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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 looorg on Saturday July 15 2017, @04:20PM (1 child)
I would say that you are onto something, I don't know really why I do it but even when I have a job I keep looking or subscribing for services to list similar or new jobs -- it's nice to know what it out there even tho I don't really want to change job. But I have noticed a pattern of Company X looking for someone and then a day or hours later a bunch of Recruitment Firms will also look for the same thing and from the description you can deduce that it's for Company X they are trying to fill a slot. That doesn't mean there are say 5 jobs available, there is still only 1 but there might be five companies that look for it and advertise for it. Massively inflating the amount of available jobs.
Overall I would say the main reason that they can't find applicants to fill the positions is that they are suffering from some kind of Goldilocks-syndrome, they want unrealistic things or just the right thing instead of picking something that is fairly close and then offer training. Sometimes reading the adverts is like reading a small child's letter to Santa. They want it all, everything and now and there is no compromise.
There also seems to be a growing market for just "interviewing" people, checking out what is available. Even tho they have no plans to actually hire anyone. From my own experience these are the companies that really want you to come to an interview but they are not really interested in spending any kind of resources finding candidates.
If they can't find cleaning staff for $9.25 or a carpenter for $17 then there probably are not any unemployed cleaners or carpenters in the area. All the cleaners or carpenters around are making more, or have some other perk that they won't give up. At the same time they might not be able to increase the wage more cause they can't charge more for the service they provide. They can't build a roof, a frame or clean a floor and losing money by doing it. So if they can't push the staff cost onto the customer then they are kind of stuck. Still the positions mentioned doesn't seem like positions that would require a lot of on-the-job training, the carpenter job more then the cleaning job tho.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 15 2017, @09:07PM
There are plenty of "wish spots" open... company I worked for wanted to hire away a top level engineer from the competition, so they opened an attractive spot for him to advance to in the company... policy forbade saying who the spot was open for, so they let internal qualified candidates "compete" for the position, but, mysteriously, it was never filled - because the person it was created for didn't want to move.
During the 2003 recession, I applied to a series of four positions that were advertised and interviewing, but not actually intending to hire anyone from the interview pool - they were just required by policy to advertise and interview before hiring from within.
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