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

In My Humble Opinion
161

Right, I mean at the end of the day what both economists and policymakers have always been trying to capture with the term “unskilled” labor, is labor that doesn’t require a high degree of specialized training. Most of the people talking about how picking fruit involves various skills are basically missing the point. You can take someone who is physically fit for the job, but who has a 7th grade education and no prior work experience, and start getting valuable labor out of them the very first day picking fruit. They will not be as good as someone with 5 years experience, but they will get better every day if they are motivated.

If you took a similar person and set them at a Master Electrician or Plumber or Welder’s task, not only could they not do even a small bit of that person’s job and produce any value at all, they would actually be likely putting themselves and other people in serious risk of injury. That’s why the traditional system for training those people involves a period of time where you do the lesser skilled work sometimes ancillary to those jobs, while taking classes and learning from a Master in an apprenticeship.

Recognizing that this is a significant difference from the “on ramping” process for a fruit picker is not saying that a fruit picker’s job easy, doesn’t produce value, or has nothing more to it than “see fruit, pick fruit.” What is important is there is a barrier to entry to skilled work because you cannot just hire someone off the street and start onramping them into a skilled position, they have to go through a process. Lots of line factory jobs, you can just like a fruit picker, be doing productive work within a day or so. There’s absolutely line jobs at factories that you get better at with time.

162

There’s more to fast food than burger flipping. But, even just working the grill has plenty that a more experienced worker will have over a less experienced. Sure, in a week or two, they can probably get meat on and off the grill without direct supervision, without serving too many raw or burned burgers. But it takes far longer than that to be efficient at it. It takes longer to get used to listening to what is going on, anticipating needs, so that you aren’t stuck holding up the drivethrough waiting on burgers.

And grill is probably the second lowest skilled job in the store, fries being a bit less so. Of course, if you’ve ever gotten cold, undercooked, overcooked, or otherwise nasty fries, or had to wait on them, then that’s because someone was doing your fries that didn’t have the necessary skills.

Sandwich making is one of the higher skilled jobs. There is a huge difference between a newbie and a veteran. I’ve seen people who’ve done it for years that are probably 4-5 times faster than someone who’s been on the position for a few months. Reg ops are often the most veteran and skilled people in the store, as that makes a huge difference in how well the lines move, and how accurate orders are. (Of course, they are also the low hanging fruit that is being eliminated first. )

A cable tech is not a “skilled trade”, but there is a big difference between a tech that will get your cable working, and a tech that will have you calling in to get repairs within a week.

Dog grooming is not, by the definition given by the department of labor, a “skilled trade”. But there absolutely is skill involved, and quite a bit of training. You could hand your dog over to someone who just picked up a pair of kitchen shears and a beard clipper, and maybe you will get something back that still has 4 legs and a tail. There is a reason why I put months of training into my employees before I even let them hold a pair of scissors, and why it’s a $65k+ benefits job for those who can deliver the quality in an efficient manner. And why I am taking over the entire area and driving everyone else out of business. Places like Petsmart do treat their employees as a fungible commodity, and that’s why I am taking all their clients.

BTW, for at least some of these low-wage workers, I’ve soaked up and given much higher paying jobs. My favorite employee to hire is one that has a bit of a food service record. There may be other employers out there that also value “unskilled labor” for their skills, and are taking them out of circulation for crap jobs like food service and retail.

So, next time you wait half an hour for fast food, and get nasty food that isn’t even what you ordered, you can thank the employers who take the “unskilled labor” label to heart.

163

Strangely, my most “zen” activity was peeling shrimp. I did prep for a few months where I would have to peel several pounds of shrimp every day. I got extremely fast at it, and even though part of the process was shoving a knife at my hand and coming within millimeters of my finger, I never got a cut.

I also barely paid attention to what I was doing, and would zone out and think about all variety of other things.

164

Which is one of the reasons that I got out of food service. I was one of the best cooks, period. Any store I went into, I was already they best, even before I filled out my paperwork. I’d read through the spec manual (or the menu for those restaurants that were poorly enough organized not to have one), and be up to speed and outperform anyone else within the first day on the job.

But did that translate into higher pay? Nope.

I always dreamed of opening a restaurant, and paying everyone what they were worth. If someone wanted a raise, I would tell them what expectations I had for giving them that money.

