Why are there still widespread worker shortages in nearly every sector?
Posted by Silver-Honkler@reddit | PrepperIntel | View on Reddit | 405 comments
I think this is the only sub I actively post on that could give a thoughtful response to this without getting too political or stupid about it.
It's been a few years. Packages are still delayed, health insurance authorizations that normally take 2 weeks take 4 months, there are widespread worker shortages in nearly every sector, doctors offices don't have workers, vets are still short handed, fast food still has staffing shortages, grocery stores, gas stations, the DMV, I mean Jesus christ you name it and there is still a worker or essential materials shortage.
Even the windshield repair guy took a few weeks after the auto insurance glass claim took over a month instead of like a day. I'm on month 4 of a dental insurance authorization which was supposed to take 10 days. Medications are still back ordered and pharmacies are still understaffed.
My only two thoughts are long covid is worse than we are being told or more people have died than we have been told. My wife said it might be a little bit of these two things, but also this is what you get when you pay people peanuts.
Where did everybody go?
Am I the only one who feels this way or is experiencing this? The last time I got something done in a timely fashion was 5 years ago. There is a worker shortage related delay baked into everything now. What gives?
jabbatwenty@reddit
I think a bunch of people died. Would also assume as the baby boomers keep retiring it will just get worse with worker shortages.
roboconcept@reddit
And it's been a mass disabling event
bananapeel@reddit
Not just a mass disabling event:
Millions died. No one knows exactly how many were covid, and how many died from other causes because hospital services were backed up and they didn't get adequate care, but they died anyway. (We'll say that number is 2-3 million people but it may be higher.)
Many many millions more are disabled. Since Disability is really hard to get, many are forced to continue working, but they are unable to produce as much work as before. So worker efficiency is lower and slower than before, not to mention the millions who are permanently out of the workforce, if they get SSDI Disability or not.
Many more lost a parent, aunt, etc. This person was their free childcare for their kid. So they now choose to stay home to take care of the kid.
Speaking of the disabled, some disabled are totally homebound and bedbound, and require care. So if you can't afford in-home nursing care or the state is unable to provide it, and you don't qualify for or cannot afford to live in a nursing home facility, guess what? A family member has to stay home at least part time to take care of you.
And then you had millions of Boomers who decided to go ahead and retire.
Add these up and you get really large numbers. This is a huge generational shift.
plop_0@reddit
Everything you've said is 100000000% accurate.
/r/LongCovid
/r/HermanCainAward
TH0RP@reddit
Millions are still dying. Covid has hit epidemic status and we see anywhere from 2-4 surges annually now.
I was a pharmacy tech before getting COVID from a co-worker who was forced to return to work (only 3 days off permitted). It permenantly disabled me. I was healthy and walking 20 kilometers a week before this.
COVID is going to be discussed like AIDS here in a decade or so. Everyone will be scratching their heads about why society let so many people die or be permenantly disabled. The pursuit of shirt-term profit over the safety of humanity will kill us all.
julieannie@reddit
And not just the workers died, but the caretakers for workers’ children. At one point in 2021, 50% of my clients had lost an immediate family member to Covid. So many had lost an aunt or parent/grandparent too who was part of their childcare system and they had to leave jobs. The childcare crisis is a huge reason certain groups have left the workforce or shifted their work.
plop_0@reddit
Oh shit. :|
Dry_Car2054@reddit
This. There are way more people hitting retirement age this year and leaving the workforce than there are people getting old enough to have their first job. Add in the covid deaths and the ongoing opioid deaths and the workforce is shrinking.
bananapeel@reddit
For every new electrician apprentice that enters the job market right now, there are seven experienced journeyman electricians retiring.
BradBeingProSocial@reddit
Plus tons of 18-24 year olds are choosing to live at home and work minimally rather than move out and work 30-50 hours to get by (especially since that 30-50 is the old number, it’s probably 50-65 hours now)
leavingishard1@reddit
This is a major factor that gets shouted down by conspiracy theorists. But there was a significant number of people that died or became unable to work during covid. They also happened to be the ones working low wage service jobs for the most part. Add in opioid crisis and mental health issues and lots of working age people are sitting at home or gone.
Add in the other factors about low pay, no benefits anywhere, expensive private health care, and you begin to get a picture.
Then Add in the boomers leaving the workforce and you have a growing cohort of retirees going out to play, and a shrinking number of people willing to work. Perfect storm for "nobody wants to work anymore what happened"
SnooRevelations9889@reddit
Take a look at this chart for workforce participation. During COVID a large number of people left work or lost their jobs. Many older workers decided that retirement was fine by them, and never went back. A lot of people keep working because of fear of the unknown, and that unknown was eliminated for a great many people.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm
And yes, the number of "extra" people who retired during COVID was greater than the number who died or became permanently disabled.
There was talk of "luring" those older workers back, but few jobs are that much fun.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
This is what happens when you pay people peanuts, then start decreasing staff, and refuse to hire new people (but post 'Help Wanted' signs) because of the bottom line.
Lots of people in other forums are reporting that they are looking for work, go into interviews where they are a good fit and then get ghosted with the job listing being reposted immediately after.
RarelyRecommended@reddit
Three years experience plus a master's degree.
Postman556@reddit
HR people literally sneer and snicker about all education people have; it’s never enough. So only over qualified people get hired, and are in turn unsatisfied with being underpaid for their education and training.
plop_0@reddit
YES. & then they quit quickly. Or they're resentful, so they don't put in any effort.
ForestWhisker@reddit
$16 an hour no benefits.
Anxious_Summer2378@reddit
Part-Time but your schedule must be open for any shift.
Ex-PFC_WintergreenV4@reddit
Please submit a two page hand-written cover letter why working here is your life’s ambition
JohnnyCAPSLOCK@reddit
Hmmmm... How can I stretch, "It isn't." into two pages? Oh bigger font and margins maybe.
DefinitelyPooplo@reddit
But if it flags for AI according to our AI decting AI, you're immediately disqualified.
Tank_Girl_Gritty_235@reddit
We will constantly call you on your days off and if you don't answer you will be reprimanded for not being a team player.
Anxious_Summer2378@reddit
And if you do come in you will be working extra hours do the worst job tasks and get off late with no overtime.
Oh and if you don't feel good the following day you're going to need a doctor's note to come in by the way we don't offer health insurance so good luck paying that out of pocket
BishopsBakery@reddit
I get all my bonuses for the month and it's old pizza on the table Friday! Two cold stale slices for everyone!
If you're lucky, a sliver of cookie cake!
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
Schrodinger's Masters Degree: it simultaneously exists but doesn't exist depending upon which job you're applying for.
What a world where leaving it off is functionally a requirement to get a job that doesn't pay a living wage.
I would laugh if it wasn't so sad.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
And why would I want to pay 100k to get a degree where the jobs available barely pays above minimum wage?
We need organization and UNIONS to get started in ALL industries now. Yes, I'm talking the white collar workers! Our nurses, our teachers, our IT specialists, our accountants! Everyone needs to work towards this because if we don't we're screwed as they use this generation like a tissue and throw them away and offshore our jobs because it's convenient for the CEO's bottom line.
stacksmasher@reddit
Some of us went to school for a degree that is actually in demand.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
So the value of a degree is only by what a corporation is willing to pay us for it?
stacksmasher@reddit
Yes. Its the US caste system.
yehghurl@reddit
I feel like I've been lied to about Unions my whole fucking life and I'm pissed about it.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
How so? Because they aren't evil things that take advantage of you?
Here's the thing to keep in mind, with the right leadership a Union is an awesome thing to behold. Will you get everything you want? Probably not, but you have the ability to upgrade your negotiating power x1 for every worker who is in it. You aren't an "at will employee" who can be fired on whim because you have the protection of the Union. This also benefits people working in Non-union places because they are competing with Unions for resources (ie, skilled people).
