I saw this yesterday, on Tucker Carlson's show. I know he's part of Pravda, and Fox news cannot be trusted with the truth, and there's clearly there's an attempt to spin this issue into partisan politics (via immigration). I understand that not only myself, but other GOG customers from the US are likely affected by this issue being talked about. I'm curious if we can abandon the identity politics on this one long enough to see that this is a problem for both sides, with the "good guys" being from both sides of the isle, as well as the "bad guys." I want to hear everyone's thoughts on this "labor shortage" issue and the effects of this "tight job market."

EDIT: I just stumbled on this seemingly lefty article to balance out and show that while we're going to see partisan talks about this, this is a bipartisan issue.

What are you even talking about?

Click either link for more info, but preferably both.

The long short of it, is that Trump campaigned on creating jobs, so right now the politics is leaning on "we have a shortage of skilled labor," which is what companies are using as an excuse for short staffing, especially in nursing homes and the like (which is not brought up in either). You have a bunch of unemployed people in the US, whom don't show up on unemployment statistics (based on how they're calculated), and you also have a bunch of people working 2 or 3 jobs and/or shacking up with people who aren't significant others, just to pay the rent, the car payment, insurance premiums (health, automobile, etc), etc, but when people are short staffed, companies say "we don't have any qualified applicants," while some labor (meaning "unskilled" or "minimum wage") jobs are requiring degrees and/or technical work experience. Whereas, 30 years ago, when companies faced a shortage of qualified applicants, they often signed them into contracts where they would pay for their trade-school or other education if they agreed to work for the company for 5 or 10 years, but this doesn't happen anymore.

I certainly have opinions on the issue (and some direct experience), but I'm probably not going to link either.

It's a multi-fold issue:

1) in many cases, the jobs aren't where the potential employees are, and the startup cost of relocating is too steep for many employees (or employers, for that matter) to just move easily. The exception is basically middle- and upper- class post-college singles or DINK couples. Add kids into the mix and it's not just the cost that gets complicated but family.

So anyway, you have a problem that remote work simply can't solve in certain fields, and hasn't really worked as projected even in fields where remote work in theory should be going smashingly.

2) Worker training - the U.S. economy has gotten very used to outsourcing its training costs onto the education sector, particularly higher ed but to a lesser extent also voc tech secondary. Externalized costs. Most companies don't see the competitive advantage to paying for their own training, which imo is short-sighted, but I'm not sure what it would take to shift that needle. It seems unlikely to emerge at least from the publicly traded corporate sector where their revenue/costs are heavily scrutinized every quarter for any blemish. And at least at first, this would appear as a blemish on their corporate filings/reports.

3) Salaries have been stagnant, particularly in certain income bands and job sectors. You can blame monopsony or corporate greed (from the left), or lazy workers who clearly all should have chosen to work as IP lawyers (from the right) but the money isn't there, esp. given that working does COST money (clothes, impact on meal planning/options, direct and indirect transportation costs, training, often equipment). Sometimes the decision to pass on a $12/hr job is quite rational.

4) Extending #3, in some areas, childcare is brutally expensive. In the short run it can absolutely be more affordable - and in some cases necessary - for working class parents to not work because the amount they can make is less than what the childcare would cost until the kids are school age.

I could go on, but that's about all the energy I have for a Sunday afternoon.

Though I would clarify one thing you said - all unemployed people do show up in the unemployment reports, they just don't show up in the U3, which is the "official" rate that gets most of the press coverage. They do show up in other DOL unemployment reports, like the U5 (includes discouraged workers and "marginally attached" workers)/ U6 includes all above tiers + the "underemployed" involuntary part-time workforce).

There's an angle i haven't thought of. I'm curious how deep this really goes, though. Right, which i think is particulary dangerous. From what i'm seeing on the job market, this is easily the biggest problem when it comes to "not enough skilled work." This outsourcing of training costs is highly problematic for the businesses: they want people to get trained (don't accept self-teaching), but on the flip side they won't provide the training. It used to be different, really, and companies would do the contract thing, but we're not seeing that, anymore. This is even happening with public sector jobs, as well. The term for this, btw, is "progressive credentialism," in that it's constantly progressively getting worse (as they try to also use this as a source for an intelligence test). I would disagree with your left-right comparison, but otherwise correct. I'm conservative, but i'm passing on $12/hr part-time jobs, even though i'm unemployed. If I can't pay the rent, feed a family, etc, why sacrifice my freedom? Do i work to live, or do i live to work? This is very much a part of #3. It's been shown scientifically that children do not do well if both parents are working. Ideally you want a stay at home mother, but a stay at home father is better than both parents working. Now days, because of the cost of living, but the lack of wages (and i blame taxes and regulations for this), both parents must work, and if you don't have a child, you must still "shack up" with people to pay the rent. I know very few people who live alone, and usually they're on income adjusted housing and/or welfare programs, unless they're paid an astronomical amount of money per hour. I don't know for sure, but i'm relatively sure that i am not showing up on any of these.

