Where has the labor force gone?

[Cerulean]

No. It's only 31k @2080hr/yr.
Where I live at $20 at hour, a rent or mortgage of 1200.00 is 36% of gross wage. Alone.
45K is the adjusted poverty line for a family in my area.
Actual 'middle class' as Americans think it is (with 50's buying power, owning a home/car/investments/vacations/affording higher education) @120k or more.
Only 10% of American households make over 118k.

I think so many Americans are fed up with working their keisters off an not even being able to keep their heads above water.

With student loan debt also being a factor, so many people just can’t afford to live. Not lavishly…I mean just live.

The low-income threshold in Chicago where I live is $67,700. (It’s not the same as poverty line..but it sure as heck paints a picture).

In major cities like San Fran, NYC and LA to be “middle class” you are well above six figures, and if you want a family…think $250k+. It’s appalling at how much tuition, housing and food has gone up compared to wages. Inflation right now is making it even worse!

 

[voce]

Just out of curiosity, are these temp contracts? Is this skilled labor? Is there guarantee of permanent employment?

Last year the $15/hr was unskilled labor temp contacts, so we were actually paying the temp agencies $22.5/hr.

This year we offered full benefits full time permanent positions, and it's hard to find anybody to come in to do unskilled labor for less than $20/hr. For what it's worth, my city is one of the most affordable in California in the heart of agriculture. It does not make sense for a small business like us to hire through a temp agency because then we'd have to pay the temp agency $30/hour while the employee only gets $20/hr. So this year we hire employees direct at $21/hr for what we used to only pay $14-$15/hr.

But, is $15/hr really a living wage? Where I live (mid-size, East Coast city) it really isn't.

Where I am, it is. My monthly rent including utilities is $600/month. So $700/week from unemployment does go a long way. I understand it wouldn't be a living wage in the coastal cities, but that's not where I am.

$400/month is enough for receiving delivered meal kits from Hello Fresh to take care of all my meals, and so if someone is able to buy groceries from the store and cook it themselves it'd be even less.

 

[PinkAndBlueBling]

You can't do crap with $15/hour in So Cal. It's insulting. Temp workers don't get benefits, either. And who want to go to a strange office when there's a COVID surge?

Kids graduate from college and unless they're in a specialized field (medicine, education, etc.) professional jobs are hard to come by. Employees are just now beginning to go back to the office. My husband is due back this week, but because of weak lungs, he's waiting. Im betting the Delta variant shows up and offices close again. He works for a multinational company that reduced its workforce by a huge amount last year. His workload has been crazy because of it and they are not replacing the lost jobs any time soon. He makes as good living, but the workload is very stressful. People are tired of taking crap, especially with the wage disparity between workers and executives.

Just because people don't want to work their butts off for a minimal amount they can't live off of and no decent benefits doesn't make them lazy or mean they want a handout.

 

[Karl_K]

I should add, instead of temp agencies calling us, this year we called them week after week, and they couldn't give us any candidates.

Who wants to work for a temp agencies and be seen as a widget to be sold and rented not a person?

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

I think so many Americans are fed up with working their keisters off an not even being able to keep their heads above water.

With student loan debt also being a factor, so many people just can’t afford to live. Not lavishly…I mean just live.

The low-income threshold in Chicago where I live is $67,700. (It’s not the same as poverty line..but it sure as heck paints a picture).

In major cities like San Fran, NYC and LA to be “middle class” you are well above six figures, and if you want a family…think $250k+. It’s appalling at how much tuition, housing and food has gone up compared to wages. Inflation right now is making it even worse!

Ayuh, and I chose 1200.00 rent/mortgage as that is the absolute cheapest you could maybe find around here. Studio/1br rent. Rural New England pricing that's disappearing because it's all quickly becoming 'bedroom' commuter communities for Boston. I moved to the boonies because it was cheap and inconvenient. I would have to stretch to afford another house in my own town now.

