Prob not as much as the pandemic as a whole causing stress and other issues where people are re-evaluating their careers. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a slave to a rich asshole boss who says things like, "Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me."
From what I can tell, I don't think he has any problem finding people. From what I can see after watching teardowns of his products, the best of the best are working on his teams. Maybe the low level grunts are swapped in and out like disposable cogs but the rest of the org? I mean look at what they do compared to the competition. The engineering on their products is truly next level. Their workers are probably sacrificing a ton of their sanity and energy but still stick around.
Regardless of your opinion of musk, this quote doesn't seem especially awful? Like, the obvious evil boss quote here is "get to work". Not "I'm going to be there with you and if there's any problems I'll take the fall personally"
Not really. That would look incredibly bad for the police. That's a highly publicized event with outcomes way above generic officer's pay grade. In particular, we can just look at what actually happened. Nobody went to jail. The county folded and let him do it. Shrug.
Why ask when you can easily find out the answer? I suspect because the answer is "very, very few" and it doesn't fit with a certain narrative.
> Just 5% of unvaccinated workers—and 1% of all workers overall—said they left a job because of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate from their employer, more evidence that a feared exodus of workers due to mandates isn’t as severe as some predicted.[1]
> “It’s not understood in the broader public discussion, people aren’t quitting their jobs to leave the labor force they are quitting their jobs to take other jobs”
Well maybe it would be more well understood if you didn't run titles like "A record 4.5M workers quit their jobs".
The linked BLS report gives some more useful statistics:
> "Over the 12 months ending in November 2021, hires totaled 74.5 million and separations totaled 68.7 million, yielding a net employment gain of 5.9 million."[1]
Well, the title was not "A record 4.5 million workers stopped working" but instead "quit their jobs". That most people get new jobs after quitting is fairly obvious I think, while if they wrote "stopped/refuses to work", the other point would have been obvious.
That's more nuance than most readers will apply. Especially with the popular conception of "nobody wants to work."
If you're in the "nobody wants to work anymore" camp, this headline will confirm your belief as it is easily taken as "look at how many people don't want to work!"
You're not their audience, they probably don't care what you (or I) think. There are multiple layers of filters and network effects and algorithms between most content and most people.
Feeds like HN don't suffer the effects of the filters and algorithms, but are very sensitive to network effects (we aren't here for underwater basket weaving, we want the nerdy techy startup stuff. )
The target audience includes or overlaps with the antiwork crowd. Whatever algorithms and filters select for this content rewards the writer regardless of accuracy or quality of prose, because it gets clicks.
That title was pretty needlessly misleading. A much fairer title would be "4.5 million workers changed jobs" - look it's even shorter than "quit their jobs".
I think it's extremely fair to consider that title unnecessarily click-bait-y.
Better headline: “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.” We might also add “Employers forced to raise wages for others who remain.”
In my circle people are leaving eng jobs as seniors where they make 200k to offers of 400k-600k. People who remained got little to no raises and are looking around for other opportunities. It's crazy, to me it feels like a bubble waiting to burst.
I am placing my bets on the USD losing purchasing power rather than nominal wages declining again. It would not be good for either political party to let nominal wages go down, at least for the bottom 50% of earners.
Agree with this. For the "bubble" in high-end SWE comp to burst, the "bubble" in VC would have to burst. And VC isn't a liquid asset class that's likely to crash on a Black Tuesday like event.
The explosion in VC capital has been primarily driven by a reach for yield among institutions, endowments, pensions and sovereign wealth funds. All of this money is extremely sticky, and once allocated will take 10+ years to de-allocate. So really the only way we see private equity funding collapse is if public equities quickly crater, forcing endowments to rebalance to stay in their allocation mandate.
And that could possibly happen, given how rich public equity valuations are. But the reality is the modern Fed is never again in our lifetime going to let nominal stock prices fall by 35% or more like they did in 2008. The traumas from the GFC are simply too ingrained in the current generation of central bankers and policy makers.
If push comes to shove and equities hit a bear market (20% drawdown), the Fed is going to turn the liquidity faucet to max. The forever war against Covid gives them a convenient excuse. In the scenario, you'll probably just see the Fed let inflation run hot at 10%+ for a few years. Again the Covid transitory narrative gives the cover.
Can you elaborate on the bubble bursting part? I don’t have much knowledge about how this works. If companies couldn’t afford those salaries, why would they be paying them? I’m probably misunderstanding.
1. Afford is a weird concept when you can go to a multi billion dollar company without ever making a profit with VC investment. A lot of tech jobs are in businesses that may not be able to make money.
2. It could lead to companies re-evaluating whether all their projects are worth it. Anecdotally, I have heard of some automation projects being cancelled as manual workers in other countries are cheaper.
That is a very personal opinion, I have very low risk apetite when it comes to investing. And the bubble i mention is me translating that to the job market.
If you look at the job market as a commodity where companies are on the buy side and workers are on the sell side you could say that the price of the commodity spiked suddenly. Whenever that happens I'm usually wary of the corrections that surely follow.
That could mean mass layoffs in the future when companies realize the commodity isn't worth that much. It could mean business closings due to lack of purchase power to compete. It could mean inflation to adjust the purchase power.
Again it's all speculation. And it's derived from risk tolerance. If you like risky investments it makes sense to try to capitalize and sell your labor for the most you can. I can't blame you.
In my circle I know a lot of people making 400-600k, but the 1 senior person that went job hunting, after about 6 months, ended up at a startup making 150k.
Software engineers specifically probably benefited a lot from WFHing in 2020-2021 by being able to grind leetcode during downtime within working hours.
Office workers (including SWEs) in general benefited a lot because WFHing made the logistics of interviewing around significantly easier.
A lot of my old department at my previous company jumped ship for places that offered significantly more pay (specifically, tech companies) or better WFH policies. More people left in the span of a few months during the summer of 2021 than I recall leaving during my entire tenure there (7 years).
I have heard since my departure that base salaries have been bumped up. Now compensation is competitive versus other banks at least, but probably still around at least ~25% lower than most decent tech companies, and ~100% lower than FAANG tier companies.
WFH policy is as conservative and hostile as ever AFAIK.
> Software engineers specifically probably benefited a lot from WFHing in 2020-2021 by being able to grind leetcode during downtime within working hours.
Speaking for myself, grinding leetcode in 2021 was very difficult because I was close to burning-out (very little outdoor recreation, blurred lines between work hours and non-work hours which resulted in me frequently working 9-11 hours per day (with breaks). I think it would have been easier pre-covid.
With in-person schools and daycares closed and the kids at home, there was no "downtime within working hours" - cue the working late at night after kids had gone to bed to make up for it (and the subsequent near-burnout experience).
Also, my recruiter told me they were seeing record-high post-screen interview cancellations by interviewees during COVID times - but perhaps their numbers were not representative. My suspicion is that there was a massive mental health disaster that was mostly hidden from view[1], and software engineers were not spared.
1. I wasn't even aware of my mental state until I started grinding leetcode and recognized the tell-tale signs of burnout as I had experienced full-blown burnout before (my self-motivation was reduced, but not yet gone)
(20 person company here) We've been giving raises above what we normally would do simply because it's not fair to have a developer who's 1 week on the job, same skillset, making $15-20k more than someone who's been working with us for 2 years.
When giving the raises, I've been saying "This raise is to keep our pay competitive with the market, and will not affect your regular annual review" (we also give raises to people annually)
I get that some employers, particularly in small businesses like you describe, might be committed to such fairness, but most employers in my experience have been perfectly content and even fight back (as in, "well, if you had a competing offer...") if the employees start comparing numbers.
And the businesses that thought that way were able to maintain the status quo by forbidding or at least strongly discouraging employees sharing compensation info. That's no longer legal in the US, and people are still playing catch up, but I think this is on its way out. As soon as it's easy for employees to _know_ that they've gotten the short stick they aren't going to stay quiet about it.
It has everything to do with avoiding employees getting mad when they here the new guy makes significantly more, which leads to conflict, which leads to unhappy employees, which leads to poor productivity.
Perhaps "fairness" is the wrong thing to call it. More like "do things to retain good employees". Usually "being fair" falls into the "do things to retain good employees" category.
I would also add that the jobs people are leaving are in the service industry. I know it's also difficult to hire in the tech industry currently, but it's already offset by higher wages and remote work. The service industry is reluctant to do the former and literally can't do the latter.
Right. And a fair amount of it is also pent-up demand for job switching that didn't happen during the pandemic.
The media is deliberately misrepresenting these stories for the click-bait. People want to read stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves. But the reality is they're not quitting the work force, they're just changing jobs.
> People want to read stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves. But the reality is they're not quitting the work force, they're just changing jobs.
I don't read "quitting jobs" as leaving the work force forever, just changing jobs. How would that even make sense? People need jobs.
I'm sure a ton of people do both or neither, since "people" is a pretty vague category. But based on those I've talked to myself, and the popularity of reddit's antiwork sub, along with the rumblings in social discourse for the past, I dunno, 30 years or more, there are a lot of PEOPLE out there who really just want to not work at all. There's some argument about the definition of "work", since many of them might wish to do something that would be defined as work if they were paid for it by an employer. Still, others would be perfectly content becoming characters from WALL-E. I don't know how to feel about those types yet.
I want to work a professional job on a reduced schedule, so that I can prioritise my personal life. 20-32 hours per week, and that can be divided a number of ways. Judging anecdotally from interviewing the past month or two (I took a year off to hone my expertise at my hobby), HR/recruiters are not exactly coping with the collective power shift to employees. I think either side is waiting to see who blinks first. It's too bad it has to be that way, but our system does pit us against each other.
The way forward is to hire more people, pay people more, and give them more time off.
