SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
I saw an story in Slate about stagnant wages in an economy that is growing otherwise:
There's a disturbance in the force of the U.S. economy. An airline canceled flights because it couldn't find enough pilots to steer them. Despite high demand, homebuilders in Colorado are throttling back activity because they can't find the workers to erect frames. Farmers in Alabama are fretting that crops may rot in the ground for a lack of workers to bring in the harvest.
[...] There are a whopping 5.7 million job openings (well over twice the level of eight years ago). Meanwhile, baby boomers are aging out of the workforce at a rapid clip and Mexicans, many of whom crossed the border to work, have been leaving the U.S. for years. The demand for workers is high.
Given these conditions, wages should be rising sharply. But look at this chart from the Atlanta Federal Reserve: They haven't been, and they're not. … Last week, the New York Times featured a Columbus, Ohio, cleaning company owner mystified that he couldn't find applicants for his $9.25-per-hour jobs ("I sometimes wish there was actually a higher unemployment rate," he actually said) and a Nebraska roofer who couldn't figure out why nobody applied for the $17-an-hour jobs she was offering. "The pay is fair," she said.
Actually, if not a single person applies for your job, the pay probably isn't fair. But that's where America remains stubbornly stuck: Employers won't pay enough, and workers either won't or can't demand more. There are likely a lot of reasons, but the biggest, or least most fixable, may be psychological: From an economic perspective, both sides of the hiring market should have the power to increase overall wages in the current climate—but they aren't.
[...] There could be a skills gap in which the workers out there simply don't have the training necessary to fill the open jobs. Or it could be that, as Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times ventured on Twitter, that "a lot of American businesses have lost the muscle memory of how to compete for workers." That is to say, they have literally forgotten the words to use, and the tools to deploy, when workers aren't lining up in droves to fill their positions.
I also found this in the Daily Caller. It discusses the shortage of H2B workers this year. Most folks here know about H1B workers... H2B is program for low skill seasonal workers which has seen rule changes and cuts this year.
Businesses in Bar Harbor, Maine are turning to locals to make up for a shortage of foreign guest workers that normally fill summer jobs in the bustling seaside resort town.
Because the H-2B visa program has already reached its annual quota, Bar Harbor's hotels, restaurants and shops can't bring in any more foreign workers for the rest of the busy summer tourist season.[...] The shortage is so acute that companies are sweetening incentives for local workers. Searchfield says some businesses are offering flexible schedules that might appeal to older workers who might be interested in working only a day or two each week. And other companies have gone so far as to offer higher wages to entice locals.
Imagine that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday July 15 2017, @03:55PM (2 children)
All the problems described above are solvable by a sufficiently determined employer. The trouble is, they aren't sufficiently determined enough, and can't think past the next quarter, so they don't try some of the obvious things to try:
1. Relocation: Recruit from places other than where the job is and pay for people to move there. There are places in the US with lots of worker shortages, but also places in the US with ridiculously high unemployment. If you are recruiting just in your immediate area, you'll have a harder time finding someone than if you offer a real chance for people in inner-city Detroit. Pay for them to move, and possibly give them some sort of voucher program to go back to where they came from periodically to visit so they don't lose their social contacts there.
2. Training programs: If you can't find someone with the skills you need, find someone who's reasonably smart and hard-working and train them with the skills you need. That solution will take longer than hiring somebody who already knows everything you think you want them to know, and be more pricey in the short term, but you will probably gain a very loyal employee in the process. In other words, recruit someone plugging away at a McDonald's, put them through a training program that pays them the same as McD's, and after they're done they get to be a skilled tradesman making 2-3 times what they made at McD's. What do you think that guy's going to think about your company?
3. Telecommuting: If the job doesn't need somebody physically there, why not let them work from somewhere else? That solves your relocation problem, and also allows people who are currently unable to work to do some work (e.g. someone staying home caring for an aging parent).
4. Part-time and/or flex-time: Maybe somebody who can't work full time (e.g. child care responsibilities) can still put in useful hours for you. I've noticed that many recruiters for salaried positions would rather have nobody than pay somebody half of the salary for 25 hours per week.
5. Check your prejudices: Are you excluding people from your potential hiring pool because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or anything else that doesn't affect their ability to do the job? Yeah, you need to stop that, and see if that changes who's available to hire.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @08:26PM (1 child)
Everything you mention here applies to white collar work. None of the job openings are white collar. Try to pay attention. The push to fill post secondary education institutions has bred an attitude that makes people think they don't have to do labor to earn money. "I'm too good to sweat. I got a degree." Idiots.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday July 15 2017, @08:58PM
What makes you think that relocation and training programs apply only to white-collar people? Who says you couldn't recruit somebody who is relatively unskilled from inner-city Detroit to be a roofer in Arizona if you really needed roofers in Arizona?
And before you think it can't be done, I just spent most of the day dealing with a company that regularly recruits people from all over the place and trains them to install gutters. Not glamorous work, but it pays better than a crappy fast food or retail job.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.