I got a new trash can for my wife for her birthday (don’t laugh, it was a big hit.) I ordered it from Etsy, and it took over a week longer than promised to arrive, including 3 days at the depot maybe a mile from my house.
It was shipped on FedEx, and a story on local TV says that they are at 65% staffing. Amazon bought an advertorial segment on the local news on an independent channel recruiting employees. And we know what is happening in England with the trucks.
Will all the people not working now sign up for holiday duty? Or are delivery times going to be stretched out, and people who have gotten used to three day delivery right before Christmas going to be surprised?
I’m starting to order now myself. Anyone else concerned?
I would expect that last year would have woken them up. That makes ME the idiot.
In the UK. Nearly one million workers come off the furlough scheme which closed on Thursday.
The assumption seems to be that many will be laid off, so that might make them available to fill the vacancies.
Oh, yes, how unreasonable all those people don’t sign up for stressful jobs with relatively low wages.
Here are my theories on why there is a Lower Level Worker Shortage:
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The child care industry is NOT back on its feet, and that combined with on-again off-again schooling for young children means a LOT of parents that used to work aren’t simply because someone has to be minding the children.
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Some people, rather than sit on their butts and stream crappy movies, took advantage of the work hiatus to take classes or reconsider their life choices and have moved on to different jobs or entirely new careers. These people will not be coming back to their low-status low-wage jobs because they have climbed the ladder.
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Some people, economically devastated, have moved in with friends/relatives and have found that they are no longer so pressured to Get A Job Any Job - heck some of them might now be in the role of caring for children and/or elders while being supported by extended family. Some have just given up, or don’t want to look for a job because of various reasons. They’ve dropped out of the traditional job category altogether.
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The crackdown on the border, sharp drop in allowed immigration, and other factors that have resulted in fewer undocumented workers in the US means that a lot of jobs - including things like harvesting crops and processing animals into meat and parts - are going unfilled, adding to the worker shortage.
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We HAVE had about 700,000 and counting people die of covid. While, yes, some of them were elderly/ill/not in the work force a good number of them were. About 160,000 by a quick google or two. That, too, has impacted the job shortage. The fact that these working-age deaths were higher in “essential workers” like agriculture, grocery/retail, and transportation doesn’t help as those are among the areas where there are now worker shortages.
So, while none of the above are the One True Cause together they add up to shortfall in workers. I think many people are looking for One True Cause in the hopes that this problem will be fixed quickly and easily. And it’s not just about wages - some of it comes down to scheduling problem. If you have kids that are in school at least one of the adults in the household needs a schedule that’s compatible with their schedule due to the legal and moral need to supervise and care for children. Lower level jobs often have erratic, changing, and unstable schedules. Sometimes it’s a matter of location - not everyone can simply up and leave and move hundreds or thousands of miles away. Sometimes it’s a matter or work conditions. Jobs that don’t allow time for people to take a piss during an 8 hour shift (as reported with by some Amazon drivers) are not going to attract workers especially when other employers are hiring, they’re going to lose workers.
The pandemic and it’s knock-on effects have exposed a rotten underbelly to our current society and system and the chickens are coming home to roost. People are voting with their feet and a lot of other people who have taken advantage of full shelves and next day delivery without a thought are now bumping into the unpleasant little fact that all of that depended on people who by and large have gotten neither much respect nor much money and sometimes inhumane treatment. Seeking your own self-interest is hailed as a capitalist virtue… unless you’re below a certain socioeconomic class, then it’s being lazy.
Yes, for some this holiday season will be a “disaster”. That’s on them, in my view. Having worked retail for the better part of a decade now a lot of the holiday problems people bring on themselves. Other people will plan ahead, make necessary adjustments, and have a good season.
Except shipping to take longer and cost more.
As someone in retail, I can confidently state that it is still the case that while my store can order anything getting it is another matter entirely. Sometimes stuff arrives on time. Sometimes it’s late. Sometimes it never shows up. Given that 2/3 of our business is food, some of it perishable, “late” can often be as bad as “never” if the product didn’t survive the shipping interval.
Plan ahead, have a plan B.
That looks to me like a really good explanation; thanks.
Some of the same points:
Our local news station is recommending people do their Christmas shopping now. I don’t patronize malls or many other non-grocery stores for that matter, so I’m not sure how seriously that advice is being taken. But we did order our granddaughter’s gift already, just to be sure we’d have it.
Even in normal times there are people who start their Christmas shopping in August.
Frankly, spreading the madness out a bit might be a good thing overall. But I expect many won’t, and will be furious to discover that things are not back to “normal”
I take that as a yes. 
I didn’t want to repeat the Nahployment thread. However, the Times today has an interesting article on Dollar General stores, which have not been doing well lately. A lot of that is that managers are burning out. Not just because they can’t hire staff (though they pay a lot less than WalMart) but that managers are not allowed to give part time people more hours though they could really use the hours. And the morons in Corporate say “we pay competitively” (which sound like the coach of the patsies who play against the Globetrotters saying they play competitively) and that managers are not meant to work 80 hour weeks. Right.
Remember the Dopers who were against the minimum wage, and thought that employees should be happy to have a job? At least some of them owned or managed small businesses. I don’t see much from them lately. Maybe all their employees told them to shove it and quit, so they are working 80 hours a week to take up the slack.
The chickens are coming home to roost.
The employment rate in the US is typically around 60% in non-covid years (civilian, non-institutional population). So that figure is closer to 96,000, which is still considerable.
The last time I was in a Dollar General there was only one person in the store, working the register and stocking the shelves.
That article illustrates one of the reasons that, when offered a management track in retail, I said “no”.
Well, today I found out that of the orders my store makes every day/week/month only 70% are getting filled in any way at all. Not fully - that we get anything at all so it includes partial orders fulfilled.
The expectation is that this will get worse.
My totally unprofessional assessment: no one it going to starve (food is prioritized. And yes, toilet paper) but there is a very real possibility that you won’t always get what you want.
Interesting - the Dollar General closest to me always has a fairly full parking lot and it’s rare that you don’t have to wait in line to check out. And the other two that I occasional stop in when running errands have always had some customers shopping. More than once, I’ve seen people with carts full. For me, it’s a run-in-for-a-quick-something, like a loaf of bread or some chips or OTC meds, but I guess others find more things they want or need.
believe me, seeing the pics of empty Walmart shelves from the instacart shoppers on various things back this up
If one of the nation’s top 3 grocery/general stores cant get the things they need makes ya wonder what the food/grocery only stores are going to end up with …
I think she’s excluding a lot of the people that number includes. “Core age” (25-54) labor force participation topped out at 83% pre-pandemic.
The overall labor force is down about 3M from peak, so dead workers aren’t a major part of that. But small parts (plenty of others mentioned) add up.