The BAD part comes in when you don't keep the people who are negotiating for you accountable for their actions. So that means additional effort on your part to make sure, at the end of the day, that you have good people leading. It's more effort, and you have to be more aware of what's going on, but it benefits you hugely at the end of it.
yehghurl@reddit
Yes, I've been gaslighted for the last 2 decades by my parents, old friends, old coworkers, managers, bosses, customers, the internet, etc. into thinking that unionizing is a negative thing. I want to know more.
Bull_Bound_Co@reddit
I'm betting they lean conservative and the irony is unions are inherently conservative. The right says some of their core values are raising a family, being apart of your community and attending church. They preach communal values because there's strength there, yet at work they want to be individuals. It's not a coincidence that the death of unions also coincided with a decline in traditional families and the death of the church.
capt-bob@reddit
Just need more competition in unions to get lower dues.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
Alright let me give you and example. My Dad is a retired blue collared worker, part of an excellent Union in California. He's been retired for about 30 years. He has a fabulous pension and great health insurance (plus Medicaid). His health insurance outstrips anything my white collar brother or white collar husband can even get while working for LARGE corporations right now.
My brother uses his wife's health insurance, and not his own. Why? Because her Union has excellent health insurance (and she can get a good pension at the end of it, he doesn't).
The leadership for your union matters a lot, but if you have great leadership and accountability then there are definite benefits to this.
And I'm going to suggest you check out the forum r/union here if you want more information.
yehghurl@reddit
Just joined and thank you for the example.✌️
Flux_State@reddit
Exactly. Alot of union leadership are the exact kind of people who get management jobs and it's great for them personally and terrible for the actual workers. Unionizing isn't just starting a union, it's a continuing responsibility as a member.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
Yup, I've seen good unions go by the wayside because the negotiators did a terrible job. Why? Best guess seems to be to they get bribed to do what the company wants, so finding the right people for management is extremely important.
ande9393@reddit
Unions are essential for the working class, white or blue collar. I always heard my dad or whoever else talking shit about unions, but now that I'm in one the good far outweighs the bad.
Slammedtgs@reddit
A few years ago I would have disagreed but am coming around. I’m all for progress and reducing costs. But seeing layoffs when companies are positing record profits and profit margins is infuriating.
FFF_in_WY@reddit
You know what feels better than 'reducing costs?' Having a big enough paycheck that those costs don't matter much.
Slammedtgs@reddit
If by paycheck you’re referring to a companies income, maybe but that still out of context to what I said.
Companies with record profits are lying people off to further increase their profits. That really seems to be a reason to support unionized labor across all sectors.
Smooth_Tell2269@reddit
Teachers and teamster unions are mostly corrupt and political hacks
2018beagle@reddit
The left doesn’t want a working, or “middle” class. Elites and peasants for all my leftist friends.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
You mean the ELITES don't want a working or middle class. It has nothing to do with right or left, it has to do with being part of the 1% or not.
Infamous-Object-2026@reddit
the Left is the elites. and so are the Right. they are part of the same bird, and speaking specifically as a disabled person this is what I see:
Right: strait in to the oven for me
Left: use me as a convenient pawn and then tossed aside when it is nolonger convenient.
time to leave both parties in the dust. all we have is eachother. if that.
Infamous-Object-2026@reddit
the Left is made up of narcissists. I am not surprised. as a physically disabled, queer, neurodivers person I feel stabbed in the back by them, they are NOT the safe space they claim to be.
capt-bob@reddit
The union we used to have charged way too much and built a casino for the union bosses to hang out in with free drinks all day. After they left from not enough members, we did lose Columbus and MLK day off and fell about 2$ under competitive wages though. They would've got more members at a more reasonable price and if they didn't get caught being so extravagant.
BradBeingProSocial@reddit
Why join a union for a 30k raise when you could have a playstation instead by saving on union dues?
Flux_State@reddit
I mean, there's been alot of bad things about unions you've heard that were absolutely true, but also alot of lies.
ImNotR0b0t@reddit
Let's unionize, America! Where do I sign up?
FFF_in_WY@reddit
I'm a little bit worried.
The bullshit from Starbucks and Amazon has shown just how useless the NLRB is. The only thing they workers can do is be willing to go hungry and hold an endless strike + picket.
We have almost killed our own ability to executive collective action, and now we have a mass cowardice bred of real poverty working against us.
It's all bad, man. And it's gonna have to get way, way worse before it gets better.
P4intsplatter@reddit
I dunno, it seems like it'd be a lot easier if we actually had a single unified structure that could enact sweeping reform across all sectors as a basic standard. Something "by the people, for the people" you know? That way f some new problem or sector popped up it wouldn't need unions, because there was like... a minimum you had to pay or something.
Point is, the onus should not be on workers to unionize in 50 different places, with 50 different demand documents (some of which might not be asking enough) to 50 different companies that may or may not say yes. Unions are a step to maintain a profession, at this point I'm not sure how helpful they'd be. We need a full labor and wage overhaul.
Spreadsheets_LynLake@reddit
As long as the petrodollar exists, then the US dollar must inflate to allow the world economy to expand. Inflation is an inescapable feature of the petrodollar. If the little people were included in the prosperity of the petrodollar, then wages would inflate, & your 30-year fixed would become dirt cheap somewhere around year #15... and every middle-class family would comfortably retire & we'd all be content with maintaining the status quo, but that ain't happening. None of it is happening, discontent grows, & that's why we feel the need to prep. Wealth is being hoarded at the top & it ain't trickling down to us, & there's a lot of blame getting cast about at other groups, when really we're all in the same position. I agree 100% - Unions & paid overtime... make H1B1 visas a path to citizenship (allegedly they're the best & brightest, so those are the desirable immigrants) so their salaries float with the market rather than suppressing wages for actual citizens. Wow, that was a long rant.
Infamous-Object-2026@reddit
it's too late for Unions. buy some guns
Tank_Girl_Gritty_235@reddit
It's laughable how many jobs demand a bachelor's for absolutely no reason. I've known several people with years of experience who got turned down for promotions or were even fired because they didn't have a degree. Not even a specific degree. They'd automatically hire someone with a BA in biology for an archivist position over someone who worked for 15 years in that museum as an archivist. (Yes, that actually happened. Fuck Steve at Fire Museum of Maryland)
stacksmasher@reddit
It’s the modern day caste system.
4MoreYearsObama@reddit
You gotta make sure people are properly levered before financially committing to a professional relationship, how else would you manage your risk on training them then having them leave?
Few-Gas1607@reddit
When it comes to employees: Good, reliable, poorly compensated. Pick two.
twatty2lips@reddit
Offer competitive pay/bennies.
hispaniccrefugee@reddit
You make it sound so complicated /s
twatty2lips@reddit
Ha shits harder than need be sometimes 🤣
Shipkiller-in-theory@reddit
and 20 certifications
qualmton@reddit
The lack of developing and teaching workers is one of capitalisms biggest downfall. The higher ups are increasingly impatient to demonstrate value by showing short term improvements and long term plans are very rare these days because of the revolving doors and golden parachutes at the executive level. Almost all the metrics are evaluated in short term profit at the cost of everything else which only works towards lining the pockets of the executives. It is all very short sighted. Training worker paying them more for knowledge and even consumers willing to pay more for quality have fallen to the way side. We are a society of impatient consumers requiring immediate gratification. The entire social structures involved have went through a dramatic and often traumatic change to get us to this point.
Dry_Car2054@reddit
I'm with state government. We hire and train constantly. As soon as a new hire gets some skills they get a job in the private sector paying more. The average young worker is leaving in a year. We have a huge problem coming up: the group of experienced staff doing the teaching is all close to retirement age. I work in a quality control type of position and see the skill deficits all the time both in our staff and in the industry we regulate. Some of them are expensive.
MonkeyKingCoffee@reddit
This is going to indirectly kill a lot of people. The USDA, FDA, USDOT and FAA are necessary.
athanasius_fugger@reddit
Don't get me started on poison in the food supply. As a former farmer and industrial food maintenance technician, having the majority of food QC be privately done and not really regulated....it's not exactly surprising the issues we saw recently with lunch meat. Additionally a good part of the grain supply is straight up poisoned. There is no regulatory oversight when it comes to arsenic in baby formula. Organic rice is grown on old cotton fields still contaminated with arsenic. It's concentrated into rice syrup for formula where the levels become harmful BUT there are still NO regulations WRT arsenic levels. That's only one example. It's been recently show through private analysis that anything with wheat contains elevated glyphosate in the final product of baked goods.
driverdan@reddit
Pay better wages and people will stay.
