what jobs they take or not take a job at all, going to force employers to increase wages and worker’s benefits. Maybe the US will see its first major increase in real wages in decades.

Can’t wait to see how the free market works this out!
Yeah, that bold part is just not true. Real wages were increasing at a substantial rate during Trumps term until the pandemic hit. See below:

 
It was fairly static under Trump prior to Covid. Look at the 10 year view.


But you’re right in that it has not rebounded. I wonder how many jobs 1% translates to…..1.6 million?
It went up about .5% under his term up until the pandemic. While that is not a huge number, it is the first time it had gone up during a presidential term in 20+ yrs. I think 1.6M is probably pretty close. I think the labor market is roughly half the population.
 
Right, for that time period it was. But that’s over now. In most places unemployment insurance isn’t even a liveable wage. So my point is that if the claim is that people aren’t going back to work because its better for them to live off on unemployment even now that the federal increase has ended, then it just further points to the wage problem that we have. It probably also points to the overall shittiness of some of these jobs (in hospitality, retail, service industries) that aren’t getting filled.

Unemployment is a safety net, and if the safety net is preferable to actual jobs, then that’s not the safety net’s fault - its the employers’ fault.
Okay, here is a possible explanation. When someone that has normally participated in the workforce first goes on unemployment, two things happen. One, they feel some shame/embarrassment for not being able to support themselves. Secondly, they have to adjust their lifestyle to fit their income as best they can. They now have to focus on needs rather than needs and wants.
I'll relate it to a really bad haircut. The first few days are terrible bc people are seeing you for the first time. However, it gets much easier after the initial shame wears off. Once all your friends and relatives know you are getting assistance, it becomes less embarrassing. The second component of this is the simple desire to support yourself. This lasts after the initial embarrassment wears off. Over time, however, this is slowly eroded along with some of your self worth. At the same time, you grow accustomed to not having all the things you want and worked so hard to be able to provide. Now you no longer require the same income to maintain the same level of self satisfaction and are no longer ashamed(at least to a much lesser level) about receiving govt assistance.
Once this point is reached, many feel comfortable taking lesser jobs or working less hours and getting other forms of assistance(food stamps/snap for example) so they have just enough to get bye when they would never have accepted that lot in life prior. To me, this is the main reason we should make getting and staying on assistance programs more difficult. I'm not saying this happens in all cases, but we are ruining peoples self esteem and sense of worth by enabling many to get/keep assistance they don't have to have.
 
I have read enough. We weren't prepared for this virus originating in a communist controlled country who treat people like the dirt you find once you've shoveled out the first layer of dirt. That is a Communistic Society. If y'all don't think this is the Nü WahhrMethööd, welcome to 2022. iPhones, Biometrics, location services, and viral loads are the new bullets. It's coming. Covid probes

Steve Jobs worshippers can come on down and turn in your badge. Don't get me started. There are consequences to giving a voice to people who do not understand how their words are changed to fit specific agendas
 
So here’s the total US workforce (in millions). We have experienced greater than 10,000 retire/exit the workforce per day for quite some time. Hard to blame entitlements for this….unless it’s the retirees receiving social security you are upset with.

2022159.82
2021152.72
2020147.79
2019157.54

Adjusted to exclude farming, which has experienced a spike throughout Covid, is equal to 2019 as of April.
I'm lost as to your point as it relates to that chart. Of course the workforce was less during the pandemic, but is is 2M+ more now than 4 yrs ago.
 
20$ an hour jobs are a dime a dozen these days. People need to wake up and realize that isn’t a lot of money anymore. Highest bidder wins! Covid somehow someway exposed this….

I blame companies for rewarding CEOs, vp and upper management with all these big pay jobs and perks. These individuals then turn around and shat on the ones who actually get things done (your avg joe). I personally believe the work force has caught on. Greed has caught up to corporate America.
 
When Covid hit the gov declared a lockdown. Of course some things still had to get done so they said the "essential" workers had to keep working while the non essential workers didn't. Then the essential workers looked around and ask why if we are so essential then why are we some of the lowest paid people in the country? The risk of Covid were still largely unknown. Maybe they were putting their lives at risk. Almost none got any extra pay for doing their jobs either.

Meanwhile if you just had a regular job you got unemployment pay plus a fed check that usually was worth a lot more than your job paid and you didn't even have to look for a job. Sit home and watch Netflix all day. Office workers and jobs like teaching got full pay and benefits and never had to leave home. But they still needed the things the essential workers provided. Food, fuel, police, hospital, ems, and the like. Things like this left a bad taste in many and they never looked at their jobs the same again. Most still have to work to survive but it will be at a higher wage. Don't expect workers to be loyal to their jobs anymore either.
 