>>Still, others would be perfectly content becoming characters from WALL-E. I don't know how to feel about those types yet.
As someone who does know how to feel about those types, let me make a suggestion: Don't. That is to say, why does it matter to you?
Is it because you need their labor for your happiness ("who will make my fries/clothes/things I'm incapable of making myself")? Then it's not their fault you feel that way, and they don't owe that to you.
Is it because "work = a moral good"? Then you're wrong work is a thing people do because they have to in order to be able to acquire currency for the things they actually want to do. It has no inherent morality.
Is it because "Mindless consumption is a moral bad"? Of course, but only because there's no ethical consumption under capitalism.
The long and short of it is you don't lose much by people opting out of working. By that I mean the type of person who was going to put in the years of work dedicated to trying to cure cancer (or advance society in whatever way you personally feel would be the most valuable) is very unlikely to also be the type of person who is only interested in doing it because they "needed a job".
TL-dr: Hang the jerk who invented work on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
I hope everyone opts out of working, the more people that do the higher the price I command climbs. "Why aren't you competing with me?" is a silly notion to have.
What if it is because I want to live in a productive society?
I believe innovations come only from a productive society. The day we become wall-E characters is the day either AI has taken over or an Alien overlord has taken over. Then humans will go the way horses did - become pets and vanity objects. This also means the number of humans will go down the same way inevitably.
I am not going to take up the socialist vs capitalist fight, I am very wary of the impacts of a huge consumption only society.
The existence of a pure-consumer class (makes nothing, takes what they want/need) doesn't prevent a "productive society" from existing. If anything, is presupposes the existence of production (otherwise, where the hell are you finding things to consume while sitting in your comfy chair and slurping down nutrients)
From your previous post:
>>There's some argument about the definition of "work", since many of them might wish to do something that would be defined as work if they were paid for it by an employer.
So let's start asking questions about your perception: How many people who want to opt out of work fall into your 2 categories of "doing 'work'" vs "Wall-E Characters" and how many fall into the 3rd category (which you seem to be) of people who want "jobs"? Further, how many innovations do you believe only exist because people were forced to partake the a system that involves jobs and work? My best guess is that there are enough people who have the ego to believe themselves capable of creating and innovating to take care of the rest by doing so, even everyone had all their basic needs met and people could opt out.
I'm not arguing that everyone plug into the Matrix and let "big alien brother" keep us as pets. But if it's an option and people want to take it (while still allowing people like you to produce things), why is that bad? And why is innovation itself a moral good? Improvement =/= innovation.
That was my first post in this thread - so I don’t know which previous one you’re referring to.
I don’t know how you expect a pure consumerist class be able to exist alongside a productive class - sooner or later the productive class is going to want to distinguish itself, pushing the consumerists down far enough. The consumers are gonna want the latest gadget eventually - they’re not gonna be ok just with basic food / shelter, which’s going to only keep raising the bar of what the consumers are entitled to - which essentially means the society isn’t going to function. Nobody wants to keep paying for some no name set of folks to keep mooching off them and worse getting the same lifestyle for free.
So the only way I see a pure consumer setup working out is where you’re zombied out or made into a pet. Or I see that as the end result.
I think almost all the innovations exist because of hard work. My above point addresses why folks want their whole society to be productive - so everyone works / contributes the best they can. It could be a doctor / nurse / janitor / manual labor / line cook feeding them / day care employee etc.
Re why not allow for folks to become pets: I hate to Godwin this argument, but I don’t think our society is going to make peace with that ever. Even the existence of a higher race will change the equation completely up side down for us - forget about them harnessing humans as pets. There have been way too many lessons from slavery for this to be acceptable.
Re why is innovation a moral good: we either move forward and harness nature or it harnesses us. Just like how covid emerged - there are always new challenges. Eventual the sun is going to go nova - we need to be off this solar system long before that. However you want to think - be in short or long times, we need innovation. I think stagnation / advocacy for the same is actually a moral bad because it dooms humanity’s future.
Note: you might be referring to a very minimalistic homeless lifestyle when you mean a pure consumer sector, in that case - that exists now. We will continue to take care of folks who choose that (or unfortunately forced into it) with increasing quality over time, but that will never be looked upon as a positive thing. It is always going to be a something to avoid - there is always going to be a stigma and danger surrounding the same. I am hoping that’s not the argument you’re going for.
>>That was my first post in this thread - so I don’t know which previous one you’re referring to.
Sorry, I had been referring to a specific person and the tone of your answer made it seem like you were them. Didn't think to check the user names.
>>I think stagnation / advocacy for the same is actually a moral bad because it dooms humanity’s future.
You have a very short view on things. Eventually, it all ends. Humanity is doomed. The very universe itself has been in a state of decay and entropy since the Big Bang. Over the long term, humanity has a 0% chance of survival. We're just whistling past the graveyard.
You would be hard pressed I think to produce someone who truly wanted to do nothing all day. People just want to do something they enjoy, not the meaningless drivel of most jobs. Just my anecdata.
Lots of people in recent years have talked to me about their idea for a small, personal business. They despise their jobs and the grind, but as you say, all dream of working on something else, just something over which they have more control.
Personally, I'd be absolutely ecstatic to do nothing all day. I love nothing more than a quiet day with nothing on the agenda where I can just chill out and enjoy the world.
Solving interesting problems is fun and all, but I don't really care to define my life around it.
Some are quitting the work force. We have an aging population and a decent amount of baby boomers (capitalized?) are retiring. Media outlets are also misrepresenting the number of boomers who have reached an age where retirement is not just an option, but expected.
The data source here notionally separates quits from retirements, though I am not sure how well it does so (as this is not particularly straightforward for say, an employer survey for people without employer pensions, which are increasingly rare for private sector retirees. My employer has no reliable way to tell if I’m quitting to live off my private retirement savings and social security or quitting for another job or quitting to take a few months to deal with burnout and then consider my options.)
Totally fair. I've had exit interviews and I've had jobs which didn't, and when I got laid off during the pandemic (which, luckily, didn't last long) there was no follow up when I stopped applying for unemployment, so I'm not sure how those numbers work, to be completely honest.
>And a fair amount of it is also pent-up demand for job switching that didn't happen during the pandemic.
Is this actually true? I've seen this numerous times over the last 8-12 months and it's always stated as if it's obviously true. But, why? Why would people have put off switching jobs until November 2021? Covid has been about the same in 95% of America since June 2020.
I think there has to be some other explanation, or at least some data to support the idea that this is all just pent-up demand being released.
> Why would people have put off switching jobs until November 2021?
A ton of people have had well over year of working remotely while slowly losing personal connections with their teams. At the same time, people are generally reluctant to entertain a job switch in a time of uncertainty. It’s not a stretch to believe that as people accept the “new normal” they finally decide to move on.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen some of this. Voluntary attrition at work tanked during the first year of COVID and then started to uptick in late summer and fall of last year.
In my personal case I did not job search during the time you mentioned because the job I had was super flexible and I had kids at home with no child care - I put off any hunting until school was back in person (and looked stable at that).
> Why would people have put off switching jobs until November 2021? Covid has been about the same in 95% of America since June 2020.
I put off looking for a new job at first because I was worried about a Covid-induced major economic downturn. I didn't want to be the new person when my employer is figuring out who to fire[1]. I only pulled the trigger when the numbers rebounded (and the downturn wasn't a big as I feared, consumer spending was really strong).
1. Or my personal nightmare, getting a downturn while serving notice and the new employer change their mind about the offer while jobs evaporate all around.
> The media is deliberately misrepresenting these stories for the click-bait.
This is a prime example of one of the main reasons I stopped reading/watching news some years back - the media thrives on click-bait and negativity, and I just don't need that in my life.
Here we have something happening that many would think is good - huge numbers of people switching jobs. Instead, all the focus is on only one side of the job switch, which exactly as you said is purposely misrepresenting the facts with the express purpose of driving traffic.
"Media" doesn't do this because they have a hidden agenda.* They are just following the profit motive. Click-bait gets clicks, which makes their ad-supported model work. I think the line in that Bond movie is, "Give the people what they want."
The way to fix this issue isn't to stop consuming news, it's to pay for the news that doesn't use click bait.
Obviously it's worse in the Internet age but honestly I don't think it's new. You think back to the sensational headlines that the newsies were shouting out on street corners and it's really the same thing.
* well, of course some do, but I'm talking 'real' news here
A lot of folks are also reflexively drawn by the negativity of the headline (myself included)... "how is society going to handle no one working?!" was my initial thought, before my conscious brain caught up with my instinctive thoughts.
I think a lot of people held on on account of so many people being laid off and many companies instigating hiring freezes. This very much feels like the exhale.
It also seems to time well with the antiwork movement, which in my opinion exists as a "correction", like we'd see in other economic paradigms, sure it's probably heightened by current inflationary pressures, but it seems worker pay, especially service-jobs, is deeply needing a steep increase.
> “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.”
I don't see why that has to be necessarily the case from that data.
2021 also saw the introduction of vaccine mandates for many jobs, we saw sectors like healthcare, accommodations&food services, and logistics struggle to fill their labor demand due to the pandemic;
> Quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000).
+159,000 people quit accommodations and food services, yet;
> Job openings decreased in several industries with the largest decreases in accommodation and food services (-261,000)
The sector lost more jobs than people quit, which points into the direction of people not willingly quitting for a better job, but people not finding jobs in the sector, at least with the terms they want, due to lost jobs in the sector.
Agreed. The emphasis on the "quitting" part always seemed odd to me. I guess it is catchier to say "The Great Resignation"? But that sounds like all these people are leaving their jobs and hiking the Appalachian Trail or something.
But the long-term impact for workers is positive in most ways. "The Great Realignment" feels more truthful.
