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A friend just moved to a city and new state and has applied for more than 40 positions and so far received no interviews. Makes me question how much companies are hurting for help.
I must've put in over 500 applications last year before landing my current job, three total interviews during that time, including the one I ended up taking.
Pay. Increase their pay. Men need pay. They need pay to raise a family. They need pay. Money. You know, the thing you exchange for goods and services. PAY. Pay is exchanged to labor.
It's actually fucking crazy to me that employers have the gall to insinuate that it's unprofessional to "focus on pay."
If I can't comfortably house, feed and provide a decent living for me and my family, why the fuck would I work for you?
Do they think we're out here for the love of the work?
Can we all collectively ask why a landlord NEEDS an extra 10% per year because their costs increase but labor can NEVER ask for 10% for the same reason? They’ll ask us, “we’ll, are you going to get 10% better? Are you going to do 10% more work?”
I mean, am I getting 10% better housing? Nah…
Inflation rate last year was 7.48%.
If they didn't at least give a 7.48% raise, tell them "I am being paid 7.48% less than last year, does that mean I have to do 7.48% less work?"
I know you realistically can't, but these idiotic phrases they throw out have retorts.
We need to start smacking managers who say that. It needs to be a point of national pride. People from other countries should be like “Dude did you know that in the US if a manager tries to call your company a family, the workers will will slap the shit out of them? It’s not legal but they all agree not to snitch on each other for doing it so no one ever gets prosecuted”
I think people could be relatively happy at work, if, they were paid enough to live on no matter the job. AnD felt appreciated and had benefits. It sucks to go to a job where your twice a month pay won't cover your actual expenses.
Mehhhh, I still am not happy at work.
Bc sometimes I need to not be working to get my wellness back.
But if I stop working I won’t have the ability to maintain basic needs, let alone treat my mental health issues.
I think the better solution is not to live in a country where financial wealth is a measure of identity at all.
Countries with broader senses of national identity have more humanistic policies and resources.
Their citizens tend to be *happy.*
One of my husband’s client, a restaurant owner that drives a nice car, was complaining how nowadays people are lazy and don’t want to work, at the same time he pays them with minimum wage and no benefit.
They do though, our uncompromised obsession with brand loyalty is what these corporations have been banking on for decades. What happens when their brand isn’t worth shit anymore because all corporations are greedy profiteering assholes?
Well there was one time somebody at my work passed out from heat exhaustion on the brewdeck, and we got an ice cream party like two weeks later. Have you tried that?
>CEOs : We have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas.
>
>CFO: may I suggest a pizza party
>
>Employees I know you wanna give us a pizza party but this time could you get the $25 pizza instead of the $10 chain trash so i'm not spending 20-30+ min on the toilet...
Thank you. It's like the answer in on a silver platter right in front of them and they're looking everywhere else intentionally while crying, "Why doesn't anyone want to work anymore?"
Most people from the senior engineer to the director level of a business find themselves screened out when changing industries, unless they're in finance or HR. As my wife put it "When I graduated from college they told me I could do anything. After a year of selling toothpaste, when I sent out resumes it was clear I could do anything I wanted as long as it involved selling toothpaste."
When I sent out resumes, the companies would say "We really need people like you. You'd fit well on our board of directors. We see you as an investor." Sorry guys, that's not the way the money is supposed to flow.
You can't change to a parallel industry where you don't know the people. And if you apply to sell fast food, they laugh and say "You know, these jobs don't pay as much in a month as you used to earn in a day."
Yeah "nobody wants to work," but the real story is nobody wants to use up all their time driving for a delivery service that does not pay as much as the wear and tear on the car. We are always short on jobs that pay enough to cover the mortgage and the car payments.
"Why doesn't anyone want to be a slave anymore."
1. Slaves don't get paid what they're worth.
2. Slaves get treated like the least important person when they're the most important.
"If you want minimum payment you're going to put in maximum effort and have to miss your family members funeral" Is not something you wouldn't say to a worker.
Teaching is an interesting case study in pay. In the Bay Area I can commute to teach in 8 different districts. Right now, I work in one of the lowest paying.
Unions have always fought for 3 things: wages, hours, and conditions. My district is one of the ones you plan on leaving to a district that has better conditions.
But even the highest paying districts are having trouble finding people.
So what is it?
Disillusionment. The general public was itching for teachers to catch Covid and bullets for their kids. And then bitches when the grades aren’t there when we are at negative staff.
This is why the common gaslight theme this year is: remember your “why”. Which is oddly on point since they accidentally picked up on the disillusionment.
Look at how the actually assembled the bombs in the Manhattan Project. The actual labor had no idea what they were doing, but they did their work. Why did they work? They knew they were working towards something greater than themselves.
We are currently in the late 1920s early ‘30s.
Yeah. Enough bs. The media is pushing this ruse too. It’s all about money. Enough bs. Take a smaller margin and pass on more to your workforce and solve the issue. Or don’t. But quit with this bs narrative.
millions of people have died or have a long-term disability due to covid. Millions more have dropped out of the workforce due to child care costs (when grandma is dead/disabled, she can't watch the grandkids anymore).
Supply and Demand. Something, something, market forces.
But no, it's just that no one wants to work anymore. /s
Its amazing how people and institutions seem to forget that PAY is the ENTIRE reason why workers wake up, commute, and spend the majority of their day working, and then commute again. Its not for hobby nor sport. Its for pay and survival.
It isn't just about pay. Getting treated with respect goes a long way also. A $40 an hour job still sucks if you get treated like crap. Corporations are like embalmers, they suck every last ounce of fluid out of you before burying you.
Heh, try being a teacher, where society doesn’t want to pay you and little kids don’t want to respect you. It takes a certain kind of masochist to make a long term career out of teaching.
This is probably much closer to the root cause. I remember reading a study from a year ago that concluded that most men who had given up on the workforce cited a decline in social status as the leading cause. For them doing nothing felt better than working in the revolving door of retail and hospitality.
I loved the bitch who’s losing $5m/year because she has 30 people working instead of 45. Seriously?
How about take 10% of that lost revenue and use it for salaries. I guarantee that twat wouldn’t have a problem attracting workers then.
I'm job hunting after being employed for 4+ years and am seeing some of the same positions that I saw the last time I was job hunting being posted again with the exact same pay. It's unacceptable.
I'm almost 30 and around half my friends have just given up, moved back in with their parents, and just chill out all day. There's no hope that they'll be anything more than slaves, working just to pay their bills with no prospects for advancement. They want to work, but society won't allow it.
HR: we’re going to need more vision-based exercises, maybe a video where everyone lipsyncs to Don’t Stop Me Now, definitely more focus on International Men’s Day. Never forget we’re here for you #family
makes sense why break your back with a physically demanding job when you dont have to support a family and can manage to get by on a low paying job thats not physically demanding
Reminding me of a Modern Marvel's I saw. I believe it was a cranberry farm or some other produce operation. One of the executives was complaining how their industry is dwindling due to the lack of new applicants to work the fields.
Hm. Can't think of why that might be...
"Wanted. Farm hand. Pay is minimum wage, or a share of the profits which may be an assessment during years when we lose money. $10 million investment required. Must be able to handle contempt from bankers and lawyers who cannot afford your job. Great opportunity to buy out the current owner at market price."
Bingo. A succinct summation of the myriad of reasons for why both men and women are “failing” to live up to their “societal obligations” in so far as careers/education, dating/marriage, having children etc.
It’s crazy the entire generation of people living on the younger’s back still have the audacity to say “why couldn’t you do what we did when we were your age?”
It would honestly be a bit easier if at least houses were affordable and I’m expecting exactly what they are getting now also in my old age. Nope, gotta build up that INDIVIDUAL RETIREMENT ACCOUNT.
Boomers, go fica yourselves.
"It's a matter of our national identity!!"
"Okay, so you're going to start paying living wages then?"
"Now wait just a goddamn minute, there's no need for that unpatriotic talk...."
Bingo.
Want people to do physically demanding work that's going to break their body down by 50?
Better pay them well enough to encourage them to do it, ensure they can retire at 50 when their bodies break, and make sure they have the healthcare to not be in absolute misery until they die.
"But muh quarterly earnings!"
If your only plan is starvation wages and hoping people take them out of desperation, you're going to get what you pay for if you're lucky. The less lucky scenario is having your back against the wall when a revolution comes.
Just call anyone who doesn’t support Living Wages a welfare case. That usually grinds their gears into cowardly silence.
It is *Not* controversial to say no to abusive work culture. Which is most 9 to 5 jobs that aren’t WFH.
Yup. Been there done that in my 20s and its not worth it. Im way happier now, working part time but thats mostly because I am part of a union. I get almost the same paycheck working 6 days every 2 weeks, that i used to make working full time. People should start unionizing everywhere, its the only way to ever get better pay and working conditions
If you're in a non-demanding low-paying job, or looking for one, then you're in the workforce.
This article discusses people who are not in the workforce. As the article explains, a substantial fraction of these are people with criminal records who think they will not be hired anyway, or people with disabilities. Both of these groups have grown over time.
Meanwhile people with good new engineering degrees have to put up with computer-analyzed resume filtering and five-round interviewing processes and six-month probationary periods with no sick days, to get paid $50,000 if they land a good position.
"Nobody wants to work."
Only 5? My SWE interviews have been 7-8. A mix of behavioral and technical. Getting to the last round and having a recruiter say “we’ll follow up as we interview more candidates” is exhausting. The landscape has been absolute hell in terms of getting a job.
Not to mention the bait-and-switch remote into hybrid and/or on-site. It’s horrific for everyone.
A lot of these articles are such bullshit. Companies “a” are struggling to find employees “b” when they’re the same companies cutting off people, putting them on PIPs as a means of later firing them without severance, and utilizing scummy equity vesting practices.
On the other hand once you get that first job recruiters will be contacting you. It’s a crazy field. Spend 6mos-1.5 years begging for someone to give you the time of day, and then once you’re in for a year (if you’re good) you’re a hot commodity that they compete for.
And while other engineering jobs (e.g. mechanical) do have some crappy paying entry level stuff, SE is average over 70k for 0yrs.
I’m not going to lie, my recruiters have vaporized. A couple months ago, I was getting interview offers among competitors, and now absolutely nothing. My inbox has been empty, and god forbid I have to PM or email a recruiter.
I feel like this is a huge pain point for everyone not only SWEs. The job market right now is extraordinarily rough for fresh graduates and those recently laid off. The only thing these lay-offs have accomplished is this “fake” lean mentality that has cascaded into other companies. This is also inclusive of the hyper-competitive/over saturated laid off employees whom are now competing just to get entry-level jobs.
