Lack of low-wage workers... where have they gone?

In My Humble Opinion
101

Oh, is someone holding a gun to people’s heads and forcing them to work there? If not, I’d prefer to let the workers decide. If I don’t want to work at a job, how does it hurt me to at least have the option to do so? If no one will work for $10/hr, you don’t need a minimum wage lower than that.

I prefer to allow people to make their own choices. Poor people and the politically disenfranchised or politically weak especially need markets. Rich people and connected people can express their preferences politically. It’s sad that one of the things they always do is attempt to paternalistically control the choices of the poor and unconnected ‘for their own good’, while not actually knowing a damned thing about the needs and goals of the people affected by their controlling ways.

I worked a lot of ‘miserable entry level jobs’, and I’m really glad they existed because as a poor person with no social support, they gave me an entry into the work force taught me responsibility, punctuality and other skills I would need to be successful, and allowed me to save money for college.

When you force something by fiat, you have no way to know if that’s the effect you’d get. Why not raise the minimum to $30? Then you’d get even more automation and fewer workers.

Again, an employer isn’t going to employ someone who generates less value than their wage. If you force the wage above that level, the employer has no choice but to either fire the worker or force them to be more productive. And if they replace the worker with automation it might not be because automation was better than the old situation - just that it’s better than the artificially mandated wage. It’s entirely possible for a high minimum wage to hurt everyone - the employer, the employees, taxpayers, and the economy as a whole.

This is why markets exist - to sort out all the competing needs, costs, resources, etc. When you short-circuit that process for social reasons, you should assume that the result will be less economic efficiency, not more. Because if it was economically efficient to do these things, they would be done without a mandate.

102

I mean, not literally, but the fundamental relationship between unskilled work is imbalanced and essentially coercive, so, kind of, yes. If the alternative is homelessness and starvation, and it’s not seamless and instant to switch between low level jobs, then many people endure these jobs because the alternative is death.

Or, to look at this another way - if the loss of a crappy job did not mean death to a lot of people, and instead they had confidence that they’d be able to survive long enough to find a better job (through that oh so evil and dreaded government help), that would shift the power dynamics between employer and unskilled employer significantly, would it not? To acknowledge that is to acknowledge that employers have a coercive power imbalance, especially towards low skill workers who are far more interchangable.

This is a better worded version of the “minimum wage is evil because it takes away people’s freedom to work miserable jobs for peanuts” argument we see bandied about. It’s something that makes sense in a grand philosophical sort of way, but I don’t think the working masses would see you as a hero for fighting for their rights to keep their low pay. And, really, I don’t think you’ve updated your outlook on this since the 1980s - the way you view politicians are paternalistically trying to help the poor in a way that doesn’t allow them to achieve Pure Rugged Independence. Our politicians haven’t actually acted that way in the US for a very long time - it’s very much “let them eat cake” and total concern over the interests of the wealthy over those of everyone else. Anyone who asks “hey, is this policy good for most Americans?” is labelled as “extreme left” as 96% of our media is controlled by 6 corporations and the Republicans have moved the overton window into lala land over the last 20 years.

Your side has conclusively won that one. There’s no need to worry about the unintended consequences that can stem from trying to help people and make lives better for most people when no one tries to do those things anymore.

My last reply actually wasn’t intended to argue in favor of minimum wage increases, although I’m fine with taking that position. My point was to contest the idea of losing low level jobs to automation as some sort of tragedy. This is a very common point of view held all over the political spectrum, so this isn’t limited to you. But it comes from a place of toxic puritan values that say that people’s meaning in life is the work they offer and that suffering is somehow beautiful, and of inequitable economic ideas that the loss of shitty, low wage jobs is inherently a bad thing because what else are poor and unskilled people going to do to provide some sort of value to their owners?

If we were to invent AI that was capable enough to replace all the jobs in the world that humans hate to do, that don’t represent fulfilling work, that would be the greatest invention in the history of mankind. It would increase the quality of human life more than anything else before it. It frustrates me when people view this as some sort of nightmare scenario, as though their lives are meaningless without shitty jobs, or maybe they won’t be able to feel superior to others to the same degree when they don’t have random customer-facing workers they can abuse and sneer at.