We're also undergoing "The Great Reshuffling", coined by Zillow CEO Rich Barton, regarding the physical movement of (mostly remote) workers, creating booms in places like Boise and Bozeman and lowering rents in places like SF and NYC. That isn't quite leaving your job to hike the Appalachian Trail, but for some people it means an opportunity to prioritize living near one's preferred recreational opportunities rather than prioritizing living near one's job. Or others might prioritize living near family, or in a low-tax state, or somewhere they can afford a big yard or a pool, etc.
A slightly worse headline: "The standard of modern employment is to pay a premium for new unskilled employees you need to train up on your system and then stagnate their wages so they're force to go elsewhere."
This is the new norm and it's extremely short sighted and inefficient for most employers. If your cost of living increase (or combined "merit increase") is below inflation your company is doing something wrong.
I've been reading about innumeracy and lame press coverage my entire adult life. Ditto how to lie with stats, charts, maps.
Clearly, shaming and scolding from the sidelines hasn't compelled anyone to improve.
It's almost as though there's another force at work, silently undermining reason, relentlessly overwhelming rational discourse. Like some nefarious hidden incentive structures which reward attention getting over honest discourse. But every time I've broached the topic, I get ridiculed. (One actual quote is "sweaty, paranoid kook". True story.)
Since I just yell at the TV and shriek at the newspaper, which helps no one, I've mostly opted out.
I'm eager for any and all notions, no matter how blue sky, for how to do better. Because I'm completely fresh out of ideas. And exhausted.
> It's almost as though there's another force at work, silently undermining reason, relentlessly overwhelming rational discourse.
There is - it's called the profit motive, and in journalism produces the incentive to write clickbait.
This is pretty well established, I don't understand why you have had negative experiences broaching this as discussions of clickbait happen all the time online.
> It's almost as though there's another force at work, silently undermining reason, relentlessly overwhelming rational discourse. Like some nefarious hidden incentive structures which reward attention getting over honest discourse. But every time I've broached the topic, I get ridiculed. (One actual quote is "sweaty, paranoid kook". True story.)
The term you're looking for is "manufacturing consent". I highly recommend Herman and Chomsky's book by the same name.
Editorial interview. Summer time. 95F. Inadequate A/C in old warehouse converted to offices. Us candidates wearing suites and ties. Snarky hipster douchebags in shorts and t-shirts.
Based on the fact that there are 129.32 million full-time employees in the United States (as of Nov 2021), that means 57% of people who are working are new to that job within the last 12 months? and only 54.82 million have actually stayed in their job the last 12 months. That seems like a really high turn over.
I don't get this complaint. 4.5M people did quit, that's the fact they're reporting on. You are the one that seems to want editorializing about what people did after they quit, in their headline, to push your agenda.
You now have power over that caviling, micromanaging boss of yours. Or the job that doesn't pay you enough. Or the gig that makes you come in the office when you can work perfectly fine from home.
Remember that productivity in America has doubled in the last 40 years, but wages have only risen by half. So sit on your ass a bit, get paid, then get a gig that respects your worth.
> You now have power over that caviling, micromanaging boss of yours. Or the job that doesn't pay you enough. Or the gig that makes you come in the office when you can work perfectly fine from home.
What about when I have all those things and still hate my job?
Or even less job for less pay (as the declining utility of money [and maybe reduction of tax rates] will leave you better off than the linear reduction in income might suggest).
Yeah, I basically had those things but was very bored by my job, especially after starting working from home. Luckily I managed to find a job where I still have those things but within a domain which is more interesting to me. So the answer could be: Switch industry/company.
Just because productivity has doubled in 40 years doesn't mean that people have been twice as productive.
Also salaries and wages aren't dependent on how hard you work. It is how much value you bring to a company (and how easily you can be replaced).
About 15 years ago .NET programmers were getting much higher rates than they are today in the UK (at least in London). The last time I looked node, go, AWS and other things were much more highly paid.
> And in a labour shortage, the value that someone brings to the company increases :)
Sure. However that won't last forever. It will drive companies to innovate away your job. I go for a McDonalds breakfast after my bike ride on a Saturday and the checkout staff are basically non-existent now. They instead have self service touch screens.
> Demand a doubling of pay to match productivity increases. The power is in our collective hands.
Why? The productivity increases might be for other reasons. Automation (many jobs have effectively been automated away), outsourcing to other countries.
Also I am not a socialist so don't include me in that nonsense thankyou.
If jobs being automated or outsourced away explained it then you'd expect to see a similarly dramatic reduction in workers... but instead people are employed at a similar rate, are more productive, and are being paid less... so who's benefiting from automating and outsourcing exactly?
Depends what they mean by Productivity. Other things can be productive other than Labour. Also it still doesn't mean you should be paid twice as much.
If I can hire 3 unskilled workers for less than the price of a skilled worker that is twice as productive as a single unskilled worker. I would just hire 3 unskilled people.
The fact remains that the bargain has changed over the last 40 years, with the bulk of the benefits of technological change not reaching workers. Now it is becoming common for even well-paid jobs to move to an assumption of no annual raise.
And employers currently whining about lack of employee loyalty just make me laugh.
Fact remains, here we are. Employers do not hesitate to take ground when they have the advantage, which is usually. Use yours while you have it.
> The fact remains that the bargain has changed over the last 40 years, with the bulk of the benefits of technological change not reaching workers. Now it is becoming common for even well-paid jobs to move to an assumption of no annual raise.
Tell me why should technological change benefit workers?
> Fact remains, here we are. Employers do not hesitate to take ground when they have the advantage, which is usually. Use yours while you have it.
Sure. I run my own business and I am a consultant \ freelancer. I am my own employer.
>Tell me why should technological change benefit workers?
Technological benefits make individual workers more productive, allowing them to be exploited for more profit. If you don't understand the economics or incentive of the situation, there's no reasoning you out of a box you didn't reason yourself into.
> Technological benefits make individual workers more productive, allowing them to be exploited for more profit.
It also makes harder jobs easier and in some cases allows someone unskilled to perform a job that a only a more highly skilled person could do. Thus someone is easier to replace and thus cheaper.
> If you don't understand the economics or incentive of the situation, there's no reasoning you out of a box you didn't reason yourself into.
I understand it fine. Technological advances is a double edged sword with regards to Labour. It may create whole new industries while destroying old ones.
> Tell me why should technological change benefit workers?
Because who else is technology for? What’s the point of having technology if it doesn’t benefit 99% of the population? What you’re describing is the plot to Elysium.
You’re missing the point: the world is producing twice as much now and employees are only getting 50% more. So business owners and shareholders are getting a disproportionate benefit of technological advancement. You might say: why do employees deserve to make more money because productivity went up when they’re not working any harder? Well why do business owners deserve to make more when they’re not working any harder either?
I am only perplexed by this in regards to how workers are surviving without jobs? Usually many brackets of workers live check to check to the degree they have no choice but to continue working despite all other concerns.
Is it the gig economy setting a bottom line ‘might as well do Uber’ level? I am not so sure but it’s the only major change in the last couple years ago I can think of?
From a straight economic perspective REAL compensation of lower skill workers has been sliding for decades so not really surprising it eventually reached a’might as well quit’ point.
This graph has a weird starting position. If this graph started, maybe 30-40 years before that, you'd see it telling a very different story.
The reason it's sliding for decades is that the purchasing power of that same money has gone down. Why? Housing. Housing is not calculated in inflation rates, annnnd everyone needs a house.
So yeah, the REAL compensation has been sliding down due to no real growth there while housing has skyrocketed. AND that before 1965, we actually did have significant wage growth.
So, this is one of those cases where the data is misleading.
Shelter (the service that a house provides) is included as a consumption item in the CPI figures (and, as any adult would expect, has the largest weight of any of the 211 items that constitute the CPI basket).
You can see the significant changes to the calculation methods detailed here: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/research-series/r-cpi-u-rs-changes.h... The rent equivalent method for owned property has been in use since 1983. (Prior to that, housing was included in CPI, just with a different method.)
The data you link to shows 3 out of 5 quintiles of incomes have been flat. Meanwhile, the cost of healthcare and child care have increased faster than inflation[1]. It's nice that TVs are cheaper for better quality, but if the essentials are more expensive the people with lower (and middle!) incomes have tighter budgets than ever.
That article contains a "real income growth since 1967" table (about halfway down, on the right).
All quintiles show growth, with the 4th quintile (20-40th percentile) showing the lowest growth at +31.1% and the 5th quintile (lowest 20%) showing a similar +34.2% across that period of multiple decades.
That's indeed "essentially flat, but still slight growth".
Note that this is showing household incomes, not individual incomes. Household used to mean 1 working family member, now it's closer to 2 due in large part by more women joining the workforce. If you had a traditional family with one working spouse, they would definitely be falling behind.
If you look at the source below for men's wages (for example), the real wage has fallen by 3% for the median male since 1979 (and by 10% real decline for the bottom 10%). That's not even accounting for the fact that housing should make up a higher % of the consumption basket for the lowest-paid workers (as compared to CPI).
That link appears to be great data (based on reading the summary). Bookmarked to read in more detail later, but saying "thanks!" now.
It appears that the 10th percentile male income has decreased by 7.7% [rather than 10%] in the 40 year period from 1979-2019, if I'm reading the page 4 content correctly.
Figure 1 is facsinating - it shows the 80s were awful for everyone, especially the bottom 10%. Male workers dropped 16.3% from 1979-1990, and Hispanic dropped 20.9%!
2010-2019 was the best real income growth for all groups apart from top 10% hispanics, and the growth is fairly evenly spread across demographics.
This is a weird article. It seems to cast the people who live in a place as collectively feeling pain, instead of specifically the owners/workers at a place of business that has lost employees. It sets up a false premise that the workers who are making choices for themselves are then suffering, when they are not part of the group experiencing the downside.