Dry_Car2054@reddit
Tell the legislature that. They decide on what the cost of living increases will be and it is always less than inflation so every year we get a little further behind.
J0E_Blow@reddit
What part of state gov.?
GeneralizedFlatulent@reddit
I have a chronic condition and would actually want to work in a state government position long term since from what I've heard from friends, it's the best way around here to have stable and predictable healthcare access.
The health benefits would be worth it to me over the pay being not as much as private sector
If more training is provided it seems like that would mean I might be considered for more roles? How does all that work? I know it's probably different in different states but it's something I'm looking unto
hanlonrzr@reddit
If you had the budget for it could you just over hire and train, knowing full well it's just free training for the industry?
PaintedClownPenis@reddit
How depressing. I'm seeing the Civil Service being reinvented because it's already been killed.
Flux_State@reddit
I mean, other countries promise this to all their citizens.
lionfisher11@reddit
There has never been a worker shortage in the history of human kind. When you see that it always means wage shortage.
Shyft11@reddit
My company has a sign outside that lists every department we have as "now hiring". They even have a referral program now to get bodies in the door. I handed out referral papers to about 6 different people I know that were looking for something better. Not a single phone call to any of them.
The next time any department complains about not having enough people, I'm gonna go off.
HeKnee@reddit
Yeah the sign is to make customer not blame the employees/companies because they can claim “were trying to hire but its a tough market”.
The company cant hire without reducing their profitability which would reduce share price so they are just stuck until the whole stock market has a large correction that reduces share price.
techmaster242@reddit
The stock market is a bubble.
hollyock@reddit
I worked in a hospital and they crew with a skeleton crew on purpose. The job postings are fake. You know when they are real when there are like 10+ for one unit that means the whole place quit and they need to re staff.
anotheramethyst@reddit
All corporate jobs that pay hourly use these complex, intricate hours-tracking systems designed to maximize profits. The result is intentional understaffing. It creates a terrible place to work and a mediocre customer experience.
Meanwhile with this cost of living crisis, more and more jobs just aren't worth what they pay. Generally there are a lot of jobs still available in this category, they are open because nobody wants to do the job for what the business can afford to pay them.
Meanwhile bureaucracy is truly out of hand. It's gotten completely ridiculous. If the job deals in any way with insurance, or dealing with HOAs, or mortgage companies... if you need approval from a government agency... it's just ridiculous.
CharmingMechanic2473@reddit
This. I am finding out many job postings are for managers to keep their overworked staff from quitting. But have no intention to hire. Simply put if they can “get by” short staffed that is what will happen.
iridescent-shimmer@reddit
I do work for a very selective company, mainly because they need engineers with great social skills which is just a unique combo lol. But, listening to the managers discuss new employees...it's kind of insane how lacking they are in basic skills. Like don't call, just show up late for a very time-based customer-facing job. Don't even know how to use Google maps. We've had more new sales people fired for faking customer visits than I've ever seen in the 8 years I've worked there. Workers and employers need to recognize balance lol.
AgentCHAOS1967@reddit
Dont forget sending jobs over seas...I stead of people here doing call center work or coding etc someone on the opposite side of the world getting paid peanuts is doing it for us and often not well and stealing identities. I say the last part because I was having issues with GrubHub ( I do food delivery) they told me to send a picture of my debit card and drivers license...I emailed them the next day and they said they would never ask for that someone was trying to scam me.
Big-Reaction-5589@reddit
Spot on. See this happening in retail. Management knows and have been questioned about increased workload, less staff, and no overtime allowed. My favorite replies have been “Good floor coverage is 10-15 customers to 1 employee” also “we aren’t under staffed, the numbers show we are adequately compared to sales” Okay, then why are customers noticing and being vocal about it it too?
recursing_noether@reddit
This is only one side of the problem though. Inflation has been really bad and people can hardly afford things as they are. Imagine increasing the cost of providing those goods and services even more.
tmiller9833@reddit
As much as it's a political football, immigration is down and immigrants take lower paying jobs. It's really not rocket science but unfortunately this reality doesn't fit the current political narrative.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
Except I'm seeing teens trying to get their first job and failing because places won't hire them.
Puzzleheaded_Town_20@reddit
My teenaged nephew wants a job and has been turned away by several fast food chains. They told him that for insurance reasons they don’t hire anyone under 18.
eveebobevee@reddit
Weren't the last 4 years the highest in regards to immigration?
https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Grew-51-Million-Last-Two-Years
hanlonrzr@reddit
Legal asylum seekers often aren't allowed or incentivized to work. We need those good ol illegals. They hustle
annethepirate@reddit
I've read it a lot here on reddit that companies will always be "hiring", but never hire anyone, because they can get government benefits. Idk if that's true. What is frustrating though is that lots of companies have automated application filters and no way to reach a human. I applied for several jobs but there's no HR number, no "contact us" button, and when I called the place, it was a number tree that ended in voicemails. It's all so removed; it feels like being a peasant on the outside of a castle wall, but the porter won't even answer the gate.
dsbtc@reddit
The government doesn't give you money if you don't hire people.
GWS2004@reddit
"because they can get government benefits. "
That's right wing bullshit. In was on unemployment for a month, it's not enough to get by.
hanlonrzr@reddit
Not the worker. The company
capt-bob@reddit
The admin give all the leftover payroll budget to themselves in bonuses, why would they lift a finger to attract and hire new people, it would be shooting themselves in the foot. They are loving working you to death and laughing all the way to the bank saying no one wants to work.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
Are you a teacher, by chance?
I don't know about that being the case for the public sector but I know that is exactly what happened last year regarding raises for our district's teachers. They used completely different stats to apply to admin as to teachers so the teachers got a teeny tiny raise and the admin's had a huge jump in their salaries.
hispaniccrefugee@reddit
I see this in white-collar/tech fields but much more rarely in blue collar. Showing up for the first two weeks seems to be an extremely high expectation in the trades.
The-Pollinator@reddit
"more people have died than we have been told."
Now see rule one
They always play the long game.
somedumbkid1@reddit
Oh for fucks sake
The-Pollinator@reddit
Are you a slave to sexual sin? Is fucking your god? If so, there is hope and help for you here.
somedumbkid1@reddit
I mean, unironically yes but it's more if a consensual thing so I'm good, thanks.
The-Pollinator@reddit
You consent to commit sin? This is a deception. It is impossible for you not to sin; you are enslaved by it. Yet, you must answer to the One Who declares it wrong and reap the reward for your responses to His morality on the final Day.
Will you therefore reap a destiny of despair; or a future of life and love?
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
somedumbkid1@reddit
I willfully and consciously do things that would be considered sins by several denominations of Christianity, yes. I am a slave to my earthly and animalistic desires. And I revel in it. I do not seek redemption for it nor am I interested in doing so. And I enjoy myself the whole time.
I am not a Christian so I care not for their rules, offers, or supposed punishments.
The-Pollinator@reddit
The grave is licking its lips in anticipation,
opening its mouth wide.
The great and the lowly
and all the drunken mob will be swallowed up.
Humanity will be destroyed, and people brought down;
even the arrogant will lower their eyes in humiliation.
But the LORD of Heaven’s Armies will be exalted by his justice.
The holiness of God will be displayed by his righteousness.
In that day lambs will find good pastures,
and fattened sheep and young goats will feed among the ruins.
What sorrow for those who drag their sins behind them
with ropes made of lies,
who drag wickedness behind them like a cart!
They even mock God and say,
“Hurry up and do something!
We want to see what you can do.
Let the Holy One of Israel carry out his plan,
for we want to know what it is.”
What sorrow for those who say
that evil is good and good is evil,
that dark is light and light is dark,
that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.
What sorrow for those who are wise in their own eyes
and think themselves so clever.