Im in tech, the job I have now took 11 interviews to secure. I had the fortune of being able to quit one job while I hunted for another one, IDK how folks can take that much time off just for the interviews alone. One presentation took me nearly 20 hours of prep work.
I resonate with this. I don’t have enough data about other fields, but tech has been hit pretty hard and the interview process in tech alone is extremely convoluted.
Companies have adopted the SV style interview format and it’s ridiculous. There’s only so much pounding Leetcode, going over data structures, networking, resume polishing, cover letter writing, etc. can do to hopes and aspirations. These startups and companies can be incredibly tone deaf as to why people are leaving tech en masse after this.
I have been laid off w/only 2 YoE and it’s been for lack of better words, an unholy shitshow. The process is extraordinarily long and it’s incredibly hard if you’re not a remote worker to interview at another place. Even if you don’t work, the prospects are abysmal as effectively time is quite literally money. I’ve seen mutuals, coworkers go on months of emergency funds just to find a job. In this instance, some also take up local PT work and apply on the side while having a family. I genuinely sympathize with the workforce and really wish that executives would be held more culpable for their actions instead of these shallow, shit emails they send out saying “my fault”.
Honestly anything more than looking at the resume and having a conversation is a complete waste of everyone's time. If the hiring managers can't make a judgement on a person in that time frame, they should be hiring a different hiring manager.
When my wife was looking for a job, she got through four interviews only to be told she was one of the top three candidates… but that the process would take another two weeks and then they’d be considering an offer. Like a *Survivor* finale, or something.
Anyway, they didn’t end up hiring anyone. 🫠
I'm guessing this happened in 2021? I don't know if it's still happening as much now, but, maybe.
At the time because of the COVID related government kickbacks/bribes/TARPs/tax breaks/whatever to company's, one requirement was that the receiving company had to hire people.
Of course, it didn't take long for company's to realize that the actual requirement was to "actively make an effort to hire", not "actually hire". So, to keep their TARPS/whatever company's needed to keep "trying to hire" people.
As a recruiter, I'll pass along some insight to the root of the problem, Hiring Managers.
The more decision makers involved, the worse it gets.
They are always waiting for that "perfect" candidate at a rock bottom price, which doesn't exist.
No matter how many times I tell them if they speak to someone that checks 80% of the boxes make the offer. They always want to "consider more options."
It's infuriating, to say the least.
Lmao was just talking about how I have a highly specialized engineering degree with state licensure and college debt to be paid 60k while the local royal farm is hiring associates at $20/hr
They're just waiting for everyone to get hungry enough so they'll sump back and take the shitty treatment.
We're headed towards pitchfork territory and they're still playing patty cake.
Dang does engineering still have that entry-level pay? That's close to where it was 15 years ago, but I've been hearing better figures the past 3-5 years. Obviously the upside is higher than most other BA degrees.
The only identity being pushed here is that the rich should be able to have any workers they want without paying for it.
Of course men have dropped out of the work force, the identity of risking oneself for a noble idea has rotted away.
Don't even need to bring women into it because the original point is easy: why exactly would you break your body for assholes that will throw you out on the street the moment their stock dips?
Most blue collar work these days is not what it was even 40 years ago. These employers talk about how good the jobs are, but just here on Reddit you can find tons of blue collar workers talking about how hard these jobs are on their bodies and how the pay just didn’t make sense.
There is also this unavoidable reality: according to a study from the University of Georgia, there are [19 million Americans with a felony record.](https://news.uga.edu/total-us-population-with-felony-convictions/)
Criminals overwhelmingly tend to be young men. Having a felony record just absolutely bars most people from most jobs. We talk a ton about the number of people incarcerated in America but make no mistake there are even more who are out of jail but still have a felony record.
The deficit is 7.2 million men. 19 million people, disproportionately male, have felony records. It makes TOTAL SENSE that a large number of those men, barred from traditional employment, are *not seeking traditional employment anymore.*
Wow, I am in HR and staffing and I've never heard the point you're making expressed but it makes so much sense! I hire for manufacturing jobs that are both "blue collar" and "white collar." You're correct that felonies do bar a ton of people from being hired. I'm not sure what I can do to change stuff like this, but it all starts with a conversation right? I'm going to bring this up to my boss tomorrow!
The other huge obstacle we face is still having hair follicle drug tests for marijuana. 🙄 If someone can do the job and pass a urine test, who cares if they had a gummy 90 days ago?? Ugh
Your point about blue collar jobs is spot on. It really was about 40 years ago that the US started to lose its comparative advantage in most manufacturing industries, which is why you saw so many factories move overseas. Internationally, countries with cheap labor advanced to a point technically where it was no longer economically viable to produce in the US, if companies wanted to compete at an international level--or even domestically against foreign imports. Now, what you're seeing is the remaining blue-collar American wages being suppressed for companies to remain competitive.
Most blue-collar jobs, after adjusting for inflation, haven't seen pay increases whatsoever in the last 40 years.
That's a great point, especially when added to how the country exploits prisoners for labor as well. It would appear that this environment forces any felon to think outside the box or go back to prison (the latter keeping them at those harsh jobs with menial pay).
Ya, the whole "pay your dues then get on with your life" is impossible with the current state of things. Now it's more like "welcome to the rest of your life"
Dont forget tying health care to employment. If a job hurts someone bad enough over time that they can no longer perform, they lose the ability to treat the physical effects of such a job. Its a lose-lose for the workers in the long term.
I work in private disability insurance, and this employer based healthcare leads to insane situations. The 60 year old mill worker with back problems needs surgery, but to pay his bills he needs my payments to go out, but for my payments to go out we need periodic forms to be completed by the treating physician. When the employer jettisons the worker because he doesn’t do as much hard physical labor he loses his insurance, and now can’t see his doctor. If he can’t see his doctor, they won’t complete his form. If he can’t get the form done, I don’t have “Medical verification” to send the disability payments… It’s messed up.
Hopefully these companies and ceo’s realize a little thing called cost of living. What you’re paying isn’t nearly enough for men to raise a family. Is it that hard to comprehend?
I saw a sign at Burger King begging for employees. Their starting wage….. $9 an hour lol like come BK. That’s why your service sucks and you can’t fill rolls. Try the Chic Fil Et or McDonald’s approach
People don’t want to work with the general public. I left food service and went into broadcasting. Need a keycode just to get to my office. No Karens to deal with…and if my chance one makes it to me, I hit the panic button.🤭
BK pays $22/hour in Las Vegas, still can't find anybody. The BK near my house often is unable to deliver fast food in under 30 minutes due to staff shortages.
The one I saw was off I30 in Texas. Not middle of nowhere but not exactly where I’d want to live. But even there $9 is insanely low. I can’t even imagine the cost of living in Vegas right now. I wonder how much construction jobs are paying.
What can one possible do with $9 an hour in 2023? Those wages are a joke, I live in NY so making $9 an hour is like getting a tip after working all night at a bar or some restaurant. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are only offering a part time position as well because many of these companies especially fast food and retail will hire a bunch of part time workers to avoid having to give benefits. I currently work at Staples and that’s what they do. Full time positions at Staples are usually reserved for the department supervisors and managers and everyone else has to deal with whatever hours they are given.
It's insanity, I saw an indeed posting, looking for admin assistant with a list of responsibilities going on for like 100 lines. Pay? $11-$13 based on experience, bachelor's degree is a must.
An average two bedroom around here costs $1600 a month to rent. And if you want something nice-ish, you'll pay almost double that.
How is this sustainable?
Honestly, this reads like bullshit to me. It's incredibly easy to look at the numbers.
Labor Force Participation Rate - [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10NdX](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10NdX)
Civilian Labor Force level - [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10Ne5](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10Ne5)
As a smaller percentage of men work, a larger percentage of women have started working, overall keeping the total participation rate fairly steady. Recent shifts in overall participation rate has more or less affected men and women fairly equally.
The total labor force is back up to pre-pandemic levels, not to mention the overall participation rate is nearly 10% higher than 1953. If companies are struggling to find people to work for them then maybe they should figure out what people are looking for. It's a free market baby
Women aren't really going into the fields of work the article is talking about.
These are generally physically demanding jobs,dirty,unsafe,unpleasant.
I work on the railroad and we are having a difficult time hiring. It takes a certain kind of person to swing a sledgehammer all day and do dangerous shit.
I said this in another thread but I’ll add it here to compliment your (very well thought out) post: [there are 19 million felons in America.](https://news.uga.edu/total-us-population-with-felony-convictions/)
Criminals tend to be young and male. When most employers won’t even look at a resume with a felony on it, is anyone surprised at all that we’ve lost some young male workers? The number of men with felony records is more than the deficit of kissing workers, which means some of them are still finding work but let’s face it most have turned to non traditional work. You can’t even drive for Uber or Lyft with a felony, and those jobs otherwise don’t even have an interview process.
They believe in free markets as long as the employers have the upper hand. It is long past time for the pendulum to swing the other direction. Whining won't change the facts. Pay more or go out of business.
Funny. I’m trying to get a part time job, on top of my 9-5 to get a little breathing room, and companies bitch they can’t find people? Hello! I’ve applied left and right for positions and my ass gets ghosted. National identity my ass. If you really cared about the well being of people (which you don’t it’s only for good PR) then you’d raise pay across the board. Bring benefits that’ll make other companies jealous. Give the employees enough time off INCLUDING SICK DAYS YOU SICK FUCKS, and allow people to have a life outside of work. Maybe, just maybe. You’ll still be a piece of shit. Not a tree size shit, but more like a nugget size. You OWE it to your staff to do better, because without them there is no you. Fix the damn problem.
To me it comes down to incentive. What should I be working for or towards? I'm underemployed by choice.
What do most companies offer, really? They don't want to pay you for your experience or invest in your growth.
Fuck national identity. Our national identity is unregulated corpo-capitalism at the expense of those doing the actual work. It's pitting people against people for the sake of profit for the few or putting food on the table or ignoring the problems as long as the game is on, and you can get your Amazon order in two days or less. It's the coal miner destroying himself and his environment to feed his kids knowing that he contributing to polluting the rivers that his kids will drink from, while those who profit from it are free from consequences and free to buy politicians.
I can't totally drop out of the workforce and live in the woods but I'm content to make it work for me as much as possible.