Some are also quitting to take care of kids, because childcare is expensive, or they can't get consistent hours. I can't imagine working if I didn't know my schedule week over week and I had a kid to take care of.
For a lot of lower wage people, the ~$3k stimulus checks they got last year was the first time in their lives they've had enough financial breathing room to quit abusive jobs and have a break without having another job immediately lined up. To someone who historically made on the order of ~$10/hr, $3k in helicopter money is a significant cushion. And jobs are abundant at every level of the economy, so risk of quitting is minimal when they can probably quickly land a better job than what they had before.
I think the coverage of this is a bit confusing though. The focus on "quitting" makes it sound like these people are all done working which I don't think is true.
I'm not surprised to see three industries at the top of the list where interfacing with the general public is the main part of your job. I worked in retail as a full time job for five years on my way to becoming a programmer. The verbal abuse you can receive from people on a daily basis was rough. Nearly every interaction involves putting yourself in between a company's policy and the person in front of you. You're sort of being paid to be a sacrificial lamb for the company's policies. A decade or so later I imagine it's even worse given how emotionally charged people have become due to this era of politics and how everyone is coping with lack of leisure during COVID.
I remember how nearly all of my friendships were with people I immediately worked with or who also worked in retail/restaurants and in hindsight it's obvious we were bonding over something other people couldn't relate to. Getting together typically involved a lot of alcohol.
I follow a few subreddits dedicated to service industry jobs and the stories you hear there are just absolutely insane.
COVID has taken a deep emotional toll on everyone. Then you factor in that the kind of people still going out to restaurants and such during the pandemic are also often the most entitled, least thoughtful segment of the population, and you get some real horror stories.
It used to be "here's a story of a shitty tip I got". Now, it's like "I had to call the cops on someone who started throwing chairs when I told him he had to weak a mask."
Healthcare is the same. Just story after story of burned out nurses having patients dying of COVID screaming in their face about it being a hoax.
I feel so sorry for anyone who's job forces them to deal with people so decoupled from reality.
I assume many people also looked around at friends and family with computer friendly jobs and saw them be able to work from the comfort of their own home in the event of a public health emergency, while they had to still go out and deal with the public face to face.
If I was in their position, I would be demanding a hefty premium for having to leave my house to earn money.
My sister was a hostess for an upscale restaurant and had a gun pulled on her because she asked someone to wear a mask. The worst part, instead of calling the cops or asking them to leave, her managers still had her seat the party. She doesn't work there anymore.
Definitely. Simply displaying the firearm is a crime (usually "brandishing"). If he actually pointed the gun at another person, well, IANAL but that sounds like assault with a deadly weapon to me.
I'm not saying that pulling a gun on anybody for this reason is in any way reasonable or proportional. What happened to your sister sounds horrific and her former-employer sounds awful beyond words.
But I have to say, I understand why people asked to mask up in some cases flip out. Does it make sense to anybody that society has somehow decided that the way to be safe in restaurants is to put on a mask so a host can walk you 10-15 feet to your table for 10 seconds where you then proceed to take your mask off for over an hour? The mask ritual especially in this case is dehumanizing performative theater that doesn't make a lick of logical sense. Most people wouldn't be so uptight about the Covid rules when they make any sense: but many of them are beyond nonsensical.
Theater or not, the reasonable thing to do in this situation is to understand that the host is not the person making the rules. You do the thing because that's the script, whether you agree with it or not. In fact maybe the host doesn't even agree with it, but they are also just doing their job.
Now that said maybe there are valid reasons why it's riskier to have people walking around a restaurant unmasked, like say HVAC might pull air up from the tables, but you walking around past a bunch of tables spreads droplets into their airspace. I don't know, I'm not an expert, but I can think of reasons that seem to make sense.
Who said anything about flipping out on the teenage girl making minimum wage being the right thing to do? Is that how you interpreted my comment even though I very explicitly denounced what happened?
I think actions such as politely voicing displeasure at the policy to the worker so they understand that many people think the policy is dumb, asking to speak to the manager or owner, and leaving so the restaurant doesn't get your business are the right thing to do in this case.
> But I have to say, I understand why people asked to mask up in some cases flip out
I do not.
> Does it make sense to anybody that society has somehow decided that the way to be safe in restaurants is to put on a mask so a host can walk you 10-15 feet to your table for 10 seconds where you then proceed to take your mask off for over an hour
Maybe. If the tables are spaced far apart and preferably outside. Packed in an enclosed space? No.
However, eating out at a restaurant is not a right. Don't like the rules, go somewhere else. Similarly, businesses can refuse service.
I understand that there's some people who are thriving and happy wearing masks, but that's certainly not everybody. As for many people like me, they are not worth wearing. Masks are psychologically damaging and dehumanizing in many ways. Already imperfect human communication is further harmed with masks. They are unnatural and damaging. And outside of wearing an N95 perfectly in one room for one task, I believe that the way they're used in practice is harmful to health (people are constantly adjusting and touching them, not washing them for ages between uses, etc)
> Maybe. If the tables are spaced far apart and preferably outside. Packed in an enclosed space? No.
If we can acknowledge that a rule doesn't make sense for health and safety in a certain context, then why follow it?
> Don't like the rules, go somewhere else.
There are plenty of people who would gladly do this but cannot when the rule is in place by Government edict.
> Similarly, businesses can refuse service.
I'm all for property owners deciding the rules on their property, but that's not exactly the system that's been built up and that authoritarians advocate for.
> We are not toddlers. Not supposed to be, anyway.
Toddlers don't have the capacity to fully understand their world and make rational risk-management decisions.
Toddlers are the ones who are expected to comply with what they're told.
I'd say that people who are using their own judgement are the opposite of toddlers here.
"Masks are psychologically damaging and dehumanizing in many ways." If a tiny little mask is causing you this much trauma you should seek professional psychological help because that is not a reasonable or healthy response to something so trivial.
Have you asked why so many people are so strongly resistant to a "tiny little mask"?
Put yourself in another person's shoes and try and realize why being forced to cover yourself, especially going on 2 years now with no end in sight, feels so unnatural and distressing to so many.
Think about how the masks impacts all human communications, not only in terms of facial expressions and body language, but even just communicating in immigrant communities where English is a second or third language and clear communication is already difficult in the best of times when people aren't masked.
This is not a small or trivial deal to many people. Use your empathy and talk to some mask-critics about how its psychologically damaging to them.
"I'm not saying that pulling a gun on anybody for this reason is in any way reasonable or proportional. What happened to your sister sounds horrific and her former-employer sounds awful beyond words.
But I have to say, I understand why people asked to mask up in some cases flip out. Does it make sense to anybody that society has somehow decided that the way to be safe in restaurants is to put on a mask so a host can walk you 10-15 feet to your table for 10 seconds where you then proceed to take your mask off for over an hour? The mask ritual especially in this case is dehumanizing performative theater that doesn't make a lick of logical sense. Most people wouldn't be so uptight about the Covid rules when they make any sense: but many of them are beyond nonsensical."
> It is trivial and at most a minor inconvenience.
You can dismiss my anecdotes if you want, but this is not a small or trivial matter to me and a lot of other people. Having this concern completely dismissed does nothing except harden my resolve to avoid complying with this dystopian medical theater.
Honestly, that is probably the best way to defuse the situation and prevent people from being shot. Collect license plates, credit card info, photos etc, and call the police after they have left the building.
"Nearly every interaction involves putting yourself in between a company's policy and the person in front of you. You're sort of being paid to be a sacrificial lamb for the company's policies."
The grocery store near me has been bleeding workers the past few years and it's reached the point where there are consistently long checkout lines filled with annoyed shoppers even on non busy days.
I could complain about the wait to the workers, but what would that do? I could complain to their shift manager, but so what, they don't do the hiring? Maybe I could find the grocery manager, he would probably want more help, but he doesn't control the budget. Now we're at 4 layers of management, the store director, who could increase hiring, but the regional manager wants to juice the numbers for his bonus so maybe I could reach out to the state director...
What i'm getting at is it seems like corporate bureaucracy at so many places has reached a point where anybody with real power to make changes has been completely isolated from the public. It's just powerless workers being yelled at by a powerless public. I don't really know how we fix that.
> What i'm getting at is it seems like corporate bureaucracy at so many places has reached a point where anybody with real power to make changes has been completely isolated from the public
Indeed. I'd even generalize further and say isolated from any of the details which would could lead to positive changes that are actually in line with their thinking. Whether that be they are too far removed from the details or for byzantine reasons the details never make it to them.
> reached a point where anybody with real power to make changes has been completely isolated from the public. It's just powerless workers being yelled at by a powerless public. I don't really know how we fix that.
Lobby politicians to foster competition. The customer service is only allowed to get super shitty if there is not enough competition.
One large supermarket, that is part of a chain, for a town might be more efficient, but I bet two smaller, independent, supermarket would lead to a nicer experience.
Hell even just cracking down on vertical integration and having the one, independent, store would be much better.
These problems usually boil down to the idea that corporate power is some how right and proper, but government should be avoided at all costs.
Governments are how the little people tell the faceless corporate bureaucracies that they are doing a shitty job.
It's probably better to report this as "reshuffling" than quitting.
People are quitting jobs for new ones. Better pay, less legacy, new opportunities, and more autonomy.
Everyone is taking advantage of the market conditions. In the end, I think this will be a good step for humanity. More people will find their passion/calling and take risks they normally wouldn't.
I have an unproven theory that the need for more workers stems from administrative bloat. There's not enough people doing actual work in companies anymore, everyone is a thinker/staff culture change agent/product|project manager/architect/"thought leader"/"I don't touch production, I'm researching new technology".