 

[MRBXXXFVVS1]

I get the frustration with wages and benefits, but then how do people afford to not work?

 

[voce]

I think so many Americans are fed up with working their keisters off an not even being able to keep their heads above water.

With student loan debt also being a factor, so many people just can’t afford to live. Not lavishly…I mean just live.

The low-income threshold in Chicago where I live is $67,700. (It’s not the same as poverty line..but it sure as heck paints a picture).

In major cities like San Fran, NYC and LA to be “middle class” you are well above six figures, and if you want a family…think $250k+. It’s appalling at how much tuition, housing and food has gone up compared to wages. Inflation right now is making it even worse!

I agree with everything you're saying and think that big corporations could be doing more. Because of the disparity in income and cost of living across the nation, a $700/week unemployment benefit distorts the market a lot.

I think the reasons for lack of labor force really varies geographically, so to generalize for what is only the situation in expensive cities is callous and insensitive to small business employers, especially those in less expensive areas.

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

Last year the $15/hr was unskilled labor temp contacts, so we were actually paying the temp agencies $22.5/hr.

This year we offered full benefits full time permanent positions, and it's hard to find anybody to come in to do unskilled labor for less than $20/hr. For what it's worth, my city is one of the most affordable in California in the heart of agriculture. It does not make sense for a small business like us to hire through a temp agency because then we'd have to pay the temp agency $30/hour while the employee only gets $20/hr. So this year we hire employees direct at $21/hr for what we used to only pay $14-$15/hr.



Where I am, it is. My monthly rent including utilities is $600/month. So $700/week from unemployment does go a long way. I understand it wouldn't be a living wage in the coastal cities, but that's not where I am.

$400/month is enough for receiving delivered meal kits from Hello Fresh to take care of all my meals, and so if someone is able to buy groceries from the store and cook it themselves it'd boat even less.

700wk/33kyr. Poverty wage for more than one person anywhere.

Still underpaid for the work. Why waste money on the temp agency? Direct hire, and offer those already existing operating costs to new hires.
40-45k is not an exorbitant wage for fulltime labor of any kind.
It cannot sustain a family of two or more. It can barely sustain a singleton. Double your own costs and you're stretching 40k.

 

[voce]

700wk/33kyr. Poverty wage for more than one person anywhere.

Still underpaid for the work. Why waste money on the temp agency? Direct hire, and offer those already existing operating costs to new hires.
40-45k is not an exorbitant wage for fulltime labor of any kind.
It cannot sustain a family of two or more. It can barely sustain a singleton. Double your own costs and you're stretching 40k.

What you are saying is directly against what our government days.

2021 Poverty Guidelines

U.S. Federal Poverty Guidelines Used to Determine Financial Eligibility for Certain Federal Programs [Federal Register Notice, February 1, 2021 - Full text] [Computations for the 2021 Poverty Guidelines] There are two slightly different versions of the federal poverty measure:

aspe.hhs.gov

Please read the post where I disclose what my cost of living is. I think you have not lived in a more rural area where $33k/year for a single person is enough. Let's not pretend America today is the America of yesteryear, where only one person has to work to support a family of two or more.

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

What you are saying is directly against what our government days.

2021 Poverty Guidelines

U.S. Federal Poverty Guidelines Used to Determine Financial Eligibility for Certain Federal Programs [Federal Register Notice, February 1, 2021 - Full text] [Computations for the 2021 Poverty Guidelines] There are two slightly different versions of the federal poverty measure:

aspe.hhs.gov

Please read the post where I disclose what my cost of living is. I think you have not lived in a more rural area where $33k/year for a single person is enough. Let's not pretend America today is the America of yesteryear, where only one person has to work to support a family of two or more.