What sorrow for those who are heroes at drinking wine
and boast about all the alcohol they can hold.
They take bribes to let the wicked go free,
and they punish the innocent.
Therefore, just as fire licks up stubble
and dry grass shrivels in the flame,
so their roots will rot
and their flowers wither.
For they have rejected the law of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies;
they have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
(Isaiah)
Typical_Elevator6337@reddit
They’re dead or have long-term debilitating disabilities.
estella542@reddit
I left nursing to become a stay at home mom. I think during Covid a lot of people realized what really matters and stopped working themselves to death for these corporations. My husband and I realized we could make things work financially with me staying home if we made some cuts. By making my family my new job, everything at home runs smoother. We eat better, the house is cleaner, we aren’t scrambling to get kids dropped off and we aren’t running in different directions on different sleep schedules. I am here if someone gets sent home sick, for dentist appointments, forgotten lunches.. I can help my husband with his laundry and make breakfast.
We were working opposite shifts and I would work 7p-7a. We would switch the kids in the parking lot several days a week. It was rough and neither of us slept well.
Even the people who stayed are picking up less overtime and are checking out. These companies aren’t loyal. There are no pensions anymore. They don’t care if your kid is sick and you don’t have childcare. You are a warm body and a license.
CPUequalslotsofheat@reddit
I hope eventually you can return to nursing, since you are in Demand. Companies are not loyal. Covid changed things. I hope people realize how selfish corporations are.
husqofaman@reddit
This is so true. Before COVID my wife and I both worked office jobs in a city. We would both get coffee/breakfast out on our way to work. We would usually eat lunch out. We would regularly go to happy hour after work (3ish days a week) before going home. We also ate dinner out several nights a week and went out on weekends to see entertainment. We also traveled for pleasure a few times a year. Then Covid hit and that all ended. We realized that we really didn’t miss all that as much as we thought we would (except the travel). Also living in a city was nightmarish at the time. So we moved to a rural town in the county I grew up in. Our cost of living is so much lower with our much simpler lifestyle. We no longer eat out more than once a week. And that usually just grabbing burritos or a pizza. I kid you not in 2023 we spent less than 25% of what we spent in 2018. So now we both work as independent contractors and take work as needed. Neither of us work full time. We both volunteer in our community in our free time. I have also met a few other people who loved to this are who are in a similar boat. Working less spending less still very happy, maybe happier.
estella542@reddit
It sounds like you guys have built a beautiful life! I can’t believe how many of us would be toiling away at miserable jobs had it not been for Covid.
husqofaman@reddit
Yeah the biggest thing is we spend so much more time together now and we realized we just don’t need to have the newest coolest thing or go to the newest coolest restaurants/locations. We are actually really happy living an average life and being ok with that. We used to be stressed that we didn’t live a big enough or cool enough life and when re realized that shit didn’t matter we became much happier. My best advice to anyone is forget about what corporate society tells us will make us happy, forget about trying to impress other people with your life, and generally stay off social media like Facebook, insta, ect.
graywoman7@reddit
This is on point. I’m a stay at home mom too and have a lot of mom friends and family who were working before covid but now stay home with their kids. They had to quit when the schools and daycares shut down and realized that between being more frugal with things, a lower tax bracket, and the ability to do a side hustle like occasional babysitting or running an Etsy shop the amount of money coming in isn’t much different. That along with less stress and their husbands being able to pick up a bit of overtime here and there since childcare is no longer an issue means there’s zero incentive to get another job. I’m in the same boat. We’ve done the math and after commuting and childcare costs it just doesn’t add up for me to work.
dianacakes@reddit
Same for us except it was my husband who started staying home and I focused on my career.
hanlonrzr@reddit
Wholesome ☺️
Available-Jello385@reddit
We’re currently discussing me leaving my nursing job to be a stay at home mom, so your comment was very nice to come across & makes me feel a lot more confident in the decision to do so.
Our reasonings sound very much alike to what you described here. So thank you for this!
estella542@reddit
The sleep alone is worth it! I still keep up my license, but even now that my kids are older (1 in college, 1 in high school, and 2 in middle school) I don’t plan to go back. I really don’t think you guys will regret it. It’s such a weight off of the whole family.
ratcuisine@reddit
My wife was making mid six figures at her tech job. Still quit her job to be a stay at home mom, because of how impossible it is to raise a family while having two working parents. Everyone's happier now.
hotdogbo@reddit
I know quite a few women that have taken a step back from their careers to focus on family.
ExcessiveBulldogery@reddit
Covid was the breaking point. Everyone everywhere had to accept shortages, delays, scarcity. Larger companies in particular, I believe, are using a 'it's not as bad as it was four years ago' pablum as an excuse to save money and not provide the level of service we came to expect (demand?) before the pandemic.,
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
This is a very astute observation.
PeppySprayPete@reddit
Because businesses are greedy and employees funny want to work 50 hours a week, only to be paid pennies and barely scrape by.
I know a few people personally that are literally being paid more on unemployment from their last job, that they're being offered by new potential employers.
Edit:
Thinking about it my own job is a decent example
We're paid well BUT when I was first hired we were a team of 7 engineers.
1 got laid off 3 more quit because they were being pushed extremely hard.
We're now a team of 3 people
We average 56 hours a week (each!)
And is my employer hiring to fill the positions of those that left?
Absolutely not.
So we're left with a team of 3 very overworked employees and a very wealthy company that is not hiring anyone or giving anyone else employment opportunities.
DreamsRemain@reddit
This is why I never answer calls outside of work. It's not our fault they can't/won't fill those positions, id ask for a raise if I went from 7 people to 3.
wpbth@reddit
I’m actively looking for jobs pretty aggressive, slim Pickens out there IMO.
panic_mitigation_fun@reddit
It’s probably a combination of factors but what I’m seeing points to corporate greed in many areas. “They got by during COVID with less help and longer wait times, let’s see how few people we can keep on staff to pad the bottom dollar”. This attitude has seemed to extend to for profit hospitals and some colleges as well.
Elegant_Tale_3929@reddit
Did you see that Congress held CEO de la Torre in criminal contempt for basically stripping the funding from the local hospital in MA (not sure if it's more than one) and letting it go to shit before closing it so he could use the money to fund his lifestyle?
Weekly-Obligation798@reddit
Hospitals. More than one. Also many more in other states.
themikep87@reddit
This, businesses hire less to save money, blame a "worker shortage" that everyone hears on the news so it must be true. The age of customer service we used to have is gone, all business now exists to maximize profits.
annethepirate@reddit
I feel like it won't be long before we can't even reach a customer service person and it'll just be ai, leaving us to mentally scream at a silicon wall.
Rooooben@reddit
I worked to support centers and call center technology. This will be one of the first big public uses of AI, guaranteed. Everyone right now is playing with it, but this is an easy use case to get done. We already script responses, automate tools, and use text to speech for announcements and IVRU navigation.
Phone and Tex support jobs are going away soon
zortlord@reddit
Already gone in some companies. And it's horrible. Like Comcast / xfinity. If you're a customer, hope you never need technical support.
alternativepuffin@reddit
Yeah, it's working as intended.
Those job postings also exist to put negative pressure on wages. And partly because those companies want the ability to scale up and hire when they feel the time is right. (which is not now) It explains the high amount of ghost postings out there. The individual companies deserve blame for this, but the flipside of it is that those companies have to be on a track of constantly maximizing shareholder value. It's how the system incentivizes them to behave.
Employees and consumers got used to the stress of being understaffed during Covid, and so all of the companies have a big reluctance to be any of the first ones back in to risk it and say to their shareholders - "hey, we're investing in our people and our product right now. We won't show dividends on that change for four years, but when we do it'll be a 20% return." Nobody has the balls to do that, and they're all short-term thinkers. What is much easier is to just cut your staff by 5% now and get the immediate revenue now. So that's what they do.