I can't find the exact methodology at the moment, but I believe U6 is sweeping, esp. if you're straight up not working above the table.

If you were working part-time I'm not sure what sampling/assumptions they make to determine who is voluntary P-T vs. involuntary (i.e. would prefer to increase FTE). The U6 nationwide from Q1 was about 8.3 - so roughly double the official U3 rate - but with pretty high variance depending on state/locality.

So I guess I'd be curious why you think you're not included in that.

https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm

'cause i'm not making money at all. Shy of a death certificate, the government likely doesn't even know if I even exist, anymore, since i'm not really paying taxes or anything. Paypal knows i exist, but my bank account's pretty much untouched. The government can't separate me from a stay at home parent who didn't register their child or something.

Yeah, but that's what the U6 is intended to measure. They do have data sources like the census that, at least historically, has had a pretty decent reputation for assessing demographics. They may or may not know <you> specifically exist, but they can model out a population that includes an estimate of how many people with your circumstances are out there.

Alternatively, take a look at the "Labor Participation Rate" it's basically the total people working / total US population over 16 yo.

That's a rougher measure, though, since it has no age cap, so a large crop of retirees (like, say, the boomers) can compress the number in a way that isn't very meaningful.

Stay at home parents are an issue, there, too. If we cut retirees out, ideally, you want a 50% Labor Participation Rate: One parent works, the other is at home focused on the children. However, 50% could also mean 25% is unemployed, while another 25% is parents working even though their spouse is working. Labor Participation Rate higher than 50% means cost of living is way too high for the average wages. Labor Participation rate lower than 50% suggests not enough hiring is being done.

Well, for one not everyone is married with kids.

And not everyone with kids has kids of an age where staying at home would be particularly necessary. Certainly you'd agree most parents of 18 year olds don't need to stay at home for the sake of kids who may not even be living at home.

Though if I could volunteer to be a SAH parent, that's the one I'd choose for myself. ;)

Let me add a #5

5. A lot of people don't want to do the work that's out there.

It's no secret that I work in automation. In my position I go to a lot of different facilities of varying sizes - anywhere from a 5-person shop on up to places that could be loosely described as "24/7" with 1,000+ employees. If there's one difficulty I've heard repeatedly over the past 20 years, it's that they have trouble finding decent workers who want to hold a job. From a technical standpoint, the work requirements are usually pretty low: know some basic math (addition and subtraction will usually suffice) and be able to lift 30-50 pounds. Beyond that, the requirements are to show up on time, actually work while you're getting paid, and follow some simple and common sense safety rules.

One might be surprised how tough it is to keep employees beyond the first week. And I've heard tons of stories about "nooners", who don't return after the lunch break of the first day on the job.

For the places I visit, we're not talking grueling work; granted, it's also not exactly sitting at a desk in the air conditioning. Much of the hard work is safely performed by machinery, and the workers are mostly keeping the machines fed and removing the resulting machined parts or assemblies. A lot of these jobs are prime for the type of people who show up "looking for work": might have a high school education and might not, might have hire-ability problems in their past, might not have any particular employment skills.

A shop I was at on Thursday, he has a one-month backlog right now because his contractors are having problems finding enough people to do the work, in this case installing custom cabinetry. Cabinet installation isn't exactly rocket science, and there's normally an experienced foreman or site leader on hand to direct the process. It's not a position that requires extensive carpentry or contractor skills, and you can learn 2/3 of the job within a couple days of good OJT. Apparently, this type of $18+/hour work is beneath the dignity of some 19-year old kid who maintained a 1.3 GPA for the 3 years of high school he attended.

So yeah, there are some cases of a labor shortage. And at least some of the cause is the labor pool itself. Not necessarily that there aren't enough people who CAN do the work, but that there are not enough people who WILL do the work.

Well, put some of that back where it's due, at the feet of the employers who toss resumes like they're confetti, often without even reading them. Before I had a resume worth looking at and a work history that got me whatever job I wanted in my field, I was getting turned down for entry-level positions all the time. No restrictions on my part - would start whenever, work whatever hours, any travel would be on my dime. And I got turned down from cashier jobs, tier 1 tech support, janitor positions, entry construction work, courier work, low-level manager positions, you name it. I got turned down by everyone for a year and more, despite a cum laude on my diploma, and an Honorable Discharge/RE-1A with almost 6 years active duty, three years as an NCO (for management experience, of a...specialized sort ;) ). I was on my last $1k of savings - about to get a loan on my car title - when an employer took a chance on me. And my situation wasn't rare at all - recent college grads often have only two options - jack, and shit. Even for entry level work. And that's not from a lack of trying.