I understand it can feel that way. I'm not attacking you and I don't mean for you to feel that way.
I actually have and started out without a pot to piss in. I also worked with disadvantaged families professionally for a time.
But that's not the purpose of this. It's not meant to be callous or insensitive. People living in the strife we allow, is.
It's a fact we've been ignoring with wage stagnation for forty years. Look at those numbers and then take rent/food/insurance and such out of it...none of them can survive without gov't supplement.
That's why $15 was agreed upon as 'minimum' wage. It is the least amount of money one could live to support a family anywhere in the country. It isn't a living wage in actuality in most areas of the country.
I was taking what you were saying about your rent/food delivery and extrapolating. That's all. We should be able to live on one salary per person. We can't, that's the point.

 

[Lookinagain]

Where I live, which is the Boston area, most unmarried younger people share a 3 or 4 bedroom place to afford rent. My daughter lives west of Boston about 40 miles and pays just under $1800/month rent for a one bedroom. Any closer to the city and she’d be paying around $2400. She lost her job as an event planner when Covid hit and it took about a year for her to find a job in a different field. She certainly wasn’t rolling in dough from unemployment when out of work. She still paid rent, bought food, etc. And used savings. But I helped her out too. People do pay taxes on unemployment so that $700 a week only really puts $550 or so in their pockets.

as to the labor shortage, people have learned to like working remotely so I think it’s harder to find folks who want to commute into a city every day, 5 days a week for office jobs. They want to either work remotely or have the flexibility to do so a few days a week. I know I’m not willing to drive into the city again every day after doing it forever. I know I’m not alone in feeling that way. So employers who don’t allow this are having a harder time finding people.

 

[voce]

I was taking what you were saying about your rent/food delivery and extrapolating. That's all. We should be able to live on one salary per person. We can't, that's the point.

A statement like "we can't live on one salary per person anywhere in the country" is not the same as "we can't live on over salary per person in some areas of the country". The latter is factual, while the former is not. I'm hearing in this thread an overwhelming number of posts endorsing the former statement, when such is not the fact.

There is so much disparity across the nation and even in my state of California that these sweeping generalizations and assumptions are (in my opinion) doing more harm than good.

When you talk about wage stagnation, you should also think and talk about the root causes, such as outsourcing and productivity improvements as a result of replacing human jobs with technology. To treat the complicated nuanced reality as though the only determining factor is greedy people and corporations is doing a disservice to truth.

The truth is, people and corporations have always been greedy, even in the 1950s when everything was going good. It's some other *changes* in the economy/market that have occurred that have a way bigger impact on wage stagnation, not greed.

Since I am a first generation immigrant, I have a bit of an outsider perspective on the labor market in America. By and large, there is a lack of competitive skilled labor, which is what employers need most. The average North American worker acts and thinks with a lot more entitlement, and works less hard, than any Asian worker in a developing country. Heck, even in Japan or Korea they don't act so entitled about workers rights.

I of course sympathize with liberal ideals, but I think a lot of this anger and indignation is directed at a secondary, not primary, cause.

 

[lala646]

My husband watches a lot of videos by this tech guy, Louis Rossman. He had a really interesting video the other day talking about the current labor shortage in the Hamptons, and it completely dovetails with this thread. One issue he didn't mention however, which is more specific to high end and resort destinations, is the shortage of H-2B visa workers. Places in the Hamptons (and Trump is famous for using tons of H-2B workers at his resorts) don't have the usual numbers of H-2B workers this year, and aren't able to lure in enough locals to deal with the insufferable wealthy patrons.

and this is the article which inspired his video:

Rich people ‘suffering’ as Hamptons businesses can’t find summer labor

With a summer shortage of hair stylists, manicurists, waiters and other service providers, Hamptonites are freaking out over losing their little luxuries.

nypost.com

 

[Dancing Fire]

In major cities like San Fran, NYC and LA to be “middle class” you are well above six figures, and if you want a family…think $250k+. It’s appalling at how much tuition, housing and food has gone up compared to wages. Inflation right now is making it even worse!