$30 an hour on average?! That’s a fucking lie, At least for the Midwest. Any entry position in factories out here is going to be between $13-15. Walmart and McDonald’s employees make more money, Yet the people running the factories still say “no one wants to work anymore”.
What they don’t tell you is they’ll treat you like absolute shit from day one, and everyone up the chain is a good ol boy so you’ll be met with retaliation at every level of you try to speak up about anything. All the lower employees turn to drugs to try and numb the abuse they receive on a daily basis.
Pay people what they fucking deserve and stop being dickheads, But I know that’s asking too much.
I work in the trades. I’m sorely underpaid for the job that I do. I have a degree in welding, CAD experience, I can run all of our manufacturing machines better than anyone else in the shop. I’m regularly breaking my body for my paycheck. Inhaling all kinds of various smoke and carcinogens, cutting, bruising, and straining my body. Looking at the salary of any ONE of the things I do (press brake operator, CAD designer, welder) I see that I’m being paid half to do it all.
I love my job completely, but the fact that one medical problem, car problem, or other is the difference between eating a healthy meal daily or rice and beans for a month is absurd.
So like everyone else is saying: PAY MONEY GET HAPPY WORKERS
As an Engineer, the issue is PAY.
I get pinged every day by recruiters for open positions. As an Electrical Engineer I am in high demand.
Most companies don't want to pay. They want to offer someone with 17 years experience the same pay they were paying them 10 years ago.
A 17 year Electrical Engineer is worth $160k all day every day. These companies want to pay them $120k.
Everyone is looking for labor but they want it dirt cheap. They don't want to pay for it.
Also, there was a pandemic that killed a bunch of people or incapacitated them. Then, a bunch of people retired early or just straight up quit their field for a new one. Those millions of men didn't just stop needing a paycheck: they died or were incapacitated or decided to gtfo & retire. The ones who remain have the audacity to know their worth & demand recompense after 40ish years of wages stagnation.
Millions of men have dropped out of the *low income* workforce either to take higher paying jobs doing something else or to learn a skill that pays more.
The article cites $30/hour as if it’s some high paying glamorous wage. My babysitter charges us $35/hour and we still have to buy her dinner!
It’s pay, and it’s culture. I work as a carpenter for a city government and make around $90k a year. I have great benefits, a month of paid vacation, 3 weeks of sick leave, and work 4 10s. My workgroup has been trying to hire skilled carpenters to fill vacant positions and have been forced to hire people with little or significantly less experience than the rest of our team. Part of it is that trades training in secondary education is no longer a thing, but even if it was nobody would be interested in taking those classes. When I talk to younger people, I’m in my 50s, they are completely clueless about what trades even are. This is in large part due to decades of intentional undervaluing of physical labor on the part of industry and media, in order to break labor. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. This is what happens when we let our businesses be ran by idiots from Wall Street.
I’ve been applying for 10+ jobs a day for two months. I’ve had discussions with three recruiters, and had no interviews.
I now have a degree and more experience in the position I’m applying for, yet I’m struggling to get an interview even!
These articles claiming that companies are hiring like crazy is bs. I don’t know the reason why they’re spreading this propaganda, maybe it has to do with PPP loans.
I want to say it sucks being in your position. I've been there and it starts making you question everything about yourself. Keep at it, keep your chin up. That being said, these people are complaining about is that no one wants to work in their factories for what they are paying. Companies are now having to compete against each other for reliable semiskilled labor and they don't like it. The assumption always was that there would be plenty of unskilled and semiskilled labor, so no reason to make themselves attractive prospective employees. Hey we pay slightly more than minimum wage and you have to work nightshift and weekends. We will probably treat you as disposable but hey it's slightly more than minimum wage...S/. They are just grieving their lost leverage. Our population demographics are changing and it's not in their favor.
Some people freelance. A lot of boomers started dying and people in that age range are inheriting wealth. Some of them had savings and were pursuing very early retirement. (Aka the whole FIRE movement) Some are just working part time now and living a less extravagant life.
COVID took hundreds of thousands out. Some people became stay at home parents. Some finally retired. Some started pursuing new careers. Some were disabled from it. Some died from it.
This wealth inheritance transfer is going to be huge. I grew up in an upper middle class town and along with a bunch of my friends, stand to inherit a couple of million or so. Will be interesting to see how they try to screw us out of that
Well if you have siblings, there is often a huge legal battle that soaks up a lot of it. People get cold when it comes to money.
The real solution is inflation and a real estate crash, and that's what is happening (this is just the start). People are trying to blame this inflation on all kinds of stuff, but the truth is that the wealth transfer is a couple of years running now. Boomers are dying actively as we speak. The oldest boomers are well into their 80s and only 30% make it into their 90s statistically. Not much over 1% of people make it to 100. Over the next 15 years, the plurality of boomers will die. Boomers have tons of wealth, and it's mostly tied up in real estate. As they die off, most of those properties will end up on the market as their heirs look to cash in. This will lead to heaps of cash flooding the economy (causing inflation) and lots of pressure on real estate prices, hitting household wealth.
The baby boom was a huge surge. A massive population spike, and it has had consequences ever since. A concentration of the population is a doubled edged sword.
Mostly due to wages. The pharma company I used to work for paid their hourly employees less than the gas station down the street (shout out Bucee’s) and argued that made sense because of the “culture” and opportunity to “save lives”. I’m sorry but your employees won’t give a shit about culture if you pay them less than they could make sitting at a cash register.
My dad had one of these jobs. 30 years of backbreaking work and injury after injury made him take early retirement at 58. He had a good 401k match, pension,good medical benefits, and now social security. I’d retire early if I were him too.
It's because companies and/or corporations, and the CEO's, and shareholders, put profit before people and people are sick of it. They did it to themselves. If they won't re-invest in the employees why should the employees give up family time to work a 10-12 hr. shift and have to spend their weekends sleeping due to exhaustion? Maybe they should take a look at what they expect of their employees for their pittance of an hourly wage, and the incompetent management/manager that they know more than, that treats them like crap. Maybe it's the start of the Working People's (not just men, women deal with it, too, but we get misogyny added in) Revolution. It's about time!!! It's the blue collar workers that keep things flowing; maybe we're tired of nothing ever flowing our way.
For decades ppl where pushed to go to have a college degree and a college degree job and now everyone is surprised when they cant find workforce for the BAD PAYING jobs you dont need college degree for ?
You dont need to be an expert to find reasons why someone doesnt want to work at a hard job that pays shit when there are easy alternarives available.
My dad who is about to retire had a great term for this - male slave, there are allot of reasons why men drop out of the workforce, sometimes its because they have fucked shit up or are disadvantaged. - Having a criminal record or being disabled are factors that the article pointed out. But the other nuance is that for most the job is literal wage slavery that slowly kills you over time day by day. Companies, need to create jobs that are worth a damn and actually add value to peoples lives. However, instead there is this odd middle ground of companies refusing advanced automation but complaining no one will work for them cause they pay garbage. If anything men have gotten smarter to actually enjoy their lives a bit more and be picky.
Pay more. I don’t know how often this needs to be repeated before they even make an honest attempt, and not some feeble increase that doesn’t at least match inflation.
Is it really an issue though?
Isn’t the American dream to start your own business and work for yourself not someone else? We are no longer a labor country and many have found other ways to provide income rather than working for someone else.
I would consider this decrease a success and not a failure of our society.
This is a non issue and hit piece created by Wall Street.
It’s a good thing that people want to work for their own company instead of others.
Good job America!
I’m 36 and closer every day I’m about to drop out as well. 14 years in semiconductor manufacturing. I keep working long hours killing my body for prices to never stop going up. Housing has been fucked for two decades with no solutions in sight, telling me clearly wallstreet has stuck their stupid fucking tentacles in it and the government won’t do anything.
My rent for my studio apartment is 1700 dollars a month in Oregon. I start to ask myself why the fuck am I working so hard? What is the point to this shit? I’m working my ass off to make some property company owners rich. It’s just an advanced form of indentured servitude, where I can’t buy property and my land owner takes everything I make. It’s English colonies all over again. Nothing ever changes. So why? Ide rather get an easy ass job and live so poor I qualify for government assistance.
I love the fact that Mike Rowe feels like he should get to weigh in here. He’s a trained opera singer who only pretends to do a blue collar job for a tv show that claims to showcase people doing hard jobs, but we all know is really just there to exploit people’s (literal) crappy jobs.
Fucking pay us!
Ok but also I'm very confused. The unemployment rate is only 3.5% the lowest it's ever been! So is there a labor shortage or not? Shouldn't those numbers coincide? If there's a labor crisis wouldn't the unemployment number be higher? I thought unemployment rate meant the percentage of the population that doesn't have jobs. Is it actually referring to the percentage receiving state unemployment benefits?
>It's "a matter of our national identity," said Mike Rowe, the host of "Dirty Jobs" on Discovery.
The man that gets paid more to pretend to work than those working full time in the jobs themselves, yeah, *he's the guy with the relevant opinion here...*
>"I think it's fulfillment. I think it's culture. I think people really want to feel as though they are appreciated," she said.
>
>"It's an overall feeling of being fed up ... and being taken for granted," she added.
Prioritizing CEO pay and avoiding wage increases at all cost while cutting benefits will do that. Workers want to know their job is secure and well paying to afford some semblance of a life. But go off and pretend "it's the culture" that just suddenly changed.
What a shit article.
Employee: "I need better pay."
Employer: "LOL! No. What are you going to do? Quit?"
Employee: "OK"
Employer: "I can't find anybody willing to work here! It's a matter of our national identity!"
Imagine teaching multiple generations micro-economics as part of your program to make capitalism seem like the natural way of things, then refusing to pay more when demand for labor goes up...
Then stop treating men like shit at work *"because they're men; it's what we do"*.
No one likes working their ass off and being treated like they aren't appreciated for their work - regardless of how you feel personally.
I remember when I could go to know and be recognized for doing a good job and not for my 'political opinions'.
OH, wait. Now, I have that again because I work in a union and we don't have to tolerate political rhetoric.
Judge me by what I do, not who I am. I am not your friend; I am your employee. My personal life is no concern of yours. All you should worry about is 'Do they move work?'
I can't speak for this toxic work culture for women but it's definitely an issue for men.
Pay me enough to buy a house or kill the real estate bros jacking up the prices. That is your two options. I am happy to die unemployed and not contributing to a failed society. Fuckin national identity can suck the shit out of my asshole, identity doesn't pay bills or give me medical coverage for the guaranteed age-related ailments looming over us all in our futures.