Bakingtime@reddit
It’s been a pay shortage for a long time now, but they say it’s a worker shortage so they can dilute wages via a “more competitive labor force”.
chaosisafrenemy@reddit
I feel like the same happened 2008 - stagnant wages, less hiring and piling more on current employees who put up with it because of job insecurity.
iammollyweasley@reddit
The job market reminds me a lot of when I was a teen and young adult. People would post help wanted ads, but then never hire
Brave_Cauliflower_90@reddit
This is the correct answer imho.
Organic-Stay4067@reddit
also helps that the government pays us closely to what these type of jobs pay. Less incentive to take shitty jobs when the government can allow us to do what we want all week. Either raise pay or cut government programs
Adolfo1980@reddit
I can't speak for other sectors, but the veterinaryand animal welfare sectors are ones I'm involved with.
Covid delayed alot of veterinary students from graduating for 1-2 years which slowed down having new vet professionals entering the field. In addition, alot of vets who were in a position to retire during the pandemic decided to hang it up (much as with some other professions). But by and large, a BIG factor is that the field is very high stress for not enough pay. From techs, to Assistants, to the doctors, there's ALOT of burnout and it seems that dealing with the public has gotten more abusive by a large degree post pandemic. Many found side hustles or other ways of making money during and after the pandemic that involved less grief from the public, pay just as much or better, and allow for a better quality of life. Overall, people just aren't willing to put up with the things they used to and some have found alternatives.
The same goes for the animal welfare field - low pay, hard hours, emotionally draining work, and being treated like garbage by the public makes people look elsewhere (be it creating a side business, working gig jobs, or just downgrading their lifestyle so that they can live on less).
Everyone still has bills to pay, but some found better ways to do it that don't involve compromising your happiness and dealing with shitty people.
Source: I manage an animal shelter and have been in animal welfare for 8 years. My wife has worked in veterinary for almost 14 years.
bananapeel@reddit
Thank you for the work that you and your wife do! You are valued and we appreciate you.
Adolfo1980@reddit
Thank you for the kind words!
bigbootywhitegirl78@reddit
I chose to downgrade my lifestyle rather than continue in a shitty job, and I know many others who have.
Only-Currency2253@reddit
I am 45. Pay is too low and keeping whatever few people that could contribute at home doing whatever they do. There is a gap in the population, or boomers were everywhere but many of their kids did not have kids. Furthering this, many people in my age group did not have kids. Be it cultural or financial oppression, our citizen numbers are decreasing. Boomers are aging out of workforce and passing away, leaving vacancies and noone to fill these jobs, because my Gen X didn't have kids due to financial oppression.
Princess_Of_Crows@reddit
Wages have bee stagnant for so long it's realigning society. I have a lot of friends moving back in with their parents and joining volunteer and community organizations because it beats the hell out of this economy.
Another drain that is bigger than people realize is more and more Americans are just immigrating, like our parents and grandparents did. Singapore is a big Nexus. I know several friends that took jobs there, got married and then moved to their spouses home country.
These are middle class friends, and they are choosing to emigrate.
Bigignatz1938@reddit
No, you are certainly not alone. I think what happened is that the oligarchs who actually run this country and benefitted wildly from the Pandemic have trained us as a culture to accept shit, and to be grateful for it.
UniqueUser9999991@reddit
Well, the pandemic - 100 million+/- people quit their jobs in 2021/22 and not all have returned. Immigration has been cut way back. Combine that with increased retirements as our working force ages, and we simply do not have enough working-age people with needed experience to fill all positions.
SnooChocolates9334@reddit
The baby boomers are retiring. We are going to have a labor shortage for about a decade or so until the next crop of kids gets to working age. Look at Japan, Italy, Germany, and China's demographics, the world is changing dramatically.
Treeninja1999@reddit
A LOT of people retired when COVID hit, and there isn't a large number of younger people to take their place. It's that simple
deliverance_62@reddit
Too many people getting a check and food stamps they don't want to work or don't have to. Us that go to.work every day are supporting them.
Swim6610@reddit
People have been having fewer, if any, children over the generations. This isn't a surprise. One reason immigration is needed especially with how our economy is set up.
Financial_Meat2992@reddit
Companies intentionally leave positions open. They save money that way, and we have all come to accept worse services. They have no incentive to fill positions that were previously filled.
thebagel264@reddit
It's easy to throw up your hands and say "no one wants to work!" At my job they are looking for machine operators but they're not giving anyone incentive. Someone can work in a loud dirty factory, or get a dollar less and flip burgers. Don't even need to get their order right half the time. Why would anyone take that job?
MostHumanlyHuman@reddit
Covid empowered me to finally become a hermit.
GregMcgregerson@reddit
Demographics. ~1m ppl are aging out of the workforce per yr for the next decade. This is just the beginning.
Bfaubion@reddit
And yet, I am still happy with my local Home Depot, in north San Diego county of all places. The workers there often seem knowledgeable and friendly. I guess I have low expectations for finding help in places like Lowes and HD. For some reason this HD is always pleasant.. I cannot say the same for the Lowes a few miles away. I have noticed support calls from any retailer always use that “we are experiencing higher call volumes than normal” shtick now.. it’s just permanent. I’m waiting for an SNL skit on this one.
In all seriousness I mostly just experience poor customer service, people just seem grumpier than they use to be.
Low_Wrongdoer_1107@reddit
I believe we are still feeling the effect of a boomer mass exodus during Covid. I’ll be 61 next year- I didn’t used to be a boomer, but they keep changing the dates :( I don’t FEEL like a boomer, but I’m the old guy in a lot of the workforce. I have a friend exactly my age, in insurance underwriting, and he is literally the oldest guy in his company.
(CNN says) During Covid a lot of boomers figured “heck with it, I’ll just retire now” and left the full-time workforce. A lot of the next generation of people filtered up into those senior positions and then quite young people moved up, too. When young people are middle management and making middle management salaries, why would anyone want to work for peanuts flipping burgers or straightening shelves at Walmart? There’s also a few people working remotely, so others feel like they don’t want to go schlep food as a restaurant server. Combine that with what research says about the later and later age of maturity- when people have their own home, a career path job, meeting their own financial responsibilities… there’s just a lot of young adults living in their parents’ basement and, too often, not working at all.
MichaelHammor@reddit
It's a war between employers and employees. There is a labor shortage because employers don't want to pay market prices for labor. Employees are sick of getting short changed and are working below their level because fuck it, why work to the max of ability for $16 when you can slack away at fastfood for $15. I'm doing the same thing. I have a degree but I refuse to kill myself for $20 an hour when I can cruise through life at Walmart for $15 an hour.
DryToe1269@reddit
Boomers are dying off by the 10’s of thousands. Covid killed more people than we probably know???
Longjumping_Bed_9117@reddit
The housing market would lead me to beleive there isnt a shortage of people due to long covid die off or something.
The number of adult males simply not working is growing.
A push for paper qualifications vice hands on experience in a trade probably lend to the lack of materials, as it takes skilled people not degreed people to make that happen...most of the time.
And i believe economic down turn tends to push a zero deffect mentality that leads to analysis paralysis and long hiring processes.
What are your thoughts on that?
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
I think this is a very fair assessment and very likely true.
Dapper-Cantaloupe866@reddit
Might have something to do with the shitty paychecks. Or perhaps the total lack of healthcare benefits for jobs that are rough on the body. *shrugs*
icze4r@reddit
One million workers just died.
Spirited-Reputation6@reddit
I always bring up the Covid factor that nobody wants to hear it. Many people died from Covid. Many folks about to retired died or retired early because of Covid. Many folks are disabled and can’t work due to Covid. Thousand of people are still dying per day due to Covid. It’s hard to replace workers with sick and incompetent people. And people keep getting reinfected and wondering why they can’t think straight or comprehend that there is an illness that is slowly killing the work force in America and globally. The race to the bottom has been in effect for over a decade. Covid has seems to be exactly what is needed to close the deal. Birdflu is right around the corner and folks immune systems are already compromised and can barely fight off or have persistent colds now. Covid has been in the same category as TB and AIDS/HIV. It has also been in the same category as other scary diseases but that might be as much as Reddit can handle rn. You’d think that there would be many vacancies available but I’m guessing jobs numbers are being inflated at the same time covid numbers are being hidden. I await the covid denial comments and quiet denial downvotes. Nevertheless, here is to being ready!
zed_zen@reddit
really interested in what the category is - i know it's being likened to AIDS/HIV due to the effects on the immune system, but haven't heard much else than that.