You think is bad now? you haven't seen nothing yet on inflation wait till our government passes another $3 trillion bill. Printing up trillions of more $$$ doesn't help cure inflation.

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

I respect your position. I respectfully disagree with some of your position.
You're comparing other countries with the richest country in the world which likes to pretend a mandate of human rights and protection with the supposed highest standard of living in the world; and because somewhere it's harder we should just accept whatever we're given? No.
Even the cheapest states have median household incomes above 40k and home prices in 200-300k range.
Root causes aside, our wage stagnation/outsourcing is a choice against record profits year over year. Exponential growth concentrated to the few. It's greed. That's why the average compensation of a CEO is 300 TIMES more than the average worker. Small business gets swept into the undercurrent unfairly more often than not.
If you want to talk about the coming need for UBI, that's also something we should be discussing in earnest. The need is coming.

 

[Dancing Fire]

I get the frustration with wages and benefits, but then how do people afford to not work?

Easy...the government will take care of you.

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

Easy...the government will take care of you.

Pay the appropriate taxes (the old 90% and pop those wage caps for SS)like the all the 'remember how great it used to be' people conveniently forget and the gov't could, easily.
But that's the great lie, people aren't lazy and they aren't looking for handouts. They want to work, they want to feed their family.
They just want their share of the largess that they help create. Wanting healthcare and education subsidized isn't out of the realm of possibility- and we don't have to jettison capitalism to do it.
How's that Government Social Security and Medicare treating ya?

 

[voce]

You're comparing other countries with the richest country in the world which likes to pretend a mandate of human rights and protection with the supposed highest standard of living in the world; and because somewhere it's harder we should just accept whatever we're given? No.
...

America has not had the highest standard of living in the world for some time. If you ask me, it's Switzerland or Dubai.

What's harder? I don't get what you're trying to say here.

Just because you've had decades of reputation of having prestige and a high standard of living compared to the rest of the world doesn't mean it's going to continue. Looking at recent developments, the standard of living Americans enjoyed in the past is unsustainable, and it has to do with bad decisions the government has made just as much as bad corporate actors.

If you're not improving yourself, you have no right to complain about diminished status or diminished economic well-being.

Things are unfair? Well, they are unfair in all of the world, America is not a utopia just because you think it should be.

If you want things to be better you need to change things, but you have reactionaries pulling your leg resisting change and convinced it's the changes that are ruining the country when the opposite is likely true.

If you want to talk about the coming need for UBI, that's also something we should be discussing in earnest. The need is coming.

I don't think you have grasped the entirety of my position. I am in favor of UBI and universal health coverage. This is why I was supporting Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang in the Democratic primaries.

HOWEVER, both need to happen at the same time, or it just won't work. Basic income doesn't protect the have-nots unless costs of living, including healthcare costs, have been controlled and won't be allowed to skyrocket astronomically.

 

[MrsBlue]

I get the frustration with wages and benefits, but then how do people afford to not work?

Probably a mix of sharing cheap living quarters and accessing an underground/cash economy for tradespeople, caregivers, etc... The internet allows for buying and selling of services and used goods. Plus the poor have no choice but to ignore expensive things like health and dental problems.

It's a fragile life but people have been making it work forever.

 

[wildcat03]

No. It's only 31k @2080hr/yr.
Where I live at $20 at hour, a rent or mortgage of 1200.00 is 36% of gross wage. Alone.
45K is the adjusted poverty line for a family in my area.
Actual 'middle class' as Americans think it is (with 50's buying power, owning a home/car/investments/vacations/affording higher education) @120k or more.
Only 10% of American households make over 118k.

You are forgetting SO many potential expenses. Car payment? Gas (not an expense if home on unemployment). Student loans (federal loans have been "on hold" since March 2020 but private loans aren't). Daycare (no idea how much that costs in rural America, here it is 2k/month for an infant spot that I would even remotely consider sending my child to). A friend of mine is a teacher in rural Wyoming and she couldn't even FIND childcare for her twins!