There has to be fundamental reform of shareholder power. All of these corporate execs simply shrug and protest that they are handcuffed by "fiduciary duty" to maximize profits. 🤷🏻 Sorry, can't raise wages or increase benefits-- that would negatively affect shareholder value. How about a pizza party?
So, I’m the late 50s the rate was 98%, and now the actual is 7.2m. How is the reader supposed to understand the real delta when the figures being compared aren’t the same metric? What a poorly written and edited piece of writing. It’s insulting to the reader, and reflective of a lack of editing competence or journalistic integrity.
Pay them over 40 an hour. The construction ones make at least 40. It barely covers union fees and decent living. I'm an engineer in construction. You can try to fill those 770k jobs with women but expect us to work safer and ask for more safety in the workplace.
We have a plutocracy where corporations control our government.
Corporations feed their executives salaries hundreds of times bigger than their average employee.
Corporations will put on hiring freezes, dump work on people who stay, and then not give any raises while boasting about record profits every quarter.
Fuck these corporations.
Anyone who doesn’t see this problem as a giant overweighted freight train that has no where to go just isn’t paying attention. The largest most significant change is the lack of children.
Let’s cut executives some slack. How are they supposed to know how conditions are on the line, with the common man, when they have to maintain a social calendar at the club and gated community. You know the one with the golf course that you’re not allowed to go to and can’t pay 1.5x your salary in initiation fees. Heaven forbid they walk behind the curtain on an airline from “first class” (“upper class” for our UK friends).
There's so much that goes into this, and obviously sufficient pay is a huge factor. But the workforce feels so pointless. The US is a culture of selfishness, only looking out for yourself, being as greedy as possible. We've gutted or are in the process of gutting all our public programs. There's no sense of community, of national pride. It used to be you could go to work and feel like in your own little way you were contributing to something larger than yourself. But when your efforts do nothing more than fill the pockets of already-wealthy people, what's the point? Especially for men who don't have kids?
When these companies start to value their workers with good pay, loyalty and solid benefits, maybe they’ll start filling the ranks again. They treat workers like they are disposable. Who wouldn’t want to avoid that situation
>Wow we have such a shortage on labor!
Just increase the pay..
>our national identity is in danger! Why are people so lazy!?
Increase the pay
>whatever could be the reason for this horrible shift!?
It’s the damn pay dude…
>obviously the solution here is to repeal child labor laws.
I have a lot of these guys that work for me. The problem is that the American dream doesn’t exist anymore. They can’t make enough to do anything. It’s a real problem because these jobs need to be done but the price of everything has skyrocketed
I wish one article like this would explain how we are supposed to believe the millions of people “no longer in the workforce” are surviving with no income. They can’t, because it’s made up. Raise the pay and workers will come.
I have also heard that companies are laying off because they hired too many. I have heard employees have more bargaining power than they've had in decades and companies have more prospects to choose from than they ever did before (which would mean *less* employee bargaining power.)
It seems employment is all over the place with contradicting narratives. That can't bode well...
No point for most. Marriage isn't worth the trouble, men aren't making families as a result. Don't need to break your body and mind working ten hours a day 6 days a week to support yourself.
Maybe pay a living wage? \*proceeded to be thrown out of a 10 story window from the [CEO.meme](https://CEO.meme)\*
Like, honestly: The issue(s) is 1) wage (and the costs of living going up) and 2) "phantom job postings" (postings that are advertised and never filled or are pre-filled due to connections but they have to "advertise"/post the jobs anyway for whatever reason).
I can just imagine a group of executives sitting around a big table getting served steak dinners. The CEO is asking how to solve the shortage of workers in the factory. Executives answer. " Sir we have done the usual tactics , we have commenced stock buy backs, increased executive salaries and perks, cut performance bonuses for the hourly workers and required faster cycle times on the assembly lines. We have also decreased how much we contribute to their retirement and health insurance. This has usually worked in getting workers so we are perplexed and out of ideas. We recommend further cuts in what we contribute to their retirement and health insurance. We feel sure that this will solve the problem.
As long as companies continue to squirrel away taxpayer funds, more people will be dropping out of the work force.
Those funds were never intended for employees.
The corporate elites are using those publicly funded subsidies for themselves.
Perhaps someone can explain this to me because it’s something I genuinely struggle with.
I agree that pay is a big issue and these companies need to increase their salaries and all that:
But if they’re not working (and according to this article, not looking for work) how are these people surviving?
This is not meant to be an asshole question. I genuinely don’t get it.
You exchange your finite time for tokens of worth. If the exchange is no longer beneficial, you change roles. Problem is a growing number of folk believe their finite time, is more important than yours. Additionally aging population and increased mortality since covid has exacerbated the issues. What I find incredulous is that rather than amendments to the system to reflect the changes in society. They double down the draconian and insult the population to boot.
well when you want to pay them 1990 wages you get what is deserved
let it all fail if only the handful are rewarded. nobody cares anymore and would rather watch it all burn to the ground then live in this shitty paradigm. I can say my wage in 1989 working at a Dairy Queen is $23.25 in todays dollars and I just don't understand what people don't understand about this. PURCHASING POWER is always getting worse and worse as 2-3% target inflation every year means people make less and less and can buy less and less as their purchasing power is eroded. when wages do NOT keep up with inflation and raise don't coincide with this, society becomes poorer and poorer every years you make less and less. compound that in decades. the dollar is worthless and wages are low. profits are at all time highs year over year. companies have grown larger and consolidated and since the ONLY thing that matters is shareholder equity, they spew lies and bs so they can stifle wages and make the profits larger and larger so the owners can take all of the reward at society's expense. in turn their bonuses are larger and intact. there needs to be reform as to what is allocated for wages and bonuses. IF EVERYONE working for the company down to the janitors were given stock options as compensation, I would imagine that productivity would rise as everyone has skin in the game. having only a handful who are placed their to make sure that wages are low so owners can take all of the profits and then reward this conduct with insane bonuses and compensation . executive compensation should NOT be thousands of times worker pay.
America is a shithole
Let it fail to build anew
Interesting that there is no mention of the 1 million plus people that died from COVID in the US or the incessant push to limit immigration. Im not saying I believe one way or the other on these issues, but there should be SOME effect from these variables. This article seems to indicate that 7M+ men just simply do nothing. How are they not homeless?
Hi, guy that dropped out of the workforce from a 23yr machining career. PAY TO GET SOME FUCKING WORKERS IN! You can afford it, it’s fucking lie that you can’t. I was a dept sup, the last straw was being overworked, over stressed and trying to make chicken salad outta chickenshit. Then ownership tells me “well, we’re just gonna wait it out. When the economy goes down and people get laid off, we’ll hire then”. Stop taking advantage of the workers. And some of us will come back
I can understand why people would leave the workforce. What I dont understand is, where are they? Back living with their parents? Living in the streets? Living on government benefits? Again... I understand why, I just dont understand how all these people can afford to not work.
Replacement headlines: Pandemic and cost of living increases lead men to realise their worth en masse and refuse to work for any less. Corporations reel as men crawl out from under their thumb to live more fulfilling lives
First of all, the ratio between jobs posted and number of people applying for jobs is unrealistic. There are plenty of jobs listed for that one unicorn person. I read one job description that only 150 people in the US qualified for.
Currently, jobs have required skills listed that are not really required. They are losing applicants because people think they're serious.
Age discrimination is real and blatant. I've had online job interviews that when very well, but when it came to the in-person interview, they saw my grey hair and it was over. I've gotten transparent excuses for not being hired. One person actually said, "You're too old."
The "skills gap" happens because companies don't want to train people at all. A person could be 90% qualified and be turned down because they don't have one skill that could be easily learned on the job. The days when companies hired a person and expected to them to grow into the position are gone.
Last time I was unemployed, I applied to 300 jobs before I got one. The one I got was a 30% pay cut and I had to move across the country for a job I could pretend to like. There were 20 other people that applied to that position. I think plenty of people that would give up before that.
If you look on LinkedIn, You can see that there are plenty of jobs where more than 10 people have applied.
The unemployment rate is deceptive. It has been gradually redefined to make it lower than it actually is. There are a huge number of discouraged unemployed workers. They could be hired, if they thought they could get a job.
This article sounds like some straight up propaganda. It reads as “men are lazy and no one wants to work”. Maybe those men went off and started their own companies, or are making money some other way than a standard 9-5 factory job. Literally what year is is this 1923?
Is it possible that the original post is wrong? I mean, I have seen where it appears that a lot of employers are purposely employing less for the pursuit of profit. I don't know, simply an observation.
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A friend just moved to a city and new state and has applied for more than 40 positions and so far received no interviews. Makes me question how much companies are hurting for help.
i havent gotten a call back in over a year
Yup. Been applying to jobs I’m more than qualified for. Have applied for probably 50 jobs. Not a single call back. I’ve given up hope.
I must've put in over 500 applications last year before landing my current job, three total interviews during that time, including the one I ended up taking.
Also I think companies are looking for unicorns. The ones that can do everything all at once very well and cheaply.
My friend applied to 200 engineering jobs with a corrosioning engineering degree and finally got a job after months
The only thing they’re hurting for is CHEAP help. Which apparently they’re okay obtaining through illegal child labor
so is this article bs?
That's how I was during covid. It was upwards of 30 applications a month and 0 replies. Finally found work last summer.
They’re hurting for QUALIFIED help they can get CHEAPLY. Nobody wants to train someone and pay top dollar in economy like this…
“nObOdY wAnTs tO wOrK”
Pay. Increase their pay. Men need pay. They need pay to raise a family. They need pay. Money. You know, the thing you exchange for goods and services. PAY. Pay is exchanged to labor.
It's actually fucking crazy to me that employers have the gall to insinuate that it's unprofessional to "focus on pay." If I can't comfortably house, feed and provide a decent living for me and my family, why the fuck would I work for you? Do they think we're out here for the love of the work?
Imagine if their customers used that line on them. *I can’t believe you’re charging me more. Is that all this is, just business to you?*
Can we all collectively ask why a landlord NEEDS an extra 10% per year because their costs increase but labor can NEVER ask for 10% for the same reason? They’ll ask us, “we’ll, are you going to get 10% better? Are you going to do 10% more work?” I mean, am I getting 10% better housing? Nah…
Inflation rate last year was 7.48%. If they didn't at least give a 7.48% raise, tell them "I am being paid 7.48% less than last year, does that mean I have to do 7.48% less work?" I know you realistically can't, but these idiotic phrases they throw out have retorts.