This causes the people actually doing work to search for these positions because they're gravy compared to dealing with the schizophrenic requests of the admins, and the cycle continues.
My experience in firms is that managers tend to create more managers and large firms buy up all the successful little ones. This leads me to believe that the final form of the economy will be a single worker surrounded by a few hundred million managers, who themselves have a series of managers. So on and so forth.
See my recent post history about low interest rates and price discovery. It seems like we're in a command economy that optimizes for employment more than meaningful work. This 'administrative expansion' is part of what I was talking about.
I was once in a meeting with 3 developers (me being the lead) and 12 managers and discussing how we were going to implement something we already implemented. It lasted 2 hours.
In this same company, I had a meeting to discuss what we were going to discuss in another meeting of the same people.
This was a company born of a merger of 5 different companies.
The Peter Principle: "Every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence"
In fact it's a consequence of individual interests trumping any collective/company interests. Selfishness trumping loyalty. Hey, it's the American way.
A clearer and less snappy interpretation:
"In companies/cultures with low cohesion, employees will tend to maximize their personal compensation at the expense of all other factors, including the aggregate performance of the company"
> Every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence
In software development, you are expected to learn, to become competent. For example hires direct from university are usually incompetent at the time of their first employment.
The most successful people I know are always at the edge of their competence or beyond the edge, but their competence envelope increases over time.
There are definitely examples of innovation/mission-driven companies in any industry, but the entrenched, conservative ones (IBM, Oracle, Adobe?, etc) have a lot of Peter Principle going on. I have personal anecdotes about that.
MBA- vs. Product-led orgs, <insert Steve Jobs quote>, and all that.
I also have an unproven theory that part of the productivity stagnation we've seen since 1973 is due to a spread of low/no-impact administrative jobs. In other words, productivity stagnated not because output stagnated, but because we're working too many hours.
I'm one of them. The remote grind was getting to me. I was doing very little actual work, but when I had to do something it was such a pain. The company was experiencing massive turnover with new employees being clueless oh how things got done. Everything started to be 10x as difficult as it used to be. Taking time off now to work on a startup. Already got my first two paying customers.
Your story is very similar to mine. It's not that the job itself was grueling by most standards, but the little work that was involved was unreasonably difficult because so many wrong things were done and no one was interested in solving systemic issues. Tasks that should have been very simple were monumental because of colossally bad decisions. I of course had some time to address a few long standing issues, but like at most companies management didn't see the value in scheduling these fixes in relation to features they wanted churned out, so most of that just got put on the sidelines. This company's solution to inefficiencies was to hire more programmers. Of course that's not how management sees it; when the business is booming, hiring lots of people is just seen as a necessary evil that doesn't need to be tied to specific needs.
I realized that life was too short to deal with that shit for years, so I walked. In another time, I might have put up with it because there'd be people to see and things to do. Now with my usual conventions and meetups being indefinitely closed, paranoid friends and family members, and some challenges with traveling, I don't have the motivation to put up with corporate BS anymore.
This article, sadly, is rather shallow. That being said, the link within the article: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm is full of somewhat difficult to parse (not the best presentation) but overall interesting information.
Googling the name of some of the tables led me to this site, which appears to use the same terms but plots them to show trends.
ex:
The thing is after you quit you have to have the drive to keep going on your own. I'm experiencing that now. Easy to just turn a game on/procrastinate. I don't have money saved so yeah... living on debt currently. Not ideal I'm aware.
If I leave for a new job making 30% more, and my company pays my replacement 30% more, he has to be replaced for 30% more...
Nobody new is entering the job market. Nobody's leaving. Just shuffling around. We're still all doing the same work. These companies are paying 30% more for labor. Aren't prices just going to go up and we're basically in the exact same spot?
Looking at the demand side, I feel that there are not that many new jobs created, not even by a long shot. So mostly everyone is shuffling their chairs, and getting a raise. Employers lose here.
If I am right, I'm curious to know why this is happening now. The pandemic should have something to say: people would prefer remote jobs now that most companies have been forced to allow for that job model. But is this enough?
Part of it might be transfer payments, part of it might be the wealth effect (stocks, house prices etc and everything bubble might have pushed people into retirement earlier). Probably affects behavior on the margin and has people pull away from the work force (and I think the Federal Reserve might be starting to realize that).
Also about half of the boomers have / are hitting retirement age and are retiring en masse, which will shrink the available labor supply quite drastically (especially since they were very productive workers in late career stage)
If a company has a 40% profit margin and employees ask for raises they have two choices. Lower profit margin or raise prices. If they are in a competitive market then raising prices is a risk because their competitor may chose not to.
It's unfortunate that they did not just say "changed jobs" in the title.
However, as someone who doesn't know how employees leaving is handled by the HR, can someone tell me what happens when an employee leaves or joins? Does the company report it to the government, if so which branch of the government and why? Also how quickly after an employee leaves will the reporting to the government happen?
Demand for workers has recovered, but the number of willing workers has not.
The 2020 recession had one of the fastest (the unemployment rate) and slowest (labor force participation) recoveries of any recession since World War II.
Government payments helped build and sustain savings, especially for lower-income people.
Personal consumption spending rebounds past pre-pandemic high.
Main reason for not working in the last seven days, among respondents under 75. (Retired is up, Other is up, the pandemic is way down.)
Over 1.5 million more people are retired than would have been expected before the pandemic.
Wage growth rises among low-income workers (5.1%).
I get tired of headlines talking about 'record numbers' of people - a record number of people existed this year, so talking about any other metrics in those terms is kind of pointless. Any time I see a headline of this form, my first thought is always "what narrative are they trying to sell?".
I don't see anything in that article indicating that this is an unprecedented event, which is what the language suggests. And I do see a _number_ of places where they use the same "record numbers" text.
Certainly something interesting is going on, but this type of language is just a way to sensationalize something - to a journalist, "an unusual surge in employment churn" can be written "record numbers of workers are leaving their jobs" and the bulk of the readers will be like "holy cow, RECORD NUMBERS? What will we do?"
I find it interesting also that the graph you pointed me to only shows a couple years of data. If you look back further, is this a novel situation, or something that only comes up every few decades, or a situation encountered multiple times each decade? I have no idea, because the journalists weren't interested in my knowing that.
There’s a lot of things going on, I think a large part of it is regulations. Another part has to do with politics and yet another has to do with inflation.
- switching jobs means more pay; it’s a workers market. Particularly with the governments current policies causing inflation.
- The jobs aren’t evenly distributed, there are job shortages in many states (particularly states implementing vaccine mandates)
- there are many factories and in person jobs moving to non-mandate states
- after years of being remote, people are switching to remote first companies and / or refusing to return to offices
- others are moving to states / regions where they can be in person
- I know a lot of nurses, firefighters, etc who were fired / quit hospitals and went into smaller practices or moved cities.
I really dislike how this data is presented. Trying to imagine 4.5M workers quitting their job is really difficult since it such a big number and lacks context.
I think it would be better to say
"about 3% of US workers quit their jobs in November"
For context, from Jan-2000 to Jan-2020 the average monthly percentage of workers quitting was x%"
Can anyone find a reference for x? I am having trouble.
This is a giant hermit crab shell move (I get this boomers job, you get my job, next person get your job) spurred on by massive wave of boomers retiring. Hopefully this ends up helping those at the bottom of the ladder the most as the current minimum wage is not acceptable.
Companies haven't given sizable COLA raises in decades, but with current inflation rates this will become more common again. Until COLA raises become standard, employees will be more likely to switch companies to get better pay pegged to today's buying power.
Companies that start giving COLA raises quickly and assure their workers this will continue into the future will fare better. Employees will be less likely to jump to a new company if they understand that their current employer won't let inflation erode their real salary.
It is clear that higher salaries isn't necessarily helping companies hire. I wonder for things to go back to normal if companies need to start offering extremely generous 6-12 weeks of vacation.
From my fairly large sample size talking to colleagues, friends, and our users, perspective is an extremely important component to the decision making here. The context in which people work and perspective on their impact/earnings/learning has shifted, and I don't just mean remote work. Things have been moving pretty fast for the past two years no matter what corner of the uni/meta-verse you are in.
Like many things your work, work routine, and everything built around it can be a fine balance of avoiding disruptions while you charge ahead in whichever track you are on. An opportunity to take a step back is likely prompting a lot of second guessing. The number of opportunities to do so are increasing. Competitor wages make headlines, opportunities change and maybe most importantly, your friends are no longer in another office building but messaging you just like your coworkers.
So much of current the BigCorp HR playbook came out of post WWII "sign-up and fight with us for your whole career" model. It will be interesting to see this evolve through a new cycle - and even more interesting to see if it continues into a major downturn.
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[ 92.2 ms ] story [ 458 ms ] threadThat was 4.4 million people, even before the vaccine mandate was around.
I work for an HR company. There hasnt been such a crazy market in modern, recorded history of our industry. Want to change jobs? Now is the time.
> Just 5% of unvaccinated workers—and 1% of all workers overall—said they left a job because of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate from their employer, more evidence that a feared exodus of workers due to mandates isn’t as severe as some predicted.[1]
1. https://hrexecutive.com/how-many-unvaccinated-workers-have-q...
Well maybe it would be more well understood if you didn't run titles like "A record 4.5M workers quit their jobs".
The linked BLS report gives some more useful statistics:
> "Over the 12 months ending in November 2021, hires totaled 74.5 million and separations totaled 68.7 million, yielding a net employment gain of 5.9 million."[1]
[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
If you're in the "nobody wants to work anymore" camp, this headline will confirm your belief as it is easily taken as "look at how many people don't want to work!"
It's negligent reporting.
Certainly more than what's seen here in this thread.