 

[bludiva]

HOWEVER, both need to happen at the same time, or it just won't work. Basic income doesn't protect the have-nots unless costs of living, including healthcare costs, have been controlled and won't be allowed to skyrocket astronomically.

I think we have to get all of the following under control to get to a better place in the US:
- housing costs
- education costs (some kind of job training/college degree that gets people into the workforce available at no cost to the learner)
- medical/healthcare costs
- minimum wage/social safety net

Do all that and the playing field gets more level for the next generation. This generation has to suck it up, someone always loses out, which makes it harder to get people to agree on a forward-looking plan.

We have a homeless problem where I live, it's highly visible and people complain about it all the time, lots of NIMBY attitudes when solutions are proposed. It comes down to 2k people who are unhoused... there's more than enough money sloshing around here to address this in a better way but imho we're bad at implementing solutions that require thinking about our city/state/gov as an interconnected web vs. a bunch of people acting in their own best interests.

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

I do, that's why I said I disagree with some of your position.
America is the richest country, we like to pretend we're the best. We're not. That's my point. We can afford and can pay/treat our people better.
'Since I am a first generation immigrant, I have a bit of an outsider perspective on the labor market in America. By and large, there is a lack of competitive skilled labor, which is what employers need most. The average North American worker acts and thinks with a lot more entitlement, and works less hard, than any Asian worker in a developing country. Heck, even in Japan or Korea they don't act so entitled about workers rights.'
You're right about skilled labor, but we also will not provide a means of access to training. Wanting a living wage in this country is not entitled. Working 40hrs at one job should be enough. Having desperation work ethic in a developing country is not something that is relevant/aspirational to the American labor force. Asian countries have issues they continue to work in relation to workers rights. Globalization has diminished bargaining right in favor of management and it's a huge source of our labor issues in America now.

https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/iiclr/pdf/vol20p1.pdf

Workers' Rights: Labor standards and global trade | Brookings

Brookings Review article by Gary Burtless (Fall 2001)

www.brookings.edu

 

[Cerulean]

You think is bad now? you haven't seen nothing yet on inflation wait till our government passes another $3 trillion bill. Printing up trillions of more $$$ doesn't help cure inflation.

I agree that printing more cash is making it even worse!

 

[lovedogs]

Wanting to be able to afford to live doesnt make someone entitled.

 

[Cerulean]

I agree with everything you're saying and think that big corporations could be doing more. Because of the disparity in income and cost of living across the nation, a $700/week unemployment benefit distorts the market a lot.

I think the reasons for lack of labor force really varies geographically, so to generalize for what is only the situation in expensive cities is callous and insensitive to small business employers, especially those in less expensive areas.

Oh I don’t mean to generalize or ignore rural communities, it’s just not been my lived experience so I can’t speak as much to it. Most of my peers live in the largest US cities, and frankly they are the economic powerhouses of our nation. That’s not to discredit the importance of smaller economies and the small businesses that contribute. I didn’t mean to imply that the situation is the same everywhere or even across sectors.

It’ll be interesting to see how migrating families shifting into rural areas will impact local economies (my mother is one of them, she sold her home and relocated to the rural Midwest). Larger employers that are (or used to be) headquartered in these pricey cities are going to be a big factor, I think.

 

[voce]

I do, that's why I said I disagree with some of your position.
America is the richest country, we like to pretend we're the best. We're not. That's my point. We can afford and can pay/treat our people better.

I don't pretend that America is the best. America has deep problems, and it's other people who are being pretentious.

You're right about skilled labor, but we also will not provide a means of access to training. Wanting a living wage in this country is not entitled. Working 40hrs at one job should be enough.

Working 40 hours unskilled labor job, without aspirations to improve your skills, should be enough? This is a very entitled attitude from my personal point of view.

Having desperation work ethic in a developing country is not something that is relevant/aspirational to the American labor force.