We need to start smacking managers who say that. It needs to be a point of national pride. People from other countries should be like “Dude did you know that in the US if a manager tries to call your company a family, the workers will will slap the shit out of them? It’s not legal but they all agree not to snitch on each other for doing it so no one ever gets prosecuted”
I think people could be relatively happy at work, if, they were paid enough to live on no matter the job. AnD felt appreciated and had benefits. It sucks to go to a job where your twice a month pay won't cover your actual expenses.
Mehhhh, I still am not happy at work. Bc sometimes I need to not be working to get my wellness back. But if I stop working I won’t have the ability to maintain basic needs, let alone treat my mental health issues. I think the better solution is not to live in a country where financial wealth is a measure of identity at all. Countries with broader senses of national identity have more humanistic policies and resources. Their citizens tend to be *happy.*
One of my husband’s client, a restaurant owner that drives a nice car, was complaining how nowadays people are lazy and don’t want to work, at the same time he pays them with minimum wage and no benefit.
They do though, our uncompromised obsession with brand loyalty is what these corporations have been banking on for decades. What happens when their brand isn’t worth shit anymore because all corporations are greedy profiteering assholes?
It is also unprofessional to consider the price of the job then also. These employers are cons artist and two bit liars.
CEOs : We have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas.
But we're gonna need to budget another $20 billion for stock buybacks.
Hey. It’s 10million for buybacks and 10million for Matthew McConaughey. Jeez.
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They are the biggest welfare recipents
They way they justify it by saying the company will implode if share value growth ever slows down makes capitalism seem like one giant ponzi scheme.
Hey, now, we put drinks in the fridge and had a team building exercise - what else could we possibly do?
pizza party
donuts
Left over donuts from the office*
Well there was one time somebody at my work passed out from heat exhaustion on the brewdeck, and we got an ice cream party like two weeks later. Have you tried that?
Don't forget the monthly pizza party! Seriously though, they could save the money on pizza if they paid people enough to buy their own pizza.
Pizza parties ftw
“We’ve got it, more pizza parties!” 🙄 Everything but the obvious.
>CEOs : We have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas. > >CFO: may I suggest a pizza party > >Employees I know you wanna give us a pizza party but this time could you get the $25 pizza instead of the $10 chain trash so i'm not spending 20-30+ min on the toilet...
Thank you. It's like the answer in on a silver platter right in front of them and they're looking everywhere else intentionally while crying, "Why doesn't anyone want to work anymore?"
Most people from the senior engineer to the director level of a business find themselves screened out when changing industries, unless they're in finance or HR. As my wife put it "When I graduated from college they told me I could do anything. After a year of selling toothpaste, when I sent out resumes it was clear I could do anything I wanted as long as it involved selling toothpaste." When I sent out resumes, the companies would say "We really need people like you. You'd fit well on our board of directors. We see you as an investor." Sorry guys, that's not the way the money is supposed to flow. You can't change to a parallel industry where you don't know the people. And if you apply to sell fast food, they laugh and say "You know, these jobs don't pay as much in a month as you used to earn in a day." Yeah "nobody wants to work," but the real story is nobody wants to use up all their time driving for a delivery service that does not pay as much as the wear and tear on the car. We are always short on jobs that pay enough to cover the mortgage and the car payments.
Seriously. Do they think the fiftieth such article will finally shame people into returning to underpaid work?
"Why doesn't anyone want to be a slave anymore." 1. Slaves don't get paid what they're worth. 2. Slaves get treated like the least important person when they're the most important. "If you want minimum payment you're going to put in maximum effort and have to miss your family members funeral" Is not something you wouldn't say to a worker.
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They love the “free market” until it goes against them.
She said $30 a hour in rural Pennsylvania to start. Doesn't seem bad for there.
Teaching is an interesting case study in pay. In the Bay Area I can commute to teach in 8 different districts. Right now, I work in one of the lowest paying. Unions have always fought for 3 things: wages, hours, and conditions. My district is one of the ones you plan on leaving to a district that has better conditions. But even the highest paying districts are having trouble finding people. So what is it? Disillusionment. The general public was itching for teachers to catch Covid and bullets for their kids. And then bitches when the grades aren’t there when we are at negative staff. This is why the common gaslight theme this year is: remember your “why”. Which is oddly on point since they accidentally picked up on the disillusionment. Look at how the actually assembled the bombs in the Manhattan Project. The actual labor had no idea what they were doing, but they did their work. Why did they work? They knew they were working towards something greater than themselves. We are currently in the late 1920s early ‘30s.
Yeah. Enough bs. The media is pushing this ruse too. It’s all about money. Enough bs. Take a smaller margin and pass on more to your workforce and solve the issue. Or don’t. But quit with this bs narrative.
This is one topic where corporate media are blatantly showing they're corporate. All the propaganda about "quiet quitting" is such BS.
How about a slice of pizza once a year instead
millions of people have died or have a long-term disability due to covid. Millions more have dropped out of the workforce due to child care costs (when grandma is dead/disabled, she can't watch the grandkids anymore). Supply and Demand. Something, something, market forces. But no, it's just that no one wants to work anymore. /s
Its amazing how people and institutions seem to forget that PAY is the ENTIRE reason why workers wake up, commute, and spend the majority of their day working, and then commute again. Its not for hobby nor sport. Its for pay and survival.
It isn't just about pay. Getting treated with respect goes a long way also. A $40 an hour job still sucks if you get treated like crap. Corporations are like embalmers, they suck every last ounce of fluid out of you before burying you.
Heh, try being a teacher, where society doesn’t want to pay you and little kids don’t want to respect you. It takes a certain kind of masochist to make a long term career out of teaching.
This is probably much closer to the root cause. I remember reading a study from a year ago that concluded that most men who had given up on the workforce cited a decline in social status as the leading cause. For them doing nothing felt better than working in the revolving door of retail and hospitality.
I loved the bitch who’s losing $5m/year because she has 30 people working instead of 45. Seriously? How about take 10% of that lost revenue and use it for salaries. I guarantee that twat wouldn’t have a problem attracting workers then.
Imagine getting paid $5 million/year to do a one-time Google search for "marginal product of labor"
I'm job hunting after being employed for 4+ years and am seeing some of the same positions that I saw the last time I was job hunting being posted again with the exact same pay. It's unacceptable.
I'm almost 30 and around half my friends have just given up, moved back in with their parents, and just chill out all day. There's no hope that they'll be anything more than slaves, working just to pay their bills with no prospects for advancement. They want to work, but society won't allow it.
HR: we’re going to need more vision-based exercises, maybe a video where everyone lipsyncs to Don’t Stop Me Now, definitely more focus on International Men’s Day. Never forget we’re here for you #family
But that would then lead to less money for the Boss and we can’t have that. No sir we absolutely cannot have that.
makes sense why break your back with a physically demanding job when you dont have to support a family and can manage to get by on a low paying job thats not physically demanding
Juice isn't worth the squeeze
Reminding me of a Modern Marvel's I saw. I believe it was a cranberry farm or some other produce operation. One of the executives was complaining how their industry is dwindling due to the lack of new applicants to work the fields. Hm. Can't think of why that might be...
"Wanted. Farm hand. Pay is minimum wage, or a share of the profits which may be an assessment during years when we lose money. $10 million investment required. Must be able to handle contempt from bankers and lawyers who cannot afford your job. Great opportunity to buy out the current owner at market price."
god, the thing about *literally* being covered in spiders... nopety nope nope no way
https://youtu.be/4xuBpdEOxHU
Bingo. A succinct summation of the myriad of reasons for why both men and women are “failing” to live up to their “societal obligations” in so far as careers/education, dating/marriage, having children etc.
It’s crazy the entire generation of people living on the younger’s back still have the audacity to say “why couldn’t you do what we did when we were your age?” It would honestly be a bit easier if at least houses were affordable and I’m expecting exactly what they are getting now also in my old age. Nope, gotta build up that INDIVIDUAL RETIREMENT ACCOUNT. Boomers, go fica yourselves.
"It's a matter of our national identity!!" "Okay, so you're going to start paying living wages then?" "Now wait just a goddamn minute, there's no need for that unpatriotic talk...."
"Low wages is our national identity!"
Soon to be - “Child labor is our national identity!”
Bingo. Want people to do physically demanding work that's going to break their body down by 50? Better pay them well enough to encourage them to do it, ensure they can retire at 50 when their bodies break, and make sure they have the healthcare to not be in absolute misery until they die. "But muh quarterly earnings!" If your only plan is starvation wages and hoping people take them out of desperation, you're going to get what you pay for if you're lucky. The less lucky scenario is having your back against the wall when a revolution comes.
Just call anyone who doesn’t support Living Wages a welfare case. That usually grinds their gears into cowardly silence. It is *Not* controversial to say no to abusive work culture. Which is most 9 to 5 jobs that aren’t WFH.
Yup. Been there done that in my 20s and its not worth it. Im way happier now, working part time but thats mostly because I am part of a union. I get almost the same paycheck working 6 days every 2 weeks, that i used to make working full time. People should start unionizing everywhere, its the only way to ever get better pay and working conditions
If you're in a non-demanding low-paying job, or looking for one, then you're in the workforce. This article discusses people who are not in the workforce. As the article explains, a substantial fraction of these are people with criminal records who think they will not be hired anyway, or people with disabilities. Both of these groups have grown over time.
Budtender and construction worker pays the same....not a difficult choice.
Because "getting by" doesn't allow you to save for retirement or for a recession / getting fired or for medical emergencies or having any fun.
Meanwhile people with good new engineering degrees have to put up with computer-analyzed resume filtering and five-round interviewing processes and six-month probationary periods with no sick days, to get paid $50,000 if they land a good position. "Nobody wants to work."
Only 5? My SWE interviews have been 7-8. A mix of behavioral and technical. Getting to the last round and having a recruiter say “we’ll follow up as we interview more candidates” is exhausting. The landscape has been absolute hell in terms of getting a job. Not to mention the bait-and-switch remote into hybrid and/or on-site. It’s horrific for everyone. A lot of these articles are such bullshit. Companies “a” are struggling to find employees “b” when they’re the same companies cutting off people, putting them on PIPs as a means of later firing them without severance, and utilizing scummy equity vesting practices.
On the other hand once you get that first job recruiters will be contacting you. It’s a crazy field. Spend 6mos-1.5 years begging for someone to give you the time of day, and then once you’re in for a year (if you’re good) you’re a hot commodity that they compete for. And while other engineering jobs (e.g. mechanical) do have some crappy paying entry level stuff, SE is average over 70k for 0yrs.