Feeds like HN don't suffer the effects of the filters and algorithms, but are very sensitive to network effects (we aren't here for underwater basket weaving, we want the nerdy techy startup stuff. )
The target audience includes or overlaps with the antiwork crowd. Whatever algorithms and filters select for this content rewards the writer regardless of accuracy or quality of prose, because it gets clicks.
I think it's extremely fair to consider that title unnecessarily click-bait-y.
Better headline: “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.” We might also add “Employers forced to raise wages for others who remain.”
Is this part happening? Are those who remain getting raises or just the new people hired as replacements? Heard a lot about that.
The explosion in VC capital has been primarily driven by a reach for yield among institutions, endowments, pensions and sovereign wealth funds. All of this money is extremely sticky, and once allocated will take 10+ years to de-allocate. So really the only way we see private equity funding collapse is if public equities quickly crater, forcing endowments to rebalance to stay in their allocation mandate.
And that could possibly happen, given how rich public equity valuations are. But the reality is the modern Fed is never again in our lifetime going to let nominal stock prices fall by 35% or more like they did in 2008. The traumas from the GFC are simply too ingrained in the current generation of central bankers and policy makers.
If push comes to shove and equities hit a bear market (20% drawdown), the Fed is going to turn the liquidity faucet to max. The forever war against Covid gives them a convenient excuse. In the scenario, you'll probably just see the Fed let inflation run hot at 10%+ for a few years. Again the Covid transitory narrative gives the cover.
Also, where else would they invest this money?
2. It could lead to companies re-evaluating whether all their projects are worth it. Anecdotally, I have heard of some automation projects being cancelled as manual workers in other countries are cheaper.
If you look at the job market as a commodity where companies are on the buy side and workers are on the sell side you could say that the price of the commodity spiked suddenly. Whenever that happens I'm usually wary of the corrections that surely follow.
That could mean mass layoffs in the future when companies realize the commodity isn't worth that much. It could mean business closings due to lack of purchase power to compete. It could mean inflation to adjust the purchase power.
Again it's all speculation. And it's derived from risk tolerance. If you like risky investments it makes sense to try to capitalize and sell your labor for the most you can. I can't blame you.
Office workers (including SWEs) in general benefited a lot because WFHing made the logistics of interviewing around significantly easier.
A lot of my old department at my previous company jumped ship for places that offered significantly more pay (specifically, tech companies) or better WFH policies. More people left in the span of a few months during the summer of 2021 than I recall leaving during my entire tenure there (7 years).
The main reason I stay in my job is that our department is pro WFH.
WFH policy is as conservative and hostile as ever AFAIK.
Speaking for myself, grinding leetcode in 2021 was very difficult because I was close to burning-out (very little outdoor recreation, blurred lines between work hours and non-work hours which resulted in me frequently working 9-11 hours per day (with breaks). I think it would have been easier pre-covid.
With in-person schools and daycares closed and the kids at home, there was no "downtime within working hours" - cue the working late at night after kids had gone to bed to make up for it (and the subsequent near-burnout experience).
Also, my recruiter told me they were seeing record-high post-screen interview cancellations by interviewees during COVID times - but perhaps their numbers were not representative. My suspicion is that there was a massive mental health disaster that was mostly hidden from view[1], and software engineers were not spared.
1. I wasn't even aware of my mental state until I started grinding leetcode and recognized the tell-tale signs of burnout as I had experienced full-blown burnout before (my self-motivation was reduced, but not yet gone)
When giving the raises, I've been saying "This raise is to keep our pay competitive with the market, and will not affect your regular annual review" (we also give raises to people annually)
I get that some employers, particularly in small businesses like you describe, might be committed to such fairness, but most employers in my experience have been perfectly content and even fight back (as in, "well, if you had a competing offer...") if the employees start comparing numbers.
Fairness itself has nothing to do with it.
It has everything to do with avoiding employees getting mad when they here the new guy makes significantly more, which leads to conflict, which leads to unhappy employees, which leads to poor productivity.
Perhaps "fairness" is the wrong thing to call it. More like "do things to retain good employees". Usually "being fair" falls into the "do things to retain good employees" category.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/08/wages-202...
The media is deliberately misrepresenting these stories for the click-bait. People want to read stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves. But the reality is they're not quitting the work force, they're just changing jobs.
I don't read "quitting jobs" as leaving the work force forever, just changing jobs. How would that even make sense? People need jobs.
The way forward is to hire more people, pay people more, and give them more time off.
I've been thinking about making a similar move.
As someone who does know how to feel about those types, let me make a suggestion: Don't. That is to say, why does it matter to you?
Is it because you need their labor for your happiness ("who will make my fries/clothes/things I'm incapable of making myself")? Then it's not their fault you feel that way, and they don't owe that to you.
Is it because "work = a moral good"? Then you're wrong work is a thing people do because they have to in order to be able to acquire currency for the things they actually want to do. It has no inherent morality.
Is it because "Mindless consumption is a moral bad"? Of course, but only because there's no ethical consumption under capitalism.
The long and short of it is you don't lose much by people opting out of working. By that I mean the type of person who was going to put in the years of work dedicated to trying to cure cancer (or advance society in whatever way you personally feel would be the most valuable) is very unlikely to also be the type of person who is only interested in doing it because they "needed a job".
TL-dr: Hang the jerk who invented work on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
(Edited for formatting/grammar)
I believe innovations come only from a productive society. The day we become wall-E characters is the day either AI has taken over or an Alien overlord has taken over. Then humans will go the way horses did - become pets and vanity objects. This also means the number of humans will go down the same way inevitably.
I am not going to take up the socialist vs capitalist fight, I am very wary of the impacts of a huge consumption only society.
From your previous post:
>>There's some argument about the definition of "work", since many of them might wish to do something that would be defined as work if they were paid for it by an employer.
So let's start asking questions about your perception: How many people who want to opt out of work fall into your 2 categories of "doing 'work'" vs "Wall-E Characters" and how many fall into the 3rd category (which you seem to be) of people who want "jobs"? Further, how many innovations do you believe only exist because people were forced to partake the a system that involves jobs and work? My best guess is that there are enough people who have the ego to believe themselves capable of creating and innovating to take care of the rest by doing so, even everyone had all their basic needs met and people could opt out.
I'm not arguing that everyone plug into the Matrix and let "big alien brother" keep us as pets. But if it's an option and people want to take it (while still allowing people like you to produce things), why is that bad? And why is innovation itself a moral good? Improvement =/= innovation.
I don’t know how you expect a pure consumerist class be able to exist alongside a productive class - sooner or later the productive class is going to want to distinguish itself, pushing the consumerists down far enough. The consumers are gonna want the latest gadget eventually - they’re not gonna be ok just with basic food / shelter, which’s going to only keep raising the bar of what the consumers are entitled to - which essentially means the society isn’t going to function. Nobody wants to keep paying for some no name set of folks to keep mooching off them and worse getting the same lifestyle for free.
So the only way I see a pure consumer setup working out is where you’re zombied out or made into a pet. Or I see that as the end result.
I think almost all the innovations exist because of hard work. My above point addresses why folks want their whole society to be productive - so everyone works / contributes the best they can. It could be a doctor / nurse / janitor / manual labor / line cook feeding them / day care employee etc.
Re why not allow for folks to become pets: I hate to Godwin this argument, but I don’t think our society is going to make peace with that ever. Even the existence of a higher race will change the equation completely up side down for us - forget about them harnessing humans as pets. There have been way too many lessons from slavery for this to be acceptable.
Re why is innovation a moral good: we either move forward and harness nature or it harnesses us. Just like how covid emerged - there are always new challenges. Eventual the sun is going to go nova - we need to be off this solar system long before that. However you want to think - be in short or long times, we need innovation. I think stagnation / advocacy for the same is actually a moral bad because it dooms humanity’s future.
Note: you might be referring to a very minimalistic homeless lifestyle when you mean a pure consumer sector, in that case - that exists now. We will continue to take care of folks who choose that (or unfortunately forced into it) with increasing quality over time, but that will never be looked upon as a positive thing. It is always going to be a something to avoid - there is always going to be a stigma and danger surrounding the same. I am hoping that’s not the argument you’re going for.
Sorry, I had been referring to a specific person and the tone of your answer made it seem like you were them. Didn't think to check the user names.
>>I think stagnation / advocacy for the same is actually a moral bad because it dooms humanity’s future.
You have a very short view on things. Eventually, it all ends. Humanity is doomed. The very universe itself has been in a state of decay and entropy since the Big Bang. Over the long term, humanity has a 0% chance of survival. We're just whistling past the graveyard.
Solving interesting problems is fun and all, but I don't really care to define my life around it.
Is this actually true? I've seen this numerous times over the last 8-12 months and it's always stated as if it's obviously true. But, why? Why would people have put off switching jobs until November 2021? Covid has been about the same in 95% of America since June 2020.
I think there has to be some other explanation, or at least some data to support the idea that this is all just pent-up demand being released.
A ton of people have had well over year of working remotely while slowly losing personal connections with their teams. At the same time, people are generally reluctant to entertain a job switch in a time of uncertainty. It’s not a stretch to believe that as people accept the “new normal” they finally decide to move on.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen some of this. Voluntary attrition at work tanked during the first year of COVID and then started to uptick in late summer and fall of last year.
I put off looking for a new job at first because I was worried about a Covid-induced major economic downturn. I didn't want to be the new person when my employer is figuring out who to fire[1]. I only pulled the trigger when the numbers rebounded (and the downturn wasn't a big as I feared, consumer spending was really strong).
1. Or my personal nightmare, getting a downturn while serving notice and the new employer change their mind about the offer while jobs evaporate all around.