Now, if we maintained our current ideas it could be a dystopia - we could very much enter a situation where a tiny fraction of people owned everything and massive amounts of society were no longer needed to provide value and we’d treat them as anything from second class citizens to cattle. But that’s not an argument from economics, but an argument from our horrific cultural values that seem to want to reinstate having a priviledged aristocracy and worthless peasants.

In any case, automation becomes better and cheaper by the day. In order for humans to keep their miserable jobs in the face of this automation, they need to work harder and for less, continuously. It is a perverse worldview to think that this is laudable, and that having automation replace those jobs is tragic. Do you think human beings should be continuously “competing” with automation on the low end by agreeing to work harder for even less benefit in proportion to the gains we make in the automation sector? That seems to me to be a consistent view with what you’ve expressed in the thread.

I think you’re the only one in this recent chain of comments that brought up the minimum wage, which isn’t surprising, because your motivation in arguments is to start with “how can I blame anything bad we’re discussing on government” and then working backwards from there. The vast majority of the thread is talking about people refusing to take jobs that pay well above minimum wage.

103

One thing that surprises me is that no one seems to be addressing the issues besides shit pay that make these jobs intolerable. Insisting 9n full time availability but scheduling people 10-30 hours a week as needed. Scheduling people for 4 hour shifts. Refusing to give consistent hours. Painful dress codes (like uncomfortable shoes). Refusing to let people sit. Bag searches before you leave work. Demerit systems.

I mean, more pay would be better, but part of what makes these jobs awful is the trend to treat all workers like they are lazy slacker teenagers who need to be constantly shamed into behaving like professionals.

104

I hate 4 hour shifts. One place I worked did four nine hour days and a 4 hour day. Still had to commute and it was from 1 pm-5 pm so messed up the day.

The sports bar I go to has a bartender come in from 3-7 on Saturday. That can be a busy time since the recreational sports leagues often come in after their games. But, they wrapped up outdoor sports last weekend and indoor stuff doesn’t start until after January 1. So, he ended up making a whopping $18 for 4 hours work and he’s scheduled again for next Saturday and is not happy.

105

Well, it’s not the pay, it’s the conditions. And the conditions are not really all on the employer so much as on the customers.

When I did fast food years and years ago, I had to deal with some shitty customers from time to time. Now, they are extremely shitty, and far more common.

Fast food generally pays out around 15% labor for hourly employees. Food cost is usually around 35%.

Of course, food prices are going up now too, giving an extra squeeze.

Personally, payroll accounts for around 80% of my expenses, but I am pretty much entirely service. At the same time, I’ve increased my pay substantially, while only raising my prices a little bit.

There actually is skill, even in fast food. It takes at least a week or two before someone is even competent at a position, much less good. It’s like anything else, the more you do it, the better you can get at it.

Because turnover is expensive. Now, I have had a lot of jobs where there was no training at all, just point in the general direction of my station and yell at me if I’m not doing it good enough, but those are shitty employers who are going to be shitty employers in any situation.

I’ve had plenty of jobs, even in food service, even fast food, where time and effort was taken to make sure that the new hire had the tools, skills, and knowledge to succeed. And those are the employers who are more harmed by having employees that are not long term investments.

And that’s why many employers are having trouble finding workers. They are not being paid a wage that they are willing to work for.

I do wonder how temporary this will be. Lots of people have found ways of saving on expenses, they are living with their parents or with roommates. They eat out a whole lot less, as well as all the other things that cost money when you leave your home.

There’s quite a bit of automation that can go into plenty of food service, and it’s long overdue, IMHO. I spent a fair amount of time in fast food, and would think about how to automate the various tasks, and it really wouldn’t be all that hard.

The low hanging fruit is obviously ordering, as that’s pretty much just turning the register around to face the customer. But it would not be that hard to automate pretty much all aspects of the production line.