Spirited-Reputation6@reddit
Just google level 3 biological hazards and diseases. It’ll give you some nastiness to compare from.
LowChain2633@reddit
I see far less elderly people in public since 2020 and it's just so eerie (obviously because they still take covid seriously and are afraid). Sometimes I'll see an elderly worker wearing a mask and I know they're only working because they're desperate. It's so sad.
And yes the job numbers are obviously fake. They fudge the numbers for political reasons. We are told no one wants to work, but no one is really hiring either. The way I feel, I wonder how this is how people in the Soviet union felt? The constant sense of unreality is really getting to me.
Spirited-Reputation6@reddit
You’re right. Far less elderly out on their morning mall walks and such. But many elderly (70% min) consume the Fox entertainment news koolaid and don’t care about masks.
Last year, I tried to get out and volunteer again (covid safe). I volunteered for a little under a year. Chatting with elderly, learning old card games and mostly just listening to people’s life stories. While I was there Covid swept through again and at least 3-4 people died. Numerous residents and staff were downed from it within about a month’s span. Sure they were old, sure it was likely repeated infection, comorbidity even, but those 3-4 seniors would still be laughing and sassing today if it wasn’t for the disease and the general populations ignorance.
bananapeel@reddit
Upvoted. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Everything you said is 100% spot on, and many people will downvote it because it disagrees with their worldview.
Spirited-Reputation6@reddit
Thanks, mate! Refreshing to hear.
LoisinaMonster@reddit
Millions are being disabled by covid, and in the US, there's approx 1000 still dying from covid a week! There's like this rule or something that the media and ruling class have decided on, which means no one talks about it because if you don't acknowledge it, then it's not happening, right?
Filthybjj93@reddit
Low pay/ bad benefits/ bad hours/ mandatory over time “which I don’t do my job can’t do anything about it” the list goes on after awhile it’s not really worth it
SaliferousStudios@reddit
They've realized that they can work with fewer people. The "now hiring" and "no one wants to work anymore" is a cover so they can abuse employees and make more money.
absurdelite@reddit
Dollar failure. Paying out the useless finance and real estate bros has made our dollar worth almost nothing. Now no industry has enough money to pay people actually adding value to society (healthcare workers etc)
1800-5-PP-DOO-DOO@reddit
I'm older, I've worked in many industries, I've owned businesses and I've taught vocationally. I started in the work force as a dishwasher 30 years ago, never went to college and only ever worked. Im now in tech.
What I can say from a ton of experience dealing with all aspects of the workforce is that labor costs are the single greatest expense for any business and have never been more expensive. Additionally, your labor is the single greatest liability in business, and there has never been a worse work force.
Hiring the wrong people can cripple your business. Be it a mom and pop, or a large corporation. Be they ground floor workers or management.
Right now, we have the most expensive, least skilled and shitty workers in decades. On top of that, we have lead brain boomers with all they holier than thou horseshit and Zoomers with all their limp wristed entitlement, and none of them can actually do anything.
There is no vocational system in the US, we have hobbled general ed k12, and academia is pumping out degrees so expensive no one can afford to take the entry level jobs they need to get the actual experience to provide value to a company (which takes years).
So companies are reluctant to hire, people don't want to work hard starting out in the trenches. They think they should come out of college, knowing nothing, and only have to work 40 hours a week and be able to afford 3 bed house and 2 brand new cars.
Fuck, back in the 80's my father had a masters and at 35 years old he had two used cars, had to chop our own wood to heat the house and my mom hand sewed our fucking winter coats from a pattern. This was with his management level position.
I'm mean seriously WTF with people today?
People have such a massively skewed barometer of what they are "owed" for doing shit all for work.
So yeah, companies don't want to hire, and they run as lean as possible, because so many candidates are completely incompetent and expect the moon.
The best work I've ever seen is from small groups of highly motivated workers with personal buy-in on a project. Be it a deck or an Agile software team, this is where the magic occurs, round table synergy.
Nobody wants to do that.
Everyone today thinks that work should be separate from life and that we work to live, and our passion should be outside of work and work is to just collect a paycheck.
News flash that's not how life works. That's not how human history has brought us to this point. That is not what put people on the moon and invented the artificial heart, and educated children and saved lives in hospitals. That's not how my mom had a famous restaurant or me my construction company. You think the best Japanese swords were made by a guy that punched out 5pm every day? Or any of the masterpiece movies we have today? Fuuuuuck no!
Anyone who ever made anything worth a shit put their heart into it and lived it with vigor.
I get it, I was punching a clock as a dishwasher, but I worked my ass off during rush. And I worked lots of overtime so I could travel with the non-profit I volunteered for during my off time.
But still you will need clock puncher, and I'm not saying we all need to drink the company coolaide and become LinkedIn sycophants.
What I am saying is, what we don't seem to have is a sense of "crushing it" no matter what the job and "bringing it" hard.
As the years went by I've watched the workforce change completely night and day.
Jobs have become something people resent and are not grateful for. They have gone from wanting to be the best at what they do for work and instead treat it as a means to and end.
Because if that, we have lost synergy at work like I was speaking about. And as a tradesmen, a manager, a mentor, and educator and business owner, I know that synergy at work is the only way work "works".
So we are basically fucked because no one actually wants to embrace what they do for work as part if their identity any longer. We have become a culture that wants something for nothing and places the highest value in life on leisure. That is a cliff and we have gone off it.
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
Thank you for taking time to respond so thoroughly.
What do you think a solution would be?
1800-5-PP-DOO-DOO@reddit
We may be able to fix it if we can rediscover a sense that our collective and personal work is going towards something that is more than just lining billionaires pockets. But how?
Honestly, I feel like it's a toxic marriage where the two parties resent eachother so much they are unwilling to come back to the table and be vulnerable and communicate fully.
I think workers feel burnt, and rightly so with inflation and how they have been treated. And I can see how businesses havr been hurt too many times to trust workers (that being the poor quality education system pumping out under-skilled workers and the quite quiting which as been going on for decades, not just since it became a pop buzzword).
So my answer is I don't know, because it looks unreconcilable.
Historicly it goes like this:
Powerful mechants with no worker rights, everyone is poor and nearly a slave class working 6-7 days a week with just enough to eat and have a roof.
People rise up and create a working class aka well off middle class. Society becomes more peaceful, more tolerant and quaility of life go way up for everyone.
Money slowly get consolidated into the government and the wealth class because sociopathy is rewarded by society as a defect of human nature going back to the stone age. Money becomes scarce. The wealth raise prices because the flow of money they became accustomed to slows. The working class get pinched with both less money and higher prices. NATIONALISM pops ups and the middle class starts pointing fingers at eachother, and thats it. Game over society collapses. It can look like a democratic revolution, which is generally good, it can looks like a Communist revolution which is generally bad, it can look like an authoritarian revolution which is generally bad (this is what Hitler did when the economy was in the shitter in Germany and why some people draw parallels to MAGA movement).
So this is the known pattern and what the Treasury and World Bank work so hard to prevent.
They get a lot of bad press, but at the end of the day, what they mostly do is try to keep society from collapsing in this very predictable way by manipulation of currency and prices ( Post World War II Japan is probably the most overt example of this type of manipulation and its effects, there is a great YouTube video on it)
So to the question, how do we solve this issue of workers and businesses having lost faith in each other, history says we need to have some sort of "great reset" where two things happen.
We kill all the rich people and take their shit.
Life becomes a living hell for the populace so they feel two things.
2A. Greatful for what they have and able to be happy working hard, not demanding a life of luxury (because no economy can sustain luxury for all because for every person who doesn't work, someone or something else has to do twice the work).
3B. A since of ownership in creating their lives as a community. A sense that their hard work is not just lining the pockets of the wealthy but actually making a contribution to a society their children will inherit. AND people only do that when they have experienced how hellish life can be.