This is a prime example of one of the main reasons I stopped reading/watching news some years back - the media thrives on click-bait and negativity, and I just don't need that in my life.
Here we have something happening that many would think is good - huge numbers of people switching jobs. Instead, all the focus is on only one side of the job switch, which exactly as you said is purposely misrepresenting the facts with the express purpose of driving traffic.
The way to fix this issue isn't to stop consuming news, it's to pay for the news that doesn't use click bait.
Obviously it's worse in the Internet age but honestly I don't think it's new. You think back to the sensational headlines that the newsies were shouting out on street corners and it's really the same thing.
* well, of course some do, but I'm talking 'real' news here
Power of analytics optimizing for the metrics.
Kinda seems to me like profit being at the center of everything is the problem
It also seems to time well with the antiwork movement, which in my opinion exists as a "correction", like we'd see in other economic paradigms, sure it's probably heightened by current inflationary pressures, but it seems worker pay, especially service-jobs, is deeply needing a steep increase.
I don't see why that has to be necessarily the case from that data.
2021 also saw the introduction of vaccine mandates for many jobs, we saw sectors like healthcare, accommodations&food services, and logistics struggle to fill their labor demand due to the pandemic;
> Quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000).
+159,000 people quit accommodations and food services, yet;
> Job openings decreased in several industries with the largest decreases in accommodation and food services (-261,000)
The sector lost more jobs than people quit, which points into the direction of people not willingly quitting for a better job, but people not finding jobs in the sector, at least with the terms they want, due to lost jobs in the sector.
But the long-term impact for workers is positive in most ways. "The Great Realignment" feels more truthful.
This is the new norm and it's extremely short sighted and inefficient for most employers. If your cost of living increase (or combined "merit increase") is below inflation your company is doing something wrong.
I've been reading about innumeracy and lame press coverage my entire adult life. Ditto how to lie with stats, charts, maps.
Clearly, shaming and scolding from the sidelines hasn't compelled anyone to improve.
It's almost as though there's another force at work, silently undermining reason, relentlessly overwhelming rational discourse. Like some nefarious hidden incentive structures which reward attention getting over honest discourse. But every time I've broached the topic, I get ridiculed. (One actual quote is "sweaty, paranoid kook". True story.)
Since I just yell at the TV and shriek at the newspaper, which helps no one, I've mostly opted out.
I'm eager for any and all notions, no matter how blue sky, for how to do better. Because I'm completely fresh out of ideas. And exhausted.
There is - it's called the profit motive, and in journalism produces the incentive to write clickbait.
This is pretty well established, I don't understand why you have had negative experiences broaching this as discussions of clickbait happen all the time online.
The term you're looking for is "manufacturing consent". I highly recommend Herman and Chomsky's book by the same name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
but I'm interested in doing it after that (+- 1.5yr), but time's gonna show
You now have power over that caviling, micromanaging boss of yours. Or the job that doesn't pay you enough. Or the gig that makes you come in the office when you can work perfectly fine from home.
Remember that productivity in America has doubled in the last 40 years, but wages have only risen by half. So sit on your ass a bit, get paid, then get a gig that respects your worth.
What about when I have all those things and still hate my job?
In this job market, employers are likely to agree to demands versus churn a role (at least the forward thinking ones).
Bottom Decile: This is your moment!
Also salaries and wages aren't dependent on how hard you work. It is how much value you bring to a company (and how easily you can be replaced).
About 15 years ago .NET programmers were getting much higher rates than they are today in the UK (at least in London). The last time I looked node, go, AWS and other things were much more highly paid.
Demand a doubling of pay to match productivity increases. The power is in our collective hands.
Sure. However that won't last forever. It will drive companies to innovate away your job. I go for a McDonalds breakfast after my bike ride on a Saturday and the checkout staff are basically non-existent now. They instead have self service touch screens.
> Demand a doubling of pay to match productivity increases. The power is in our collective hands.
Why? The productivity increases might be for other reasons. Automation (many jobs have effectively been automated away), outsourcing to other countries.
Also I am not a socialist so don't include me in that nonsense thankyou.
This drive exists all the time, just like people like to save money when they go shopping.
Good. We need less bullshit jobs.
>Why?
Because workers have the right to negotiate wages and asking for increased pay is a very fair negotiation during a labor shortage caused by low wages.
>I am not a socialist.
It’s very easy to tell by your complete lack of support of worker’s rights.
???
If I can hire 3 unskilled workers for less than the price of a skilled worker that is twice as productive as a single unskilled worker. I would just hire 3 unskilled people.
And employers currently whining about lack of employee loyalty just make me laugh.
Fact remains, here we are. Employers do not hesitate to take ground when they have the advantage, which is usually. Use yours while you have it.
Tell me why should technological change benefit workers?
> Fact remains, here we are. Employers do not hesitate to take ground when they have the advantage, which is usually. Use yours while you have it.
Sure. I run my own business and I am a consultant \ freelancer. I am my own employer.
Technological benefits make individual workers more productive, allowing them to be exploited for more profit. If you don't understand the economics or incentive of the situation, there's no reasoning you out of a box you didn't reason yourself into.
It also makes harder jobs easier and in some cases allows someone unskilled to perform a job that a only a more highly skilled person could do. Thus someone is easier to replace and thus cheaper.
> If you don't understand the economics or incentive of the situation, there's no reasoning you out of a box you didn't reason yourself into.
I understand it fine. Technological advances is a double edged sword with regards to Labour. It may create whole new industries while destroying old ones.
Because who else is technology for? What’s the point of having technology if it doesn’t benefit 99% of the population? What you’re describing is the plot to Elysium.
Tell me why should the prior arrangement where there was what many feel was a more equitable arrangement not continue?
> I am my own employer.
Congrats. I was self-employed for over a decade, too. And none of this has anything to do with equitable employment arrangements.
Is it the gig economy setting a bottom line ‘might as well do Uber’ level? I am not so sure but it’s the only major change in the last couple years ago I can think of?
From a straight economic perspective REAL compensation of lower skill workers has been sliding for decades so not really surprising it eventually reached a’might as well quit’ point.
Has it? I’ve seen that claim a lot, but every time I look at the data, it shows growth across all quintiles.
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2021/10/2...
The reason it's sliding for decades is that the purchasing power of that same money has gone down. Why? Housing. Housing is not calculated in inflation rates, annnnd everyone needs a house.
So yeah, the REAL compensation has been sliding down due to no real growth there while housing has skyrocketed. AND that before 1965, we actually did have significant wage growth.
So, this is one of those cases where the data is misleading.
False. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...
Shelter (the service that a house provides) is included as a consumption item in the CPI figures (and, as any adult would expect, has the largest weight of any of the 211 items that constitute the CPI basket).
You can see the significant changes to the calculation methods detailed here: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/research-series/r-cpi-u-rs-changes.h... The rent equivalent method for owned property has been in use since 1983. (Prior to that, housing was included in CPI, just with a different method.)
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Kxcc
All quintiles show growth, with the 4th quintile (20-40th percentile) showing the lowest growth at +31.1% and the 5th quintile (lowest 20%) showing a similar +34.2% across that period of multiple decades.
That's indeed "essentially flat, but still slight growth".
If you look at the source below for men's wages (for example), the real wage has fallen by 3% for the median male since 1979 (and by 10% real decline for the bottom 10%). That's not even accounting for the fact that housing should make up a higher % of the consumption basket for the lowest-paid workers (as compared to CPI).
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45090.pdf
It appears that the 10th percentile male income has decreased by 7.7% [rather than 10%] in the 40 year period from 1979-2019, if I'm reading the page 4 content correctly.
2010-2019 was the best real income growth for all groups apart from top 10% hispanics, and the growth is fairly evenly spread across demographics.
"In Liberty County, workers who quit feel liberated, but the community discovers a powerful downside"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/12/quitting-...
I think the coverage of this is a bit confusing though. The focus on "quitting" makes it sound like these people are all done working which I don't think is true.
I remember how nearly all of my friendships were with people I immediately worked with or who also worked in retail/restaurants and in hindsight it's obvious we were bonding over something other people couldn't relate to. Getting together typically involved a lot of alcohol.
COVID has taken a deep emotional toll on everyone. Then you factor in that the kind of people still going out to restaurants and such during the pandemic are also often the most entitled, least thoughtful segment of the population, and you get some real horror stories.
It used to be "here's a story of a shitty tip I got". Now, it's like "I had to call the cops on someone who started throwing chairs when I told him he had to weak a mask."
Healthcare is the same. Just story after story of burned out nurses having patients dying of COVID screaming in their face about it being a hoax.
I feel so sorry for anyone who's job forces them to deal with people so decoupled from reality.
If I was in their position, I would be demanding a hefty premium for having to leave my house to earn money.
But I have to say, I understand why people asked to mask up in some cases flip out. Does it make sense to anybody that society has somehow decided that the way to be safe in restaurants is to put on a mask so a host can walk you 10-15 feet to your table for 10 seconds where you then proceed to take your mask off for over an hour? The mask ritual especially in this case is dehumanizing performative theater that doesn't make a lick of logical sense. Most people wouldn't be so uptight about the Covid rules when they make any sense: but many of them are beyond nonsensical.
Now that said maybe there are valid reasons why it's riskier to have people walking around a restaurant unmasked, like say HVAC might pull air up from the tables, but you walking around past a bunch of tables spreads droplets into their airspace. I don't know, I'm not an expert, but I can think of reasons that seem to make sense.
I think actions such as politely voicing displeasure at the policy to the worker so they understand that many people think the policy is dumb, asking to speak to the manager or owner, and leaving so the restaurant doesn't get your business are the right thing to do in this case.
> I understand why people asked to mask up in some cases flip out
I do not.