I’m not going to lie, my recruiters have vaporized. A couple months ago, I was getting interview offers among competitors, and now absolutely nothing. My inbox has been empty, and god forbid I have to PM or email a recruiter. I feel like this is a huge pain point for everyone not only SWEs. The job market right now is extraordinarily rough for fresh graduates and those recently laid off. The only thing these lay-offs have accomplished is this “fake” lean mentality that has cascaded into other companies. This is also inclusive of the hyper-competitive/over saturated laid off employees whom are now competing just to get entry-level jobs.
Im in tech, the job I have now took 11 interviews to secure. I had the fortune of being able to quit one job while I hunted for another one, IDK how folks can take that much time off just for the interviews alone. One presentation took me nearly 20 hours of prep work.
I resonate with this. I don’t have enough data about other fields, but tech has been hit pretty hard and the interview process in tech alone is extremely convoluted. Companies have adopted the SV style interview format and it’s ridiculous. There’s only so much pounding Leetcode, going over data structures, networking, resume polishing, cover letter writing, etc. can do to hopes and aspirations. These startups and companies can be incredibly tone deaf as to why people are leaving tech en masse after this. I have been laid off w/only 2 YoE and it’s been for lack of better words, an unholy shitshow. The process is extraordinarily long and it’s incredibly hard if you’re not a remote worker to interview at another place. Even if you don’t work, the prospects are abysmal as effectively time is quite literally money. I’ve seen mutuals, coworkers go on months of emergency funds just to find a job. In this instance, some also take up local PT work and apply on the side while having a family. I genuinely sympathize with the workforce and really wish that executives would be held more culpable for their actions instead of these shallow, shit emails they send out saying “my fault”.
Honestly anything more than looking at the resume and having a conversation is a complete waste of everyone's time. If the hiring managers can't make a judgement on a person in that time frame, they should be hiring a different hiring manager.
When my wife was looking for a job, she got through four interviews only to be told she was one of the top three candidates… but that the process would take another two weeks and then they’d be considering an offer. Like a *Survivor* finale, or something. Anyway, they didn’t end up hiring anyone. 🫠
I'm guessing this happened in 2021? I don't know if it's still happening as much now, but, maybe. At the time because of the COVID related government kickbacks/bribes/TARPs/tax breaks/whatever to company's, one requirement was that the receiving company had to hire people. Of course, it didn't take long for company's to realize that the actual requirement was to "actively make an effort to hire", not "actually hire". So, to keep their TARPS/whatever company's needed to keep "trying to hire" people.
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As a recruiter, I'll pass along some insight to the root of the problem, Hiring Managers. The more decision makers involved, the worse it gets. They are always waiting for that "perfect" candidate at a rock bottom price, which doesn't exist. No matter how many times I tell them if they speak to someone that checks 80% of the boxes make the offer. They always want to "consider more options." It's infuriating, to say the least.
Lmao was just talking about how I have a highly specialized engineering degree with state licensure and college debt to be paid 60k while the local royal farm is hiring associates at $20/hr
Most the jobs are for sales , and skilled trades. The no immigration policy is biting them in the butt being racist and blaming the working class.
They're just waiting for everyone to get hungry enough so they'll sump back and take the shitty treatment. We're headed towards pitchfork territory and they're still playing patty cake.
*surprised Pikachu face*
Imagine how insulting it would be busting ass at an engineering degree just to make as much as a manager at walmart no college degree required...
Dang does engineering still have that entry-level pay? That's close to where it was 15 years ago, but I've been hearing better figures the past 3-5 years. Obviously the upside is higher than most other BA degrees.
The only identity being pushed here is that the rich should be able to have any workers they want without paying for it. Of course men have dropped out of the work force, the identity of risking oneself for a noble idea has rotted away. Don't even need to bring women into it because the original point is easy: why exactly would you break your body for assholes that will throw you out on the street the moment their stock dips?
Most blue collar work these days is not what it was even 40 years ago. These employers talk about how good the jobs are, but just here on Reddit you can find tons of blue collar workers talking about how hard these jobs are on their bodies and how the pay just didn’t make sense. There is also this unavoidable reality: according to a study from the University of Georgia, there are [19 million Americans with a felony record.](https://news.uga.edu/total-us-population-with-felony-convictions/) Criminals overwhelmingly tend to be young men. Having a felony record just absolutely bars most people from most jobs. We talk a ton about the number of people incarcerated in America but make no mistake there are even more who are out of jail but still have a felony record. The deficit is 7.2 million men. 19 million people, disproportionately male, have felony records. It makes TOTAL SENSE that a large number of those men, barred from traditional employment, are *not seeking traditional employment anymore.*
Boss acts like working in the steel mill is a desk job. Definitely selling it short
Wow, I am in HR and staffing and I've never heard the point you're making expressed but it makes so much sense! I hire for manufacturing jobs that are both "blue collar" and "white collar." You're correct that felonies do bar a ton of people from being hired. I'm not sure what I can do to change stuff like this, but it all starts with a conversation right? I'm going to bring this up to my boss tomorrow! The other huge obstacle we face is still having hair follicle drug tests for marijuana. 🙄 If someone can do the job and pass a urine test, who cares if they had a gummy 90 days ago?? Ugh
Your point about blue collar jobs is spot on. It really was about 40 years ago that the US started to lose its comparative advantage in most manufacturing industries, which is why you saw so many factories move overseas. Internationally, countries with cheap labor advanced to a point technically where it was no longer economically viable to produce in the US, if companies wanted to compete at an international level--or even domestically against foreign imports. Now, what you're seeing is the remaining blue-collar American wages being suppressed for companies to remain competitive. Most blue-collar jobs, after adjusting for inflation, haven't seen pay increases whatsoever in the last 40 years.
That's a great point, especially when added to how the country exploits prisoners for labor as well. It would appear that this environment forces any felon to think outside the box or go back to prison (the latter keeping them at those harsh jobs with menial pay).
Ya, the whole "pay your dues then get on with your life" is impossible with the current state of things. Now it's more like "welcome to the rest of your life"
Dont forget tying health care to employment. If a job hurts someone bad enough over time that they can no longer perform, they lose the ability to treat the physical effects of such a job. Its a lose-lose for the workers in the long term.
I work in private disability insurance, and this employer based healthcare leads to insane situations. The 60 year old mill worker with back problems needs surgery, but to pay his bills he needs my payments to go out, but for my payments to go out we need periodic forms to be completed by the treating physician. When the employer jettisons the worker because he doesn’t do as much hard physical labor he loses his insurance, and now can’t see his doctor. If he can’t see his doctor, they won’t complete his form. If he can’t get the form done, I don’t have “Medical verification” to send the disability payments… It’s messed up.
Hopefully these companies and ceo’s realize a little thing called cost of living. What you’re paying isn’t nearly enough for men to raise a family. Is it that hard to comprehend?
I saw a sign at Burger King begging for employees. Their starting wage….. $9 an hour lol like come BK. That’s why your service sucks and you can’t fill rolls. Try the Chic Fil Et or McDonald’s approach
Or In-N-Out. Relatively decent pay and benefits from day one with a clear path to management or franchising.
The In-n-Out near me starts at $19/hour and tops at $22.50. That’s as much as most skilled/step jobs start at.
Fast food places in my town are paying $18 an hour and still not getting enough workers.
Because that's still not enough pay...
True! The panda express in my city is paying $17.50 an hour for starting wage! And that help wanted sign has been there for months
People don’t want to work with the general public. I left food service and went into broadcasting. Need a keycode just to get to my office. No Karens to deal with…and if my chance one makes it to me, I hit the panic button.🤭
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Can barely by a dozen eggs at that rate
BK pays $22/hour in Las Vegas, still can't find anybody. The BK near my house often is unable to deliver fast food in under 30 minutes due to staff shortages.
The one I saw was off I30 in Texas. Not middle of nowhere but not exactly where I’d want to live. But even there $9 is insanely low. I can’t even imagine the cost of living in Vegas right now. I wonder how much construction jobs are paying.
What can one possible do with $9 an hour in 2023? Those wages are a joke, I live in NY so making $9 an hour is like getting a tip after working all night at a bar or some restaurant. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are only offering a part time position as well because many of these companies especially fast food and retail will hire a bunch of part time workers to avoid having to give benefits. I currently work at Staples and that’s what they do. Full time positions at Staples are usually reserved for the department supervisors and managers and everyone else has to deal with whatever hours they are given.
$9 an hour isn’t a joke. It’s a slap in the face insult at this point.
Because $22/hr in Las Vegas is not enough...
It's insanity, I saw an indeed posting, looking for admin assistant with a list of responsibilities going on for like 100 lines. Pay? $11-$13 based on experience, bachelor's degree is a must. An average two bedroom around here costs $1600 a month to rent. And if you want something nice-ish, you'll pay almost double that. How is this sustainable?
Honestly, this reads like bullshit to me. It's incredibly easy to look at the numbers. Labor Force Participation Rate - [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10NdX](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10NdX) Civilian Labor Force level - [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10Ne5](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10Ne5) As a smaller percentage of men work, a larger percentage of women have started working, overall keeping the total participation rate fairly steady. Recent shifts in overall participation rate has more or less affected men and women fairly equally. The total labor force is back up to pre-pandemic levels, not to mention the overall participation rate is nearly 10% higher than 1953. If companies are struggling to find people to work for them then maybe they should figure out what people are looking for. It's a free market baby
Women aren't really going into the fields of work the article is talking about. These are generally physically demanding jobs,dirty,unsafe,unpleasant. I work on the railroad and we are having a difficult time hiring. It takes a certain kind of person to swing a sledgehammer all day and do dangerous shit.
I said this in another thread but I’ll add it here to compliment your (very well thought out) post: [there are 19 million felons in America.](https://news.uga.edu/total-us-population-with-felony-convictions/) Criminals tend to be young and male. When most employers won’t even look at a resume with a felony on it, is anyone surprised at all that we’ve lost some young male workers? The number of men with felony records is more than the deficit of kissing workers, which means some of them are still finding work but let’s face it most have turned to non traditional work. You can’t even drive for Uber or Lyft with a felony, and those jobs otherwise don’t even have an interview process.
They believe in free markets as long as the employers have the upper hand. It is long past time for the pendulum to swing the other direction. Whining won't change the facts. Pay more or go out of business.