Sooo, we may be able to avoid a total system collapse if we can rediscover a sense that our collective and personal work is going towards something that is more than just making the rich richer. But I don't know how we get there.
And even if we do come up with the answer, how does a single worker in the boiler room change the trajectory of a giant ship? They can't, which is why we have the metaphor of a worker throwing a wench in the gears to stop the machine.
Shortymac09@reddit
IMHO, you start off good but the dive right back into boomer entitlement "no one wants to work anymore: that you so hate.
I work in procurement hiring consultants, here is what I've seen:
1) too many ghost jobs encourages a scattershot "apply to all the jobs" strategy.
2) recruit agencies using AI to modify resumes and robo-apply candidates to jobs they are unqualified for. Seriously, this keeps happening to our company. The candidates' real resume and the one submitted to us by the company are different.
3) A lot of companies and government offices are "too many chiefs, not enough indians". We've massively understaffed, undervalued, and undercompensated lower level work, so no one wants to do it. Management is also wildly illinformed of how much effort it takes to clean up and merge data from different systems.
4) Merging multiple jobs together and trying to find unicorn candidates. I once interviewed for a job that was a BA, PM, and GIS analyst role merged together for 70 a year.
Each one of those jobs is 70k a year in my area. You ain't finding someone in that role.
5) Job compensation hasn't kept up with inflation and basic necessity hyperinflation.
The education, rent, and housing are way too fucking high. Expecting a new grad to be happy with 30k a year in a HCOL area is insane.
Either we reduce the costs of these key items or we need to raise wages to compensate. Boomers seem to think we can have high lifestyle costs and low wages at the same time.
calmcuttlefish@reddit
In the health sector, burnout and deliberate understaffing by admin. I witnessed this beginning in the years before COVID, and then COVID made it worse. Experienced staff replaced by green, cheaper staff instead of a mix of experience, creating higher burnout and high turnover. Many red states are seeing an exodus of healthcare workers due to policies that are making it more and more difficult to provide adequate care. Newly mandated reporting of abortions by everyone from PCPs to therapists is causing many to relocate. Health deserts are spreading.
FrostyLandscape@reddit
We need immigrants.
jaOfwiw@reddit
I can only speak of my industry.
It's a job that pretty much the entire country's infrastructure runs on. One of the building trades. Without my profession and many others nothing will exist the way it does not for long anyways. I know of multiple skilled trades high in demand for more workers. Except they want skilled workers. Of course apprentice programs are taking in new members. But boy would it be foolish in my specific trade. We are relatively underpaid (union) compared to all the other trades. Yet my responsibilities can sometimes do several million dollars worth of damage if not done adequately. I will go to work and do the best I can, but even with my decently easy service job I have now, I'm honestly burnt out and my retirement plan has changed and been stripped to hardly anything.. my work can be grueling, deadly, unforgiving. It can take a toll on the body and has in my case. I got nothing extra for it, I get no PTO, no sick time, no thanks, and with inflation my modest wage now feels like I'm struggling to get by. I've accepted it's enough to put food on the table and keep the lights on. But I actively recommend against it. It's a critical job that just isn't worth it. Anyone making less then me, doing menial work, I feel for them, it's gotta be so hard, and if you mess up someone's order or whatever the service may be, you probably get treated poorly. Corps don't care, they get theirs and the big wheel turns. Eventually the corporate greed will crush the majority and something will change.
Famous_Fishing3399@reddit
Jesus told us this message on July 2022....
https://ibb.co/DGqqY4J
RESIST!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NeriuG-cWjY
Solutions to wut I'm implying....
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ExAALqwec&pp=ygUdaG9seSBncmFpbCBmb3IgR3JhcGhlbmUgb3hpZGU%3D
https://thepeoplesinitiative.org/chelation-therapy-with-dr-ana-maria-mihalcea/
anamoirae@reddit
The birthrate has been dropping for years, then suddenly we lost over a million people to covid. Hundreds of thousands also ended up with long covid making it impossible to work. During the shut down many workers realized they could start their own business, a YouTube channel or only fans page and never have to work at a fast food restaurant again. Many families realized that having two incomes wasnt necessary when one parent had to stay home to be with kids who werent going to school. We also have a very large number of people who have been born since the early 90s who are profoundly disabled due to autism. Add into that the fact Trump shut down many legal avenues for immigration and you have the perfect storm for worker shortages.
paracelsus53@reddit
They don't pay enough, so people move in with their parents instead of working.
karamielkookie@reddit
I think it’s long covid. I have it and I’m too disabled to work. Millions are afflicted.
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
This isn't medical advice but I had long covid for 4 years and tried everything. I caught it again in Feb. I started taking handfuls of zinc tablets every 2 to 3 hours and got tons of fresh air and sun. By day 4 my fever was gone and I was exercising within a week. The acute infection waned after a week. By week 2 it became clear my long covid wasn't coming back. I've been healing for like 6 months now and getting my physicality back.
I don't know what mechanism did it. I think the sunlight, air and zinc were key components to my recovery. I remember feeling like superman when he gets powered up by the nearest star. I definitely don't think it eventually went away on its own.
Wytch78@reddit
My kid’s teenage acne has finally started to clear up with a zinc supplement. Plus omega and selenium.
karamielkookie@reddit
I’m so happy to hear that. I’ll up my zinc and I’ll try to keep the windows open and get some sun. I’m housebound rn but still hopeful for recovery!
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
It was super strange. I felt like a magnetic attraction to sunlight even tho I was taking vitamin D. I was in a park in the middle of winter and took everything off and just basked for like an hour. It was incredible, like more powerful than any drug. I was probably high off brain inflammation at the time but it was truly amazing.
karamielkookie@reddit
That sounds so wonderful. I just got a new treatment that will hopefully get me a leg up. I’ll make sure to take advantage of any gains I get to go outside and experience the sun and fresh air. Thank you so much for sharing. Hope to join you in recovery soon
Shortymac09@reddit
I have long covid as well since December 2020.
Right now, I'm still employed thanks to WFH, family support, and reorganizing my life to accommodate my issues.
But my workplace is trying to strong-arm me back into the office despite my doctors recommendations and is increasing workload.
I'm starting to plan my exit strategy from my current workplace. I need to hit some financial goals and eliminate debt (25% complete) to then drop into a low level, but low pay 100% WFH job.
Most of them are customer service related but whatever, WFH helps me manage my issues and keeps me employed.
maponus1803@reddit
There are several reasons all listed below but the biggest one is that in the US there are more older people than younger people, older meaning 55 and up. The companies that are paying attention are freaking out about this demographic shift because not only does it mean less workers, it also means the value of the average working age person is rising.
Wytch78@reddit
Also companies don’t want to pay the elevated insurance costs for older workers.
Petalman@reddit
Wages insufficient.
lawman9000@reddit
I've encountered 2 reasons, and both ultimately come down to companies not being serious:
1.) Nobody wants to pay.
2.) You could be a perfect fit for the role and the company still overlooks or outright ghosts you.
DirtyScrubs@reddit
Simple, jobs don't pay enough to hire, Secondly no one can keep staff because there is no benefit to staying at a job. I'm college educated in the medical field and my current job offered nonraise after a year, corporate hospitals, typically a raise is less than a dollar per year. So I change jobs as soon as i find something else hiring paying, currently have an interview next Friday for a 10k increase in salary. This is why hospitals, and American industries are short staffed and without expirienced workers.
gtzbr478@reddit
I think it’s multifactorial, with impact from COVID (not just LC but having to care for sick kids/spouses, being sick a few days here and there). And also bad working conditions & looking for profit at any cost (pun almost intended).
There have been lots of layoffs.
Yet at the same time I know way too many people who can’t find a job! So it’s like… they layoff workers, who are not replaced… which creates delays and poor service. Just hypotheses.