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Not everyone is able to choose the situation into which they are placed in life. Even so, let’s assume you are married with 2 young children, high school diploma and technical skills training, wife has similar education. If your top earning potential is $15/hour, then another household wage earner (wife) at similar or less wages won’t even scratch the surface of child care for those two kids. Are you saying that people in this income bracket shouldn’t have a family? If I had waited until I was financially stable to start my family it would’ve never happened haha.

Again, single person at $15/hour is just over 50% of the average median income for Greenville county. And that’s from 2020 which doesn’t account for about 20% inflation. This is a real problem for many.
If you have training above a high school diploma, your top earnings potential is not $15/hr right now in Greenville. As for the family aspect there is a good deal of room between not being able to meet a kids basic needs financially and being financially stable, imo. If having a family is important to you, I see nothing wrong with you having to live below your desired lifestyle level. Nothing wrong with having to eat sandwiches and ramen noodles instead of going through the drive through at Chick fila. Save up and buy 15 yr old Toyota corollas and get rid of two car payments. Work alternant shifts to reduce/eliminate day care needs.
 
I'm in commercial insurance and work with a good bit of smedium-sized businesses and this just isn't true. A lot of the folks I talk to have increased their hourly rate dramatically, upped their benefit programs, etc and still can't find people. One of my clients even started a "perfect attendance" bonus program just to reward his employees for showing up on top of raises and that didn't work either.
Sadly our manufacturing plant has done this as well. About 1700 employees and only a hundred or so are eligible for the "perfect attendance" bonus. Sad state.
 
in todays labor market $15/hr is equivalent to minimum wage

small businesses are going to have to double and triple their wages to keep up with the inflation from pre to post covid.

I have personally tried to bring in kitchen help $17-$20 an hour and thats not enough,

$20-$25 an hour might be the new floor for putting the democrats in power.

but it is what it is.
 
This all boils down to the American dream has changed. The American dream was if you were smart enough and willing to work hard enough you could accomplish anything here.
Now it's how can I sit at home do little or nothing and get paid enough to live.
The liberals are currently working on. How can I sit at home do nothing and get paid equally with the engineers, doctors, etc. They have the bright idea that everyone is equal, but they aren't.
All men may be created equal, but there is separation shortly after birth
 
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All the fat, blue haired, pajama wearing, video game playing people are staying home.

When they’re not at Walmart.
 
I'd love to see the free market in action. Turn off the Government spicket, and watch how fast people go to work, if they wanna eat and pay the light bill...
As posted earlier in the thread, unemployment payments, etc are back to pre pandemic levels. The stimulus checks amounted to a couple months rent. There hasn’t been a Covid related unemployment benefit paid in over a year.

Here’s what’s happening: the largest demographic cohort in American history has been at or near retirement age for a decade now but not retiring at normal rates due to losses on retirement portfolios sustained in 2007-2009. Those people were/are occupying the higher paid positions in many companies and now they’re retiring. This creates a vacuum at the top and big opportunity for everyone below them. This wave of retirements has hit my sector (engineering) hard and it’s been pretty common for mid careers like me in our 30’s to see 30-50% wage increases over the last year with the right job change.

It’s not that people don’t want to work. It’s that there’s more open jobs than there are people and folks are able to be selective and a lot of jobs simply are not attractive or haven’t kept up with reality in terms of compensation. $15/hour is a good wage for a service sector worker but if they can go get an entry level clerk job that has long term career progression prospects and pays $20, the reason they aren’t bussing your tables isn’t because they’re lazy.
 
Let's say 40% were, that's still 400,000. Not an insignificant number. Certainly not the main reason, just part of the equation.

No where close to 400,000…assuming all people who were 18-65 were working which we know isn’t the case it would be around 250k. That’s not near enough to put the struggle that we are seeing on the work force. Of that 250k I’m sure there is a large percentage that were unhealthy and had other underlying conditions. Probably some that had people unable to work.

The scary part is how much the healthcare industry has been crippled both with supplies and staff.

The deaths “related” to COVID have not hindered the work force. Sorry that’s just rainbows and unicorns.

 
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Stay tuned. The upcoming recession, food shortage and energy shortage will be fun. But hey! At least we have competent leadership in Washington and the press secretary is a black lesbian, so that's good.
We have all genders and races covered! Bland no more mean tweets
 
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Hence the amazing mental health of our society. It's unbelievable how things have crumbled so quickly. It's going to be so difficult to find a way to put it all back together.
A good start would be to get government out of peoples lives, quit pumping money into the economy and re-start American energy production.
 
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