Now, not hard is not the same as not expensive. I’m sure it would cost several hundred thousand, maybe a million or two to do so, which is why it is generally cheaper to just hire someone at near MW to do the job.

That’s not just annoying, that’s actually illegal.

106

My daughter’s boss (manager, not owner) said that they have had more incidents of customers going berserk in the last year than in the previous twenty combined. This is a coffee shop. Only a small fraction of these are mask related, if only because they’ve all but given up on mask mandates.

Customers are impatient because they have to wait longer for their food or drink because there are fewer employees. Then you have employees (like my daughter) quitting which exacerbates the problem.

My daughter (high schooler) refused to go back finally when one of her coworkers was physically threatened by a customer. Previous another coworker was hit by a drink thrown by a customer (fortunately an iced drink, not a hot one). In neither case were the police called. The owners “don’t want any trouble” and of course the customer is still always right.

The owner also comes in and rants about “people getting paid to sit at home binge watching Netflix” AFTER the extended and supplemental unemployment payment ended. And she’s screaming at the employees who ARE there including my daughter who between honors classes, sports, robotics and math team doesn’t have time to binge watch anything. What was once a fun part time job has become a dystopian nightmare.

The place must be minting money, because anything lost on higher wages is gained on having fewer hours worked. And tips are way down because service sucks. So the employees aren’t actually making more.

Their help wanted sign says “$15/ hour with tips” but what they are actually offering is minimum wage ($13.50) plus a share of the tips. The employees were clearing $4-5 an hour in tips two years ago, now it’s more like $1-$2 an hour.

They are also scheduling people for 3-4 hour shifts, just trying to cover the highest traffic times (6 to 9am and noon - 3pm). My daughter might have been willing to work 6-3 one day a week but not three hours three days a week. She’s got to find a ride each way and wash and iron her uniform for each shift.

The manager is sympathetic, but not the owner. I suspect the manager isn’t going to last long either.

107

And that’s something that very few people are willing to even think about. What are the chances that business owners who bitch and moan at every suggestion that they should pay their workers more won’t fire every one of those workers the minute automation becomes cheaper than people? Basically zero.

And improvements in automation aren’t going to just stop. We will reach this point at some point. Maybe it would be a good idea to start thinking about this before it becomes a civilization-level crisis.

But it’s the employers who decide how to react to the customers. There are other posts about how the bosses just let the customers get away with this shit, which tells the employees exactly how much they are valued (Hint: it’s less than the amount the assholes spend at the store).

Maybe employers should start stepping up and letting their employees tell the assholes to fuck off, or something?

Yep. Back in the dawn of time, when I worked at a Pizza Hut in highschool, I wanted to switch a shift because I had some other event that day. I was told, “You can’t switch with Bob. We need you to switch with someone who is as good at the job as you are.” Well, I guess we’re not “interchangeable” are we? But I still made the same as Bob.

108

What do you mean by the “burden” of profitability? It’s the sole reason for-profit businesses exist. No one would open a burger stand to break even, or lose money.

109

Create a list of every single thing you have to pay in order to run a business.

Now, you can increase your profitability by reducing any one or more of those items.

And yet, it’s always the lazy, good for nothing workers who are expected to suck it up and take less money in order to make the business profitable.

Despite the fact that every dollar the business brings in is due to the efforts of those same employees.

Go ahead, try it. Buy a business, lease a building, pay the utilities, purchase equipment and supplies, put ads in every newspaper and on the radio. How much “profit” are you making if you haven’t hired anyone to work for you? Zero.

110

The bar does have a way of making up for low tip shifts, so that’s good. This summer, they decided to open up extra early all summer due to pent up lockdown demand, Olympics, Euros, day baseball and a few work from home types enjoying a liquid lunch. But, they definitely supplemented bartender tips during the days where it was dead.

111

You don’t think that businesses attempt to reduce those other expenses at every turn?