You can't hope to be taken seriously saying nobody is willing to do the work. I don't know the reasons for it, but often good employers and good employees just miss each other while looking hard. I got the reasonably happy ending, but it took almost a year and a half. And, as an amusing anecdote - when that employer gave me an interview and then a job offer, they asked me what my starting salary was I was hoping for. I was so desperate, I wrote in "$18,000/yr plus health benefits" and the recruiter laughed to himself, drew a line through my 18k, and wrote 50k over it. I've never met anyone - other than far-spectrum welfare leeches on the right and left - who won't do work when they need it. Though I have met plenty of people who try but fail =)

I'm not saying NObody is willing to do the work. Because clearly you don't get 1,000+ employees in your plant without having 1,000+ people to do the job. However, when unemployment levels are on the low side (like not 2009-2011), many of my customers have expressed difficulty finding people willing to:

1. show up on time.
2. follow simple job directions.
3. actually work.
4. stick around for more than a week.

If I hadn't heard this off and on for the past 23+ years I've been in this business, I wouldn't have mentioned it in the thread. When one customer says it, you might think they're ogres to work for: "No wonder they quit - this place is a shithole." And I've seen some serious shitholes over the years. When three or four say it, eh, fluke. When you hear it over and over and over again, all across the country, for 2+ decades, at shops large and small, you begin to get the idea that maybe there's something to it, that maybe there's a segment of the able-bodied population looking for something they're not going to get, and that maybe some of that comes down to the person. For what it's worth, it seems to be worse in areas where there is a lot of that sort of work, and people just bounce around from one employer to the next looking for... I dunno, maybe some Golden Ticket for people who make minimal effort.

I'm not arguing that the opposite - overqualified people being passed over - isn't one pitfall of looking for work, and that it doesn't happen. I'm saying that when some of these folks (Bad-Life-Choice Bob and Betty) do get the job, they can't manage the simple things it takes to keep it. I'm not talking a working mom with a couple kids who sometimes struggles to catch the bus on time because one kid forgot to mention the school project due yesterday - she figures it out because it's what she needs to do. I'm talking about the single guy with no particular anchors chained to his ankle who simply doesn't feel like working. Good pay for someone walking in the door with no particular skills, good benefits, decent working environment, boring-ass job... not good enough, apparently.

When we're sitting at ~4% unemployment, the pickin's get slim. And even when it's higher than that, there is a certain portion of the labor pool that feels, "Eh, I'll just keep collecting the free money. Seems easier than getting up at 6am."

Just an article I've read recently
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/07/hello-full-employment/564527/

I only know the UK market, but I doubt it's significantly different in the US. Over here I've been involved in recruiting for several companies I worked for. I can say for certain that for small and medium sized companies, recruiting skilled developers is the single hardest thing for them to do. You can easily recruit a developer, but that's not your goal. If you hire a crap dev then you can be sure that they will cause more damage to productivity than they produce. For small teams it can be the death knell to just have one underperforming member, and you can be sure that person will not be looking to move on, and will never improve (believe me, I've tried so hard with some). Back in the 1960s in the acclaimed book "The Mythical Man Month", they estimated the difference in productivity between a low performing developer and a high one was a factor of 50 (actually, might have been 10, been a while since I read it). In my opinion this has not changed, the difference is immense.

In hiring for one role, we went through at least 100 CVs, interviewed about 30, offered a job to about 4 of them, but they all took other offers. Every interview took hours of my time, that's the tech lead on the project out of action for a fair portion of the day. The cost in lost time alone makes it tempting to lower standards, but if you do then you will regret it. The 96 we rejected then continued floating round in the "labour pool", and kept contributing to the statistics that suggested there was no shortage of devs. There was definitely a shortage of good devs.

With this difficulty and cost in mind, please believe me that local, immigrant, martian, it doesn't matter. The only thing you care about is getting a good dev. If it were viable to achieve that through training someone up (and personally I think graduate training schemes are an awesome idea, decent grads can become decent devs in just a year, but you've then got to find decent grads) then companies would do it, unfortunately most resourcing requirements are not that far away, and they need the skills right now.

In my opinion, unemployment figures are not a good measure of the presence of a labour shortage, the number open positions is a much better indicator.