Instead I went into a very different industry, but I still do pay substantially better than industry average, and the results in the explosive growth of my company and the bankrupting of my competition speaks for itself.

I respect the skills of my employees, even if the DOL classifies them as unskilled.

Even before the pandemic, there certainly was a difference in employees, and the employers who respected that did well, and the employers who did not provided shitty service.

165

I don’t want to discourage anyone treating their employees well and rewarding above baseline, because I do think that very often is good business strategy and works well. The issue is that on a larger scale level, many companies that treat workers as replaceable and pay them as little as possible do so quite simply “because it works.” Companies are not immune to irrational behaviors any more than people are, but it is hard to deny wringing every last drop out of every penny of employee pay with shitty work schedules, bad benefits, low wages etc is sometimes a winning strategy for a large number of companies.

Sometimes two oppositional strategies can also be deployed in the very same space effectively. When the cult of shareholder value took over the business zeitgeist, people forgot that businesses can actually be structured around founder values that aren’t always as simple as “maximize profit.” Comparing Costco to Wal-Mart is a classic example of this. Jim Sinegal had some values for his warehouse business–he thought CEOs should not make more than 11x the salary of their lowest paid employee. Jim also didn’t believe that just because he was operating in a retail environment where most of his competitors were paying bottom barrel wages, that he had to do the same. Costco has basically always paid a decent bit above minimum wage, people aren’t getting wealthy stocking shelves at Costco, but under Sinegal it was never a company that wanted to pay its workers bottom of the barrel–it basically felt you got better people and less turnover from paying them more. Its hourly workers have also historically had better access to benefits than is the norm. Note a lot of this is based on a late 1990s business case study of the business that I read, I have no idea how Costco has been run since it went public many years ago and Sinegal hasn’t had control of the company in a decade or more, so a lot of this may have no applicability to modern day Costco.

Wal-Mart on the other hand took basically the exact opposite strategy, churn through employees non-stop, pay them like shit, treat them like shit, and keep making money hand over fist.

The reality is both strategies worked and the results were largely in line with what the people running those companies wanted to see.

166

Wendy’s was similar. Dave Thomas wasn’t a greedy man, he wanted to have a great place for people to eat.

One of his principles was “Profit is not a dirty word.” but profit was also not what drove him.

I actually have his book, “Dave’s Way”, and have based a number of my business ethics and practices on it.

I was working there when Dave died, and immediately saw the changes as the vultures swooped in and starting converting the equity that he had built into cash in their pocket. They put in pay caps, rather than leaving it to the General manager to determine what an employee was worth, and lowered the quality of their product. They went from the leader in fast food quality to just another crappy place to get something when you didn’t want to feel hungry anymore.

We joked that their motto went from “Quality is our recipe” to “Quality was our recipe.”

Same thing happened with O’Charley’s, more or less. It wasn’t that the founders died, but instead, they tried to expand too quickly, took on debt, and got a hostile takeover from a hedge fund. They stopped paying nearly as well, even forcing pay cuts on some of the most valuable employees. They also went from a leader in quality for casual dining to just another hole in the wall.

The strategy works as a race to the bottom. But Wendy’s decline in quality left space for other franchises to step up that did focus on quality. O’Charley’s stopped being the best casual dining in many areas and allowed smaller sole proprietorship restaurants thrive.

Petsmart has lowered their quality of their workforce. They used to do months of training, now they do 2 weeks. They used to provide quality equipment to their groomers, now many have to make do with what they can buy on their own, and broken shared use equipment. This has allowed me to thrive as their clients all leave them for a place that values quality. I actually charge less then they do, pay my employees more, and deliver far higher quality. It does mean that I don’t make hundreds of times more than my employees, in fact, some of them make more than I do, especially on a per hour basis. (At the same time, I’m making more than I ever made working for someone else.)

I’ll note that I do vastly prefer shopping at Costco than Wal-Mart, though I go to Meijer far more than either.

I do to some extent fear what happens to my business when I retire or die, and it goes to someone else that just sees it as a cash cow to be milked.