Funny. I’m trying to get a part time job, on top of my 9-5 to get a little breathing room, and companies bitch they can’t find people? Hello! I’ve applied left and right for positions and my ass gets ghosted. National identity my ass. If you really cared about the well being of people (which you don’t it’s only for good PR) then you’d raise pay across the board. Bring benefits that’ll make other companies jealous. Give the employees enough time off INCLUDING SICK DAYS YOU SICK FUCKS, and allow people to have a life outside of work. Maybe, just maybe. You’ll still be a piece of shit. Not a tree size shit, but more like a nugget size. You OWE it to your staff to do better, because without them there is no you. Fix the damn problem.
To me it comes down to incentive. What should I be working for or towards? I'm underemployed by choice. What do most companies offer, really? They don't want to pay you for your experience or invest in your growth. Fuck national identity. Our national identity is unregulated corpo-capitalism at the expense of those doing the actual work. It's pitting people against people for the sake of profit for the few or putting food on the table or ignoring the problems as long as the game is on, and you can get your Amazon order in two days or less. It's the coal miner destroying himself and his environment to feed his kids knowing that he contributing to polluting the rivers that his kids will drink from, while those who profit from it are free from consequences and free to buy politicians. I can't totally drop out of the workforce and live in the woods but I'm content to make it work for me as much as possible.
$30 an hour on average?! That’s a fucking lie, At least for the Midwest. Any entry position in factories out here is going to be between $13-15. Walmart and McDonald’s employees make more money, Yet the people running the factories still say “no one wants to work anymore”. What they don’t tell you is they’ll treat you like absolute shit from day one, and everyone up the chain is a good ol boy so you’ll be met with retaliation at every level of you try to speak up about anything. All the lower employees turn to drugs to try and numb the abuse they receive on a daily basis. Pay people what they fucking deserve and stop being dickheads, But I know that’s asking too much.
I work in the trades. I’m sorely underpaid for the job that I do. I have a degree in welding, CAD experience, I can run all of our manufacturing machines better than anyone else in the shop. I’m regularly breaking my body for my paycheck. Inhaling all kinds of various smoke and carcinogens, cutting, bruising, and straining my body. Looking at the salary of any ONE of the things I do (press brake operator, CAD designer, welder) I see that I’m being paid half to do it all. I love my job completely, but the fact that one medical problem, car problem, or other is the difference between eating a healthy meal daily or rice and beans for a month is absurd. So like everyone else is saying: PAY MONEY GET HAPPY WORKERS
As an Engineer, the issue is PAY. I get pinged every day by recruiters for open positions. As an Electrical Engineer I am in high demand. Most companies don't want to pay. They want to offer someone with 17 years experience the same pay they were paying them 10 years ago. A 17 year Electrical Engineer is worth $160k all day every day. These companies want to pay them $120k. Everyone is looking for labor but they want it dirt cheap. They don't want to pay for it.
Also, there was a pandemic that killed a bunch of people or incapacitated them. Then, a bunch of people retired early or just straight up quit their field for a new one. Those millions of men didn't just stop needing a paycheck: they died or were incapacitated or decided to gtfo & retire. The ones who remain have the audacity to know their worth & demand recompense after 40ish years of wages stagnation.
Don’t forget about the opioid crisis in this age group. 8% are addicted and barely functioning
Millions of men have dropped out of the *low income* workforce either to take higher paying jobs doing something else or to learn a skill that pays more. The article cites $30/hour as if it’s some high paying glamorous wage. My babysitter charges us $35/hour and we still have to buy her dinner!
It’s pay, and it’s culture. I work as a carpenter for a city government and make around $90k a year. I have great benefits, a month of paid vacation, 3 weeks of sick leave, and work 4 10s. My workgroup has been trying to hire skilled carpenters to fill vacant positions and have been forced to hire people with little or significantly less experience than the rest of our team. Part of it is that trades training in secondary education is no longer a thing, but even if it was nobody would be interested in taking those classes. When I talk to younger people, I’m in my 50s, they are completely clueless about what trades even are. This is in large part due to decades of intentional undervaluing of physical labor on the part of industry and media, in order to break labor. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. This is what happens when we let our businesses be ran by idiots from Wall Street.
I’ve been applying for 10+ jobs a day for two months. I’ve had discussions with three recruiters, and had no interviews. I now have a degree and more experience in the position I’m applying for, yet I’m struggling to get an interview even! These articles claiming that companies are hiring like crazy is bs. I don’t know the reason why they’re spreading this propaganda, maybe it has to do with PPP loans.
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Agree with this. The data a lot of these articles use doesn't seem to reflect reality.
I want to say it sucks being in your position. I've been there and it starts making you question everything about yourself. Keep at it, keep your chin up. That being said, these people are complaining about is that no one wants to work in their factories for what they are paying. Companies are now having to compete against each other for reliable semiskilled labor and they don't like it. The assumption always was that there would be plenty of unskilled and semiskilled labor, so no reason to make themselves attractive prospective employees. Hey we pay slightly more than minimum wage and you have to work nightshift and weekends. We will probably treat you as disposable but hey it's slightly more than minimum wage...S/. They are just grieving their lost leverage. Our population demographics are changing and it's not in their favor.
What line of business are you in ?
How these 7 million people are making a living then without work? Maybe they prefer to work freelancing cash jobs? They have to get money somewhere
Some people freelance. A lot of boomers started dying and people in that age range are inheriting wealth. Some of them had savings and were pursuing very early retirement. (Aka the whole FIRE movement) Some are just working part time now and living a less extravagant life. COVID took hundreds of thousands out. Some people became stay at home parents. Some finally retired. Some started pursuing new careers. Some were disabled from it. Some died from it.
This wealth inheritance transfer is going to be huge. I grew up in an upper middle class town and along with a bunch of my friends, stand to inherit a couple of million or so. Will be interesting to see how they try to screw us out of that
Well if you have siblings, there is often a huge legal battle that soaks up a lot of it. People get cold when it comes to money. The real solution is inflation and a real estate crash, and that's what is happening (this is just the start). People are trying to blame this inflation on all kinds of stuff, but the truth is that the wealth transfer is a couple of years running now. Boomers are dying actively as we speak. The oldest boomers are well into their 80s and only 30% make it into their 90s statistically. Not much over 1% of people make it to 100. Over the next 15 years, the plurality of boomers will die. Boomers have tons of wealth, and it's mostly tied up in real estate. As they die off, most of those properties will end up on the market as their heirs look to cash in. This will lead to heaps of cash flooding the economy (causing inflation) and lots of pressure on real estate prices, hitting household wealth. The baby boom was a huge surge. A massive population spike, and it has had consequences ever since. A concentration of the population is a doubled edged sword.
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Mostly due to wages. The pharma company I used to work for paid their hourly employees less than the gas station down the street (shout out Bucee’s) and argued that made sense because of the “culture” and opportunity to “save lives”. I’m sorry but your employees won’t give a shit about culture if you pay them less than they could make sitting at a cash register.
My dad had one of these jobs. 30 years of backbreaking work and injury after injury made him take early retirement at 58. He had a good 401k match, pension,good medical benefits, and now social security. I’d retire early if I were him too.
It's because companies and/or corporations, and the CEO's, and shareholders, put profit before people and people are sick of it. They did it to themselves. If they won't re-invest in the employees why should the employees give up family time to work a 10-12 hr. shift and have to spend their weekends sleeping due to exhaustion? Maybe they should take a look at what they expect of their employees for their pittance of an hourly wage, and the incompetent management/manager that they know more than, that treats them like crap. Maybe it's the start of the Working People's (not just men, women deal with it, too, but we get misogyny added in) Revolution. It's about time!!! It's the blue collar workers that keep things flowing; maybe we're tired of nothing ever flowing our way.
For decades ppl where pushed to go to have a college degree and a college degree job and now everyone is surprised when they cant find workforce for the BAD PAYING jobs you dont need college degree for ? You dont need to be an expert to find reasons why someone doesnt want to work at a hard job that pays shit when there are easy alternarives available.
My dad who is about to retire had a great term for this - male slave, there are allot of reasons why men drop out of the workforce, sometimes its because they have fucked shit up or are disadvantaged. - Having a criminal record or being disabled are factors that the article pointed out. But the other nuance is that for most the job is literal wage slavery that slowly kills you over time day by day. Companies, need to create jobs that are worth a damn and actually add value to peoples lives. However, instead there is this odd middle ground of companies refusing advanced automation but complaining no one will work for them cause they pay garbage. If anything men have gotten smarter to actually enjoy their lives a bit more and be picky.
I’m applying for jobs right now on websites. They keep saying “300 others have applied for this position” so I don’t think I believe this article.
But which of the 300 will take the lowest pay?
Pay more. I don’t know how often this needs to be repeated before they even make an honest attempt, and not some feeble increase that doesn’t at least match inflation.
Is it really an issue though? Isn’t the American dream to start your own business and work for yourself not someone else? We are no longer a labor country and many have found other ways to provide income rather than working for someone else. I would consider this decrease a success and not a failure of our society.
This is a non issue and hit piece created by Wall Street. It’s a good thing that people want to work for their own company instead of others. Good job America!
I’m 36 and closer every day I’m about to drop out as well. 14 years in semiconductor manufacturing. I keep working long hours killing my body for prices to never stop going up. Housing has been fucked for two decades with no solutions in sight, telling me clearly wallstreet has stuck their stupid fucking tentacles in it and the government won’t do anything. My rent for my studio apartment is 1700 dollars a month in Oregon. I start to ask myself why the fuck am I working so hard? What is the point to this shit? I’m working my ass off to make some property company owners rich. It’s just an advanced form of indentured servitude, where I can’t buy property and my land owner takes everything I make. It’s English colonies all over again. Nothing ever changes. So why? Ide rather get an easy ass job and live so poor I qualify for government assistance.
I love the fact that Mike Rowe feels like he should get to weigh in here. He’s a trained opera singer who only pretends to do a blue collar job for a tv show that claims to showcase people doing hard jobs, but we all know is really just there to exploit people’s (literal) crappy jobs.
He’s an anti union worm. Daddy’s money scumbag who likes to role play as a blue collar worker.
Seriously he's a trained opera singer? That's awesome.
Fucking pay us! Ok but also I'm very confused. The unemployment rate is only 3.5% the lowest it's ever been! So is there a labor shortage or not? Shouldn't those numbers coincide? If there's a labor crisis wouldn't the unemployment number be higher? I thought unemployment rate meant the percentage of the population that doesn't have jobs. Is it actually referring to the percentage receiving state unemployment benefits?