112
113

Here we all are, positing possibilities, whenThe Atlantic asked this same question, (“Where Did 7 Million Workers Go?”), and the answers are illuminating. Since it’s paywalled, here’s a summary:

The most complete explanation is that the massive fiscal-policy response to the pandemic reduced the urgency of looking for work:

  1. There’s a big surge in Americans’ personal savings.

  2. Due to that and partners who are making good pay, some Americans are able to prioritize family care and avoid COVID.

  3. There’s also a sense that there are lots of jobs out there, and wages are rising: I can wait.

So maybe The Great Resignation (record numbers of Americans quitting jobs) will continue, and “this may be a pivotal turning point in the relationship between labor and capital.”

Or not. Eventually those financial cushions will dissipate.

Eventually, Americans will go back to work, where bosses will still boss them around, employers can still fire them, unions are still rare, and real wage growth is still slow.

Either way, America is going to need more workers. The prime-age population hasn’t grown in ten years. Declining fertility rates all but guarantee it won’t rebound. There’s only one answer: increase (legal) immigration. Uh, but conservatives would freak, right? Maybe not:

One great way to do this would be to “recapture” surplus permanent-residency visas, or green cards, that went unclaimed in previous years. Since 1992, hundreds of thousands of green cards authorized by Congress have not been issued because of administrative hiccups; last year, unused green cards reached a record high. As a result, the U.S. could extend permanent-residency visas to more than 100,000 immigrants—essentially liberalizing immigration law without technically increasing the total number of visas already authorized by Congress.

Edited for clarity.

114

Yeah there was a spate of “just in time” scheduling that effectively keeps people on-call for a huge percentage of the week. Working 70 hours a week earned me good money but you can’t do that if the first job expects way more availability than they’re actually willing to pay you for.

115

Right. If someone can’t find someone to work even at high wages, I wonder how often it’s for jobs like that. If you only get 15 hours a week but have to be perpetually available so you can’t take a 2nd job and your kids still need to be in child care, well, that’s not viable.

116

I like these kinds of questions…like ‘where have all the workers gone’ has a simple, pat, answer.

Some of it has been

  • ‘wages haven’t kept up with inflation’,
  • ‘people are finding other ways of surviving…single family incomes’,
  • ‘people are fed up with working in these environments’,
  • ‘GREAT BIG F’N PANDEMIC’,
  • Just-in-time Supply Chain issue the likes of which we’ve never seen.
  • A Work-From-Home realization that a portion of the workforce can do the exact same job anywhere there’s internet…and those jobs pay more,
  • A HUGE re-allocation of population from Texas/Florida/California to places that are relatively cheaper/more lucrative than Texas/Florida/California and the relative impacts to the real-estate market as a result
  • a continued shrink-flation of prices where you get much less for much more money

But, you know, it’s just that kids won’t work because they’re lazy and older people are addicted to that unemployment check, and the illegals aren’t working for slave wages anymore.

117

When I was a manager, I would always interpose myself if a customer seemed to be becoming an issue. Now I am pretty much the only point of contact with a client.

But, I don’t know that an employee should be encouraged to escalate a situation. There’s outright rude and hostile, and then there’s just grumpy. If you let your employees go off on people who are just a bit annoyed or irritated about having waited in a long line for their lunch, then you are going to be having fights with customers on a regular basis.

In this case, the manager was the only person dealing with the customer. It ended up escalating to where the police had to come sort things out.

118

How about blaming the worthless clown that hired 'em?

119

I know there’s skill in everything, but a week? That’s not really refuting my point much- if someone can be competent at something in a week, that’s probably about as low of a bar as you can set for skill.

120

Yes, I don’t know why, but a lot of people change the term “unskilled work” by pointing out that every job, well, uses some sort of rudimentary skill, even if it’s just using your hand-eye coordination to sweep the floors. This seems like a (IMO) pointless attempt to try to redefine unskilled work as to make the term useless. It’s probably a response to the sneering superiority and hatred some people use towards unskilled work, suggesting that anyone who performs unskilled work is worthless and isn’t worthy of consideration.

But it’s useful to distinguish between work that requires special training and work anyone can do, so this is kind of a silly point to push. We can treat unskilled workers like human beings without exaggerating their skillset.