167

I worked in retail a long time ago. At my first cashier job as a 15-year-old kid, it took me a few weeks to roughly match the highest scan volume of the busiest cashiers. To me, that’s unskilled labor. There was no mastery of a task after years of toil and work. It took a few weeks and I was as good as anyone else. Some who had been there for a decade or more were worse. Those who were better than me were only a little better. We were all interchangeable cogs from that point on.

I’ve never considered whether pet groomer is a skilled position or not. It seems like your groomers are skilled but the Petsmart ones aren’t and there is room in the industry for both models. Perhaps a bit like the difference between the dude who cuts your lawn and the master gardener who lays out your entire lot, plants the bulbs to flower in waves over the course of the season, manages the invasive weeds, and does all the fertilizing, pest management, etc. Both are merely “lawn care” in name only. Your groomers are skilled in the same way that hairstylists are and you pay them accordingly. Seems fair.

168

Note the human equivalent of pet groomer, Barber / Hair Stylist, would not be considered unskilled. I believe all or almost all States actually require licensure to do the work, and there’s post-secondary schools that teach the basics of being a barber, a lot of times (maybe always?) everyone does that as a baseline, the people who want to learn things like how to do hair coloring and etc might do an additional “cosmetology” program. I don’t know much about cutting canine hair but it would not surprise me if it’s similarly skilled, but due to the lack of human “customer” it isn’t as tightly regulated so it is much more fly by night as to what any individual groomer is doing.

169

There is a very big difference between Costco and Wal-Mart: Wal-Mart is MUCH more labor intensive. Costco can pay more because thenworkers leverage a lot of capital investment. A typical Wal-mart stocker is putting individual products on shelves. A stocker at Costco is probably driving a forklift and stocking entire cases of product.

From the two references below you can see the revenue per employee for the two companies:

Costco:

Wal-Mart:

The result is that Wal-Mart has revenue per employee of around $240,000. For Costco it’s $717,000.

Note this is revenue, not profit. And another way yo look at the data is that Wal-Mart employs almost three times the number of people per dollar of revenue as does Costco…

It should be obvious that Costco has a lot more room to pay its employees more than Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s whole business model is cheap goods, and they are heavily dependent on lots of workers. There is very little room for them to pay their workers more without destroying their business model. A model which primarily benefits low income people.

170

Wal-Mart runs Sam’s Club stores and all of its labor practices from Wally World basically apply at Sam’s Club. So even in the exact same sub-type of retail (warehouse stores) Wal-Mart runs much differently than Sinegal era Costco.

171

I have actually taught people to do hand harvest of various crops. And IME the first day you’re going to get remotely useful work only if you’re standing over them, and sometimes not then; and that work if done even minimally well, and probably even if it’s not, will be done extremely slowly.

The first day, if the farmer or another skilled worker isn’t taking a large chunk out of their own time to work right with people and watch them, and to some extent even if they are, you’re going to get a lot of damaged fruit, unripe and/or overripe fruit, and quite possibly significant damage to the plants being harvested. And if the work involves ladders, or is done anywhere near machinery, new workers may indeed put themselves and others in risk of serious injury if not very carefully supervised. For that matter, they’re liable to put themselves in risk of serious injury from weather conditions that people not used to them nearly always underestimate the risks of.

172

Your personal experiences are interesting to read but are what is called “anecdote.” Sans some compelling high-level data showing otherwise I am going to say that most first time fruit pickers do not have a supervisor standing over them the entire first day, and if they harvested usable fruit then they produced value. Your personal life story is interesting but not particularly relevant to the discussion.

Due to the scale at which industrial agriculture occurs such anecdote just aren’t very useful or compelling, and it is entirely atypical that management at large fruit concerns have a 1:1 manager/picker ratio for people’s first day of work.

I would also ask what point you’re actually trying to make, because I can’t find one anywhere.

It’s been explained what is generally meant by the terms “skilled” and “unskilled” labor. Do you have any evidence that fruit pickers routinely go through a certification exam? Is there licensure for fruit picking? Are there technical schools that teach fruit picking? What percentage of fruit pickers attend such schools? Are there apprenticeship programs for fruit picking? If so can you link me to such program and we can review the parameters of the apprenticeship, what portion of fruit pickers go through such an apprenticeship?

173

Have you either any actual experience in this area, or any cites as to the first-day usefulness of hand harvesters who have never done such work before? Or are you just guessing?

