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: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:01PM (19 children)
I'm an american Software Engineer. I've been getting 10-15% raises every year for ~4 years now (since I started working full time), and I'm surrounded by people in similar situations.
Also, since 1978, CEO raisises in the US have outpaced worker's raises by 90x. (Source: http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-has-grown-90-times-faster-than-typical-worker-pay-since-1978/ [epi.org] )
So when I see an article saying Americans are not getting raises, I call BS. Americans are getting raises, but a small wealthy portion are getting the vast majority of them, and a few upper middle class people (like me) are getting the rest.
This is not a net pay problem, its a distribution problem.
As an interesting aside, the software industry seems to be really obsessed with hiring the very best, which results in a similar labor market to that of professional sports: everyone is always trying to hire more people, but almost all candidates are rejected, and the ones you give offers to often have many competing offers. When I realized I was making over 3x the income as our nations world cup champion women's soccer team's players, and 50% more than most of the players on my local men's team, but less than 5% of the stars, it really drove home the pay distribution in such fields: there are people in my office that are equally filthy rich. Competitive hiring means lots of open positions, but those are not positions that 99% of people have a chance at filling, and the businesses assume they won't be able to fill most of them, so its hard to actually consider them available jobs. It turns out the dream of being a successful software engineer is actually more financially lucrative around here than the dream of being a professional athlete for most sports.
Also oddly the pay for a software engineer does not seem to correlate directly with value/skill. The percentage size of annual raise correlates with perceived skill/value. I don't get a raise to my actual value, instead I'm worth 15% raises every year (My current pay is not involved in my evaluation to decide if I get a raise!). I have no idea how that makes sense, but I'm pretty sure it requires a culture that does not discuss salary openly, since its completely unreasonable: maybe that's how the CTO's justify treating themselves in a similar unreasonable way? Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting far more money than I deserve out of this madness before it collapses, but what its doing to society disturbers me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:10PM (3 children)
The software industry has become so obsessed with celebrity that everyone needs a "big break" to become a "rockstar" before finding any work at all. That's the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:26PM (2 children)
Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the industry was full of rockstar coder bros
For whatever that means
Relevant song lyrics. Twenty-five years ago, the song was about feminism. Now it applies to young men. As always, popularity matters, and moderation of this comment will depend entirely upon whether mods recognise the song.
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Saturday July 15 2017, @09:00PM (1 child)
4 Non Blonds - Whats Up? oh wait.. I'm not a mod.... my bad..
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @09:10PM
If a woman sings it, she's a feminist. If a man sings it, he's a loser.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:43PM
WTF are you even babbling about? Comparing a useful and in demand skill like yours to women's soccer in the USA? Nobody gives a crap about soccer in the USA in general and nobody in the world really cares about women's soccer. So of course those jobs don't pay well. Compare your pay to one of the popular "gangster ball" leagues where there is money, booze, drugs and women flowing in abundance from the massive TV contracts to the select few who can compete at the pro level.
But bigger question, are you even American? No American would make the mistake of thinking soccer counts as a "Pro" sport in this country. We only have pretend pro leagues run by speculators hoping to make it a "thing" someday, probably on the theory of demographic replacement.
But yea, your pay relates to expected returns from your work. The corporate world is malfunctioning in many places and starting to lose the ability to correctly value things though so weird things show up for a time... until the invisible pimp hand smacks another corporation to the bargain bin vultures. That is often just the Impossibility of SJW Convergence at work but other forces are at work against the corporation. Size used to matter, now it quickly becomes a liability. It is going to take another few decades to sort out a new optimal size.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:52PM (1 child)
Meh. It was the same for me. It's not that you're so awesome, it's that you're getting underpaid. Once you hit parity you'll find that the raises suddenly dry up. It's both that the good ones can get paid more and they refuse to pay more than $X. They can't bring themselves to pay more, so instead my bonuses continue to grow. I suppose I can't complain about the total compensation, but clearly the intent is so they can roll back my pay at any time, I would rather they just keep up with inflation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @08:28PM
This is it right here. I would regularly get 5-15% raises all the time. Then suddenly I was 'under performing' and got .1-.5 if I was lucky. Did I suddenly become a stupid shitbag? No. I was having smoke blown up my ass for them to justify their original fuckup. Inflation is a nice way to lower their overcompensation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @09:42PM
Could've fooled me, since there are vast swaths of programmers who can't seem to program at all and constantly make utterly trivial errors that a preschooler should know to avoid. Is that what being the "very best" means?
Another issue is that they're turning away good people simply because they don't have degrees, which just limits the talent pool even further.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday July 15 2017, @10:41PM
There's also another current facet within the software industry that you didn't include: workers that are 35+ years old are often considered expendable regardless of their experience, performance, or pay.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 16 2017, @12:44AM (9 children)
How do you secure your gains against that your earned dollars can be worthless when it collapses?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 18 2017, @02:11AM (8 children)
Invest in things that aren't dollars.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 20 2017, @01:38AM (7 children)
What things? if your capital is small as in most salaried jobs and you need to make it grow. Like stocks and dividends do?
I have noticed that metals grow by money loosing value faster. But that doesn't seem like real growth anyway. If buying and selling shares in precious metals were possible it would be a little different. Property usually requires up front capital greater than salaried jobs admit for being a pure investment thing. And so on.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 20 2017, @01:56AM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 20 2017, @03:59AM (5 children)
Metals and property is quite static in value increase. And stocks are bought and sold in a currency like US dollars.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 20 2017, @08:49AM (4 children)
None of the three are dollars themselves and limit harm from high levels of inflation, no matter what currency you originally purchased the investment with. Second, while metals and similar durable commodities tend to be quite static, the same is not true of property which can be improved, rented out, or merely increase in value due to other real estate growth in the location.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 20 2017, @03:57PM (3 children)
How do you get the proper value from stocks if say the value of the US dollar plummets hard?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 20 2017, @08:10PM (2 children)
Either price it in a stable currency or wait for the dollar to stabilize, possibly with the issuance of a new US currency. Same goes with the other investments mentioned.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 20 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
Stocks tend to be bought and sold from a stock account noted in one currency. And the provider is tied hard to the national currency. So getting anything sold in another currency is unlikely because you will have to jump through the currency for any transaction. And if there's a crisis maybe the account provider has shut down to leaving your investment in limbo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 20 2017, @11:09PM
That would correspond to the case where I wait for the national currency to stabilize again. Moving the stock to a different broker who can handle other currencies would be the first option of the two I listed.
Something that bad will affect wealth in general, but you can still weather it by having the right of investments, such as real estate. And if you're speaking of a failure so complete that even land is lost, well, that's going to affect everyone, not just some hapless would-be middle class trying to save money.