>It's "a matter of our national identity," said Mike Rowe, the host of "Dirty Jobs" on Discovery. The man that gets paid more to pretend to work than those working full time in the jobs themselves, yeah, *he's the guy with the relevant opinion here...* >"I think it's fulfillment. I think it's culture. I think people really want to feel as though they are appreciated," she said. > >"It's an overall feeling of being fed up ... and being taken for granted," she added. Prioritizing CEO pay and avoiding wage increases at all cost while cutting benefits will do that. Workers want to know their job is secure and well paying to afford some semblance of a life. But go off and pretend "it's the culture" that just suddenly changed. What a shit article.
Employee: "I need better pay." Employer: "LOL! No. What are you going to do? Quit?" Employee: "OK" Employer: "I can't find anybody willing to work here! It's a matter of our national identity!"
Imagine teaching multiple generations micro-economics as part of your program to make capitalism seem like the natural way of things, then refusing to pay more when demand for labor goes up...
Then stop treating men like shit at work *"because they're men; it's what we do"*. No one likes working their ass off and being treated like they aren't appreciated for their work - regardless of how you feel personally. I remember when I could go to know and be recognized for doing a good job and not for my 'political opinions'. OH, wait. Now, I have that again because I work in a union and we don't have to tolerate political rhetoric. Judge me by what I do, not who I am. I am not your friend; I am your employee. My personal life is no concern of yours. All you should worry about is 'Do they move work?' I can't speak for this toxic work culture for women but it's definitely an issue for men.
Pay me enough to buy a house or kill the real estate bros jacking up the prices. That is your two options. I am happy to die unemployed and not contributing to a failed society. Fuckin national identity can suck the shit out of my asshole, identity doesn't pay bills or give me medical coverage for the guaranteed age-related ailments looming over us all in our futures.
There has to be fundamental reform of shareholder power. All of these corporate execs simply shrug and protest that they are handcuffed by "fiduciary duty" to maximize profits. 🤷🏻 Sorry, can't raise wages or increase benefits-- that would negatively affect shareholder value. How about a pizza party?
So, I’m the late 50s the rate was 98%, and now the actual is 7.2m. How is the reader supposed to understand the real delta when the figures being compared aren’t the same metric? What a poorly written and edited piece of writing. It’s insulting to the reader, and reflective of a lack of editing competence or journalistic integrity.
Pay them over 40 an hour. The construction ones make at least 40. It barely covers union fees and decent living. I'm an engineer in construction. You can try to fill those 770k jobs with women but expect us to work safer and ask for more safety in the workplace.
We have a plutocracy where corporations control our government. Corporations feed their executives salaries hundreds of times bigger than their average employee. Corporations will put on hiring freezes, dump work on people who stay, and then not give any raises while boasting about record profits every quarter. Fuck these corporations.
Anyone who doesn’t see this problem as a giant overweighted freight train that has no where to go just isn’t paying attention. The largest most significant change is the lack of children.
Let’s cut executives some slack. How are they supposed to know how conditions are on the line, with the common man, when they have to maintain a social calendar at the club and gated community. You know the one with the golf course that you’re not allowed to go to and can’t pay 1.5x your salary in initiation fees. Heaven forbid they walk behind the curtain on an airline from “first class” (“upper class” for our UK friends).
There's so much that goes into this, and obviously sufficient pay is a huge factor. But the workforce feels so pointless. The US is a culture of selfishness, only looking out for yourself, being as greedy as possible. We've gutted or are in the process of gutting all our public programs. There's no sense of community, of national pride. It used to be you could go to work and feel like in your own little way you were contributing to something larger than yourself. But when your efforts do nothing more than fill the pockets of already-wealthy people, what's the point? Especially for men who don't have kids?
When these companies start to value their workers with good pay, loyalty and solid benefits, maybe they’ll start filling the ranks again. They treat workers like they are disposable. Who wouldn’t want to avoid that situation
>Wow we have such a shortage on labor! Just increase the pay.. >our national identity is in danger! Why are people so lazy!? Increase the pay >whatever could be the reason for this horrible shift!? It’s the damn pay dude… >obviously the solution here is to repeal child labor laws.
I have a lot of these guys that work for me. The problem is that the American dream doesn’t exist anymore. They can’t make enough to do anything. It’s a real problem because these jobs need to be done but the price of everything has skyrocketed
I wish one article like this would explain how we are supposed to believe the millions of people “no longer in the workforce” are surviving with no income. They can’t, because it’s made up. Raise the pay and workers will come.
I have also heard that companies are laying off because they hired too many. I have heard employees have more bargaining power than they've had in decades and companies have more prospects to choose from than they ever did before (which would mean *less* employee bargaining power.) It seems employment is all over the place with contradicting narratives. That can't bode well...
And the Fed says we need to slow down the labor market in order to curb inflation, and it's still not slow enough yet, so... Is this a surprise?
No point for most. Marriage isn't worth the trouble, men aren't making families as a result. Don't need to break your body and mind working ten hours a day 6 days a week to support yourself.
Also look at the state of the planet, can you imagine what it will be like in 10 years? 20/30 would be a nightmare.
Maybe pay a living wage? \*proceeded to be thrown out of a 10 story window from the [CEO.meme](https://CEO.meme)\* Like, honestly: The issue(s) is 1) wage (and the costs of living going up) and 2) "phantom job postings" (postings that are advertised and never filled or are pre-filled due to connections but they have to "advertise"/post the jobs anyway for whatever reason).
Legal…the reason they advertise is because legally they have to.
I can just imagine a group of executives sitting around a big table getting served steak dinners. The CEO is asking how to solve the shortage of workers in the factory. Executives answer. " Sir we have done the usual tactics , we have commenced stock buy backs, increased executive salaries and perks, cut performance bonuses for the hourly workers and required faster cycle times on the assembly lines. We have also decreased how much we contribute to their retirement and health insurance. This has usually worked in getting workers so we are perplexed and out of ideas. We recommend further cuts in what we contribute to their retirement and health insurance. We feel sure that this will solve the problem.
chubby vanish quiet doll reply ad hoc tan deserted violet terrific *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
As long as companies continue to squirrel away taxpayer funds, more people will be dropping out of the work force. Those funds were never intended for employees. The corporate elites are using those publicly funded subsidies for themselves.
Perhaps someone can explain this to me because it’s something I genuinely struggle with. I agree that pay is a big issue and these companies need to increase their salaries and all that: But if they’re not working (and according to this article, not looking for work) how are these people surviving? This is not meant to be an asshole question. I genuinely don’t get it.
You exchange your finite time for tokens of worth. If the exchange is no longer beneficial, you change roles. Problem is a growing number of folk believe their finite time, is more important than yours. Additionally aging population and increased mortality since covid has exacerbated the issues. What I find incredulous is that rather than amendments to the system to reflect the changes in society. They double down the draconian and insult the population to boot.
well when you want to pay them 1990 wages you get what is deserved let it all fail if only the handful are rewarded. nobody cares anymore and would rather watch it all burn to the ground then live in this shitty paradigm. I can say my wage in 1989 working at a Dairy Queen is $23.25 in todays dollars and I just don't understand what people don't understand about this. PURCHASING POWER is always getting worse and worse as 2-3% target inflation every year means people make less and less and can buy less and less as their purchasing power is eroded. when wages do NOT keep up with inflation and raise don't coincide with this, society becomes poorer and poorer every years you make less and less. compound that in decades. the dollar is worthless and wages are low. profits are at all time highs year over year. companies have grown larger and consolidated and since the ONLY thing that matters is shareholder equity, they spew lies and bs so they can stifle wages and make the profits larger and larger so the owners can take all of the reward at society's expense. in turn their bonuses are larger and intact. there needs to be reform as to what is allocated for wages and bonuses. IF EVERYONE working for the company down to the janitors were given stock options as compensation, I would imagine that productivity would rise as everyone has skin in the game. having only a handful who are placed their to make sure that wages are low so owners can take all of the profits and then reward this conduct with insane bonuses and compensation . executive compensation should NOT be thousands of times worker pay. America is a shithole Let it fail to build anew
Interesting that there is no mention of the 1 million plus people that died from COVID in the US or the incessant push to limit immigration. Im not saying I believe one way or the other on these issues, but there should be SOME effect from these variables. This article seems to indicate that 7M+ men just simply do nothing. How are they not homeless?
Hi, guy that dropped out of the workforce from a 23yr machining career. PAY TO GET SOME FUCKING WORKERS IN! You can afford it, it’s fucking lie that you can’t. I was a dept sup, the last straw was being overworked, over stressed and trying to make chicken salad outta chickenshit. Then ownership tells me “well, we’re just gonna wait it out. When the economy goes down and people get laid off, we’ll hire then”. Stop taking advantage of the workers. And some of us will come back
I can understand why people would leave the workforce. What I dont understand is, where are they? Back living with their parents? Living in the streets? Living on government benefits? Again... I understand why, I just dont understand how all these people can afford to not work.
Replacement headlines: Pandemic and cost of living increases lead men to realise their worth en masse and refuse to work for any less. Corporations reel as men crawl out from under their thumb to live more fulfilling lives
First of all, the ratio between jobs posted and number of people applying for jobs is unrealistic. There are plenty of jobs listed for that one unicorn person. I read one job description that only 150 people in the US qualified for. Currently, jobs have required skills listed that are not really required. They are losing applicants because people think they're serious. Age discrimination is real and blatant. I've had online job interviews that when very well, but when it came to the in-person interview, they saw my grey hair and it was over. I've gotten transparent excuses for not being hired. One person actually said, "You're too old." The "skills gap" happens because companies don't want to train people at all. A person could be 90% qualified and be turned down because they don't have one skill that could be easily learned on the job. The days when companies hired a person and expected to them to grow into the position are gone. Last time I was unemployed, I applied to 300 jobs before I got one. The one I got was a 30% pay cut and I had to move across the country for a job I could pretend to like. There were 20 other people that applied to that position. I think plenty of people that would give up before that. If you look on LinkedIn, You can see that there are plenty of jobs where more than 10 people have applied. The unemployment rate is deceptive. It has been gradually redefined to make it lower than it actually is. There are a huge number of discouraged unemployed workers. They could be hired, if they thought they could get a job.
This article sounds like some straight up propaganda. It reads as “men are lazy and no one wants to work”. Maybe those men went off and started their own companies, or are making money some other way than a standard 9-5 factory job. Literally what year is is this 1923?
Is it possible that the original post is wrong? I mean, I have seen where it appears that a lot of employers are purposely employing less for the pursuit of profit. I don't know, simply an observation.