They’re hiring almost entirely people who grew up doing such work, and who when they were new to it were trained at least partially by their relatives. Agricultural employers try hard to get the same people back year after year, specifically because those people already know what they’re doing on that particular operation.

And it’s been explained over and over that what’s technically meant by those terms is in many cases not what is “generally meant” by those terms; and that nobody in this thread, other than possibly you, is arguing about the technical language.

174

FWIW I pulled this from a “Harvest Team” job description from a fruit farm here in Virginia. Unless this list of job descriptions and qualifications is atypical and most harvest jobs require significantly more training and experience nothing whatsoever in this post is suggestive that it is anything other than what would be classified as unskilled labor:

The Field Worker starts as a entry level position with little to no previous experience required but can extend to experienced agricultural employees with a focus on production. This is a predominantly physical/manual labor position. Field Workers will manually plant, cultivate, harvest, pack, and maintain crops under the instruction of the Field Supervisor or Team Leaders. In the spring (Feb-April) the position will consist predominantly of plant care and maintenance. In summer (May-August) and fall (Sept-Nov) the position will primarily be harvesting fruit in an efficient, safe, and quality manner.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

  • Ability to focus on a single task for extended periods of time.
  • Ability to stay focused while in a group of peers.
  • Ability to follow instructions and retain training information.
  • Ability to work independently while meeting or exceeding quotas.
  • High manual dexterity

Qualifications/Basic Job Requirements:

  • Pass a background check and other pre-employment screening;
  • Demonstrate an interest in local farming and/or agriculture;
  • Be able to discuss Agriberry Farm, including its core values, focus, products and primary markets;
  • Remain focused while performing repetitive functions;
  • Have reliable transportation to the farm and be able to arrive at the work site by 6:45 am, or as otherwise instructed
  • Maintain enthusiasm, good attitude, honesty and a willingness to treat all co-workers with respect, despite challenging work conditions.

It pays a training wage of $13.50/hr, $15/hr at completion of training–which is not unusual and is frequently found in other jobs like fast food and some factory positions.

175

The term skilled and unskilled labor are technical terms so they have no meaning outside of that context. Might as well be discussing gibberish.

176

They will have boilerplate ads which they’re required to run in the USA as part of the process necessary for them to qualify to hire anyone from outside the country. Do you have any statistics for who they’re actually hiring, including what percentage actually have no previous experience in such work? Do you have any statistics for what percentage of such people who they do hire are still on the job in a week?

(I wouldn’t expect either of those figures to be zero. But I’ll be surprised if they aren’t both pretty low.)

Many words in the English language have both technical meanings and common use meanings. That does not make them gibberish.

177

Are you asserting that you cannot get a job as an entry level harvest worker without prior experience? That would suggest that just like say, being a doctor, you cannot just be hired off the street as a doctor without significant training, including the practical experience of completing a residency. We know quite well from job postings for doctors that you cannot become a doctor without significant education and experience, so there are no doctor job postings that use the phrase “entry level position with little to no previous experience.” But we do know how people become doctors–there’s schools for it and we know about the residency programs doctors also have to complete.

Now despite the fact job postings for entry level agriculture workers use phrases like “little to no previous experience required” you are suggesting that is a lie or a fraud by this farm, and that it’s just boilerplate so they can import migrant workers. You are thus asserting that entry level agricultural work is not open to people with “little to no experience”, so just like being a doctor then, that means there must be some way to get into the field. Is there a school? An official training program? I assume since you did not answer that question there is not. You suggest that you have to basically be “born into it”, so you’re saying all the farm workers in the country were “raised on farms” and got trained through that, and if someone was not raised on a farm they are not able to acquire a job as an entry level agriculture worker?

That seems strange to me.

So your general assertion then is that there are no entry level jobs in agriculture, and that no one works in agriculture unless they received training at their family farm first.

178

As a cable tech, we spent about a week just on ladder training.

I was just watching a maintenance guy struggle with the ladder trying to get to the roof of my building. It was fairly dangerous, and far more work than necessary.

179

What education and training was required before they would hire you as a cable tech?

180

Probably usually a more senior employee.

It’s been explained, and no one has objected to, what the DOL considers skilled labor.

The objection is to whether jobs that the DOL considers to be skilled do in fact, require skills, and that those workers are not fungible.