> Does it make sense to anybody that society has somehow decided that the way to be safe in restaurants is to put on a mask so a host can walk you 10-15 feet to your table for 10 seconds where you then proceed to take your mask off for over an hour
Maybe. If the tables are spaced far apart and preferably outside. Packed in an enclosed space? No.
However, eating out at a restaurant is not a right. Don't like the rules, go somewhere else. Similarly, businesses can refuse service.
We are not toddlers. Not supposed to be, anyway.
I understand that there's some people who are thriving and happy wearing masks, but that's certainly not everybody. As for many people like me, they are not worth wearing. Masks are psychologically damaging and dehumanizing in many ways. Already imperfect human communication is further harmed with masks. They are unnatural and damaging. And outside of wearing an N95 perfectly in one room for one task, I believe that the way they're used in practice is harmful to health (people are constantly adjusting and touching them, not washing them for ages between uses, etc)
> Maybe. If the tables are spaced far apart and preferably outside. Packed in an enclosed space? No.
If we can acknowledge that a rule doesn't make sense for health and safety in a certain context, then why follow it?
> Don't like the rules, go somewhere else.
There are plenty of people who would gladly do this but cannot when the rule is in place by Government edict.
> Similarly, businesses can refuse service.
I'm all for property owners deciding the rules on their property, but that's not exactly the system that's been built up and that authoritarians advocate for.
> We are not toddlers. Not supposed to be, anyway.
Toddlers don't have the capacity to fully understand their world and make rational risk-management decisions.
Toddlers are the ones who are expected to comply with what they're told.
I'd say that people who are using their own judgement are the opposite of toddlers here.
Put yourself in another person's shoes and try and realize why being forced to cover yourself, especially going on 2 years now with no end in sight, feels so unnatural and distressing to so many.
Think about how the masks impacts all human communications, not only in terms of facial expressions and body language, but even just communicating in immigrant communities where English is a second or third language and clear communication is already difficult in the best of times when people aren't masked.
This is not a small or trivial deal to many people. Use your empathy and talk to some mask-critics about how its psychologically damaging to them.
You are the one that needs to re-calibrate themselves and have some empathy, rationalizing this situation is reprehensible:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29813465
"I'm not saying that pulling a gun on anybody for this reason is in any way reasonable or proportional. What happened to your sister sounds horrific and her former-employer sounds awful beyond words.
But I have to say, I understand why people asked to mask up in some cases flip out. Does it make sense to anybody that society has somehow decided that the way to be safe in restaurants is to put on a mask so a host can walk you 10-15 feet to your table for 10 seconds where you then proceed to take your mask off for over an hour? The mask ritual especially in this case is dehumanizing performative theater that doesn't make a lick of logical sense. Most people wouldn't be so uptight about the Covid rules when they make any sense: but many of them are beyond nonsensical."
You can dismiss my anecdotes if you want, but this is not a small or trivial matter to me and a lot of other people. Having this concern completely dismissed does nothing except harden my resolve to avoid complying with this dystopian medical theater.
Which I think is more the fundamental issue of a lot of people who flip out about many things, including this issue.
Pray for the retail workers that frequently cannot wield your expected level of judgement themselves.
Which part?
The grocery store near me has been bleeding workers the past few years and it's reached the point where there are consistently long checkout lines filled with annoyed shoppers even on non busy days. I could complain about the wait to the workers, but what would that do? I could complain to their shift manager, but so what, they don't do the hiring? Maybe I could find the grocery manager, he would probably want more help, but he doesn't control the budget. Now we're at 4 layers of management, the store director, who could increase hiring, but the regional manager wants to juice the numbers for his bonus so maybe I could reach out to the state director...
What i'm getting at is it seems like corporate bureaucracy at so many places has reached a point where anybody with real power to make changes has been completely isolated from the public. It's just powerless workers being yelled at by a powerless public. I don't really know how we fix that.
Indeed. I'd even generalize further and say isolated from any of the details which would could lead to positive changes that are actually in line with their thinking. Whether that be they are too far removed from the details or for byzantine reasons the details never make it to them.
For a grocery store. That's insane bloat.
> reached a point where anybody with real power to make changes has been completely isolated from the public. It's just powerless workers being yelled at by a powerless public. I don't really know how we fix that.
Just get groceries delivered.
One large supermarket, that is part of a chain, for a town might be more efficient, but I bet two smaller, independent, supermarket would lead to a nicer experience.
Hell even just cracking down on vertical integration and having the one, independent, store would be much better.
These problems usually boil down to the idea that corporate power is some how right and proper, but government should be avoided at all costs.
Governments are how the little people tell the faceless corporate bureaucracies that they are doing a shitty job.
People are quitting jobs for new ones. Better pay, less legacy, new opportunities, and more autonomy.
Everyone is taking advantage of the market conditions. In the end, I think this will be a good step for humanity. More people will find their passion/calling and take risks they normally wouldn't.
This causes the people actually doing work to search for these positions because they're gravy compared to dealing with the schizophrenic requests of the admins, and the cycle continues.
Caveat: I have only barely studied economics.
In this same company, I had a meeting to discuss what we were going to discuss in another meeting of the same people.
This was a company born of a merger of 5 different companies.
and this worker could then demand a very high pay.
I mean, this has already happened - think celebrities and/or famous stars.
In fact it's a consequence of individual interests trumping any collective/company interests. Selfishness trumping loyalty. Hey, it's the American way.
A clearer and less snappy interpretation:
"In companies/cultures with low cohesion, employees will tend to maximize their personal compensation at the expense of all other factors, including the aggregate performance of the company"
In software development, you are expected to learn, to become competent. For example hires direct from university are usually incompetent at the time of their first employment.
The most successful people I know are always at the edge of their competence or beyond the edge, but their competence envelope increases over time.
MBA- vs. Product-led orgs, <insert Steve Jobs quote>, and all that.
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
The conditions are poor and the compensation isn't adequate, no wonder people are leaving their roles and the younger generations don't fancy it.
Two open jobs for all you who can't find one.
I realized that life was too short to deal with that shit for years, so I walked. In another time, I might have put up with it because there'd be people to see and things to do. Now with my usual conventions and meetups being indefinitely closed, paranoid friends and family members, and some challenges with traveling, I don't have the motivation to put up with corporate BS anymore.
Googling the name of some of the tables led me to this site, which appears to use the same terms but plots them to show trends. ex:
https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_quits_rate_total_nonfarm
boomers retiring and people switching job.
there will be less money for start up when boomers money is going to retirement instead investment.
Nobody new is entering the job market. Nobody's leaving. Just shuffling around. We're still all doing the same work. These companies are paying 30% more for labor. Aren't prices just going to go up and we're basically in the exact same spot?
If I am right, I'm curious to know why this is happening now. The pandemic should have something to say: people would prefer remote jobs now that most companies have been forced to allow for that job model. But is this enough?
Also about half of the boomers have / are hitting retirement age and are retiring en masse, which will shrink the available labor supply quite drastically (especially since they were very productive workers in late career stage)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR5XaparSAo&ab_channel=DWNew...
However, as someone who doesn't know how employees leaving is handled by the HR, can someone tell me what happens when an employee leaves or joins? Does the company report it to the government, if so which branch of the government and why? Also how quickly after an employee leaves will the reporting to the government happen?
Demand for workers has recovered, but the number of willing workers has not.
The 2020 recession had one of the fastest (the unemployment rate) and slowest (labor force participation) recoveries of any recession since World War II.
Government payments helped build and sustain savings, especially for lower-income people.
Personal consumption spending rebounds past pre-pandemic high.
Main reason for not working in the last seven days, among respondents under 75. (Retired is up, Other is up, the pandemic is way down.)
Over 1.5 million more people are retired than would have been expected before the pandemic.
Wage growth rises among low-income workers (5.1%).
Certainly something interesting is going on, but this type of language is just a way to sensationalize something - to a journalist, "an unusual surge in employment churn" can be written "record numbers of workers are leaving their jobs" and the bulk of the readers will be like "holy cow, RECORD NUMBERS? What will we do?"
I find it interesting also that the graph you pointed me to only shows a couple years of data. If you look back further, is this a novel situation, or something that only comes up every few decades, or a situation encountered multiple times each decade? I have no idea, because the journalists weren't interested in my knowing that.
There’s a lot of things going on, I think a large part of it is regulations. Another part has to do with politics and yet another has to do with inflation.
- switching jobs means more pay; it’s a workers market. Particularly with the governments current policies causing inflation.
- The jobs aren’t evenly distributed, there are job shortages in many states (particularly states implementing vaccine mandates)
- there are many factories and in person jobs moving to non-mandate states
- after years of being remote, people are switching to remote first companies and / or refusing to return to offices
- others are moving to states / regions where they can be in person
- I know a lot of nurses, firefighters, etc who were fired / quit hospitals and went into smaller practices or moved cities.
I think it would be better to say
"about 3% of US workers quit their jobs in November"
For context, from Jan-2000 to Jan-2020 the average monthly percentage of workers quitting was x%"
Can anyone find a reference for x? I am having trouble.
Companies that start giving COLA raises quickly and assure their workers this will continue into the future will fare better. Employees will be less likely to jump to a new company if they understand that their current employer won't let inflation erode their real salary.
Like many things your work, work routine, and everything built around it can be a fine balance of avoiding disruptions while you charge ahead in whichever track you are on. An opportunity to take a step back is likely prompting a lot of second guessing. The number of opportunities to do so are increasing. Competitor wages make headlines, opportunities change and maybe most importantly, your friends are no longer in another office building but messaging you just like your coworkers.
So much of current the BigCorp HR playbook came out of post WWII "sign-up and fight with us for your whole career" model. It will be interesting to see this evolve through a new cycle - and even more interesting to see if it continues into a major downturn.