How is it not relevant? Where do you think the jobs are going? Americans in the status quo are competing with the rest of the world for outsource-able jobs. You get much less for the dollar in America compared with other countries. It's why we are losing manufacturing jobs, and not even make America great again campaigns, or anything that the current administration is doing, can bring them back.

If you don't have desperation work ethic in light of AI capabilities displacing human jobs... You are not assessing the full picture correctly. There are a limited number of opportunities, the number of jobs can't stretch to however many humans you can birth. While no one aspires for desperation work ethic, I see it as an unavoidable reality, and other countries are facing the music while too many Americans are living in the make believe world of the "should be".

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

That I don't agree with. This reductive quantifying of who deserves.
Are the people who maintain your lawn, clean your house or care for your children not deserving of a living wage? Servers? Call centers? The hospital and cafeteria workers? The employees of Walmart and Amazon? And on and on.
We live in a consumption based economy and many can't afford to live in it. That's a problem.
Most people in this country work what is considered 'unskilled' or service industry. That's who we're talking about.
Because it is unnecessary in America. Why would we continue to match developing countries for the sake of continued profit margins while lowering quality living metrics?
Because that's partly what this is. That's the point, it's not a situation we should aspire to. It isn't should be, it is what can be. We should be pulling other countries up in labor rights not downgrading to meet them as some inevitability.

 

[westofhere]

Poverty line calculations are based on the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. They’re a federal calculation created to justify a low minimum wage, not to reflect reality. The actual poverty line is obviously much, much higher. Where I live, a single person cannot live on $15/hour, because housing prices have exploded.

Minimum wage workers can't afford rent anywhere in America

Housing has become so expensive in the United States that the typical minimum wage worker cannot afford rent, according to a new report.

www.google.com

An illustration: in 1978 my parents bought a modest 3-bedroom 2,500 sq ft house for 80k. My mother was a stay at home mom; my father owned his own business and made 48k a year. Their 15% down payment was 12k, or 25% of my father’s annual salary.

Today that house is worth 480k. The cost is 6x more, but buyers are NOT making 6x more, which would be $300kish per year. That’s wage stagnation. Low wages=the necessity of government assistance. (And a nation grotesquely in debt, though of course half of our budget and thus debt is for defense, which is another topic. Before the pandemic, we owed China a trillion dollars. Just as we’re completely dependent on that illegal labor force people babywhine about while eating the food they harvest and not wanting to pay more for it, and we’re dependent on corrupt countries for their oil, we’re dependent on a country that’s putting Muslims in concentration camps. We have no moral standing in the world).

Another statistic: 80% of single mothers receive government aid; 80% of single mothers receive no support from their children’s fathers. Imagine a world where men had to pay 50% of the cost of raising anyone they fathered.

 

[westofhere]

In short: low wages cost government (and thus taxpayers) a fortune. There is no mythical capitalist reality where people are living on low wages. Where wages fall short, socialized programs step in. And thank god for all of them: food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, social security—but a far more intelligent approach would be to pay higher wages. You can’t support low wages and whine about government assistance at the same time; it’s completely illogical and shows no understanding of basic mathematics, which is all economics is at heart.

 

[lovedogs]

That I don't agree with. This reductive quantifying of who deserves.
Are the people who maintain your lawn, clean your house or care for your children not deserving of a living wage? Servers? Call centers? The hospital and cafeteria workers? The employees of Walmart and Amazon? And on and on.
We live in a consumption based economy and many can't afford to live in it. That's a problem.
Most people in this country work what is considered 'unskilled' or service industry. That's who we're talking about.
Because it is unnecessary in America. Why would we continue to match developing countries for the sake of continued profit margins while lowering quality living metrics?
Because that's partly what this is. That's the point, it's not a situation we should aspire to. It isn't should be, it is what can be. We should be pulling other countries up in labor rights not downgrading to meet them as some inevitability.

All of this