Raphy000@reddit
Because the government pays you more to not work.
bobaja9915@reddit
Lots of companies went to employing multiple shifts of part time people or 1099. So you get burnt out people on one end working multiple jobs with shifting hours and not enough time to get good at their jobs with no benefits, while they spend their real energy on finding a full time job with benefits. Then on the other end of workers even hospitals have switched to employing doctors through 1099. Which leads to people not really being invested in their jobs or employers being invested in their staff.
redrumraisin@reddit
They found out that people will accept longer lines and what crew stayed on is willing to be exploited. At my job its always a skeleton shift and they refuse to hire new people, if they do its a literal 4 hrs a month.
HuachumaPuma@reddit
I think that many companies want to sell the idea that “nobody wants to work anymore” so they can get away with poor service that is a result of underpaying and understaffing
freesoloc2c@reddit
It's the pay people peanuts. When gas and food get too expensive to go to work then people just get welfare and stay home or do gig work because at least you work for yourself.
BushHermit21@reddit
"My only two thoughts are long covid is worse than we are being told or more people have died than we have been told. My wife said it might be a little bit of these two things, but also this is what you get when you pay people peanuts."
Bingo and bingo. I think it's a combo of both. Our vet's service has tanked, because they say they can't keep techs. I asked the practice manager whether they're paying them enough to afford rent, food, gas and insurance in our community. He threw up his hands in exasperation.
And everyone there has gone multiple rounds with COVID. They're missing things.
CharmingMechanic2473@reddit
The previous administration gutted the USPS. It will never be the same. He had machines destroyed to keep it broken.
Limoncel-lo@reddit
Thanks for mentioning Long Covid.
Economic inactivity due to long term illness is record high in the UK since the start of the pandemic, and government is concerned:
https://twitter.com/TorstenBell/status/1771449162661282206
There is no similar measurement available in the US, at least publicly, but disability rates are climbing at increased rate in the US since 2020:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU00074597
Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of people of working age who left labor force due to Covid related and Long Covid health issues.
OldShady666@reddit
I work at a large academic publishing house. Every few months there is a new round of layoffs as they try to automate another facet of our work or outsource it to India. These decisions are made by upper level management with no input from the people who are actually doing the work and making books. The result is that things have gotten significantly slower at every level, and we’re more prone to mistakes—sometimes really big and costly mistakes. They also do not invest appropriately in our technology: We’re now using software to copy edit our books, but it takes about a month and at least 10 emails to process an invoice. Don’t even get me started on the ancient, glitchy, and time consuming systems we use to get information about our books onto our website. The world is changing. People aren’t buying books like they used to, and I understand that will result in belt tightening. I guess my point here is that I’m seeing significant slowdowns as we try to incorporate AI into our work, and I wonder if other industries are impacted by this, too.
Thr33Evils@reddit
I think a significant long-term factor is the decline in birthrates, which has been going on for decades. I believe it resulted in a weak, unstable system, which got hit hard by the economic shock of covid. And a worsening economy is currently one of the biggest reasons more people aren't having kids. Wild government spending has led to 80% of US dollars in existence being created in the last 5 years; we are going to suffer horribly from the inflation still to come. To make matters worse, we've had over 10 million immigrants recently, but only a minority are capable of economic success matching an average American, and only a minority of those actually work, considering the negative incentives provided by generous welfare programs. So we have less productive, educated, civilized people than ever, and more illiterate, criminal, and dependent people than ever, no wonder the economy is in the toilet.
OldShady666@reddit
Undocumented immigrants cannot receive almost all federal aid. This includes welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, among other programs. I repeat, undocumented immigrants cannot receive federal aid.
DragMalibu@reddit
Lack of training and lack of pay. Especially in healthcare sectors.
trevormel@reddit
there simply isn’t a worker shortage. i just graduated from college and only TWO of my friends have been able to find a job. the rest of us can’t get hired, be it fast food, package delivery, restaurant work, or what we went to school for. if there WAS this shortage that you claim, it would be exceptionally easy for us to get jobs. this just isn’t the reality tho
Snowboundforever@reddit
Nobody wants to work for wages that cannot support them but complain when businesses raise prices. It is a self-fulfilling problem.
Wise_Mongoose_3930@reddit
I wonder if the fact that the billionaire class keeps getting richer has something to do with those prices going up?
Snowboundforever@reddit
That has more to do with believing that financial wealth creation will trickle down. It doesn’t
Sudden_Publics@reddit
I’m afraid that covid fatalities have been severely underreported since the pandemic began. Just in the United States the excess death count is far higher YoY since 2020, which is outside of the >1MM people who were reported fatalities due to COVID.
Agitated-Pen1239@reddit
I lost 5 people in 2020, all week elderly and only 1 was "because of COVID."
My aunt that died of COVID had been sick and in poor health before, so unfortunately, it was expected COVID would have finished the job. The other 4 people died of no official report, things were so busy during that time that we may never have an answer and couldn't afford an autopsy on so many family members. All I know, is they were sick and died. I think it was COVID and it went unreported. I live/d across the country so I couldn't do much to get more answers
TrekRider911@reddit
My mother was hospitalized for Covid, went in bipap for a day, then went on hospice for week before dying.
Her cause of death on the certificate? COPD. She never smoked, or had any other chronic breathing issues. This was in 2023.
I truly think we are covering up how many people are dying from Covid.
bananapeel@reddit
Right there with you. I lost two out of three parents and two aunts and a cousin. No way to know for sure, but I am certain that my stepdad's death was hastened by covid, if not outright caused by it. Your body can only take so much when you are elderly.
Sudden_Publics@reddit
I am so very truly for your losses. Hope despite this you and the rest of your family have been able to heal to some degree. 😔
Agitated-Pen1239@reddit
It's been a rough one, I have no more elderly family members left (that I've met) aside from 3 out of 4 grandparents, but only 1 grandparent I actually am close with. This year, my aunt died from complications of stage 4 pancreatic cancer at 71, she made it 19 years lost diagnosis. The COVID vaccine almost killed her in 2021.. COVID has been rough on my family, at least 6 people permanently affected by covid somehow or another. I can only imagine how many people have similar stories. I've not caught COVID (at least no symptoms) and worked the entire pandemic in hospitals. Life is weird!
Thank you for the kind words, I drove across the country mid lock down after losing the 5th family member. I had to pay my respects but didn't trust this virus or other people to hop on a plane.
rmullig2@reddit
People stopped going to the doctor during COVID because they were afraid they would contract it in the doctor's office. By ignoring other health problems it caused the excess deaths.
bananapeel@reddit
Not to mention, the healthcare system was so busy, people couldn't go to the doctor. We still see 6-month waiting times.
LowChain2633@reddit
If you had covid, and then you had a stroke and died a month after you "recovered" from it, you would not be counted as a covid death. There are many such cases.
Lockheed-Martian@reddit
How do we documemt that? I'd love to see real numbers.
Sudden_Publics@reddit
By googling it, Mr. Lockheed-Martian.
twatty2lips@reddit
No one has mentioned OD deaths... >100k in 2022 alone and ~80% are men. I'd assume most of these are young able bodied men. It's a staggering number year over year. These people aren't working or reproducing.
Snoo23533@reddit
Without meaning to sound callous, were these people productive members of society before they died? Like, ODs usually happen to drug addicts on the street. Not folks that have to go to work the next day.
twatty2lips@reddit
I have a particularly shitty example, 3 brothers. All the same year a couple months apart. All working at their family business, highly successful... one had 2 young kids... so yeah maybe look outside your little bubble.
Cultural_Double_422@reddit
The majority of addicts arent homeless on the street, they have jobs, families, and live an otherwise normal life.
OD's don't "usually" happen to someone based on whether or not they have a home, but you're rarely going to hear about OD's that occur in a home n
Mattna-da@reddit
I came to mention this - especially when it comes to worker shortages in the trades. It’s probably millions of people
LowChain2633@reddit
It's mostly middle aged people https://usafacts.org/articles/who-is-overdosing-on-fentanyl/
twatty2lips@reddit
Idk if I'd call that group middle aged but there's probably some overlap. This article is also only considering fentanyl ODs... seems like we are splitting hairs.
Careless_Donkey_6644@reddit
I think OD death is way higher than what’s officially reported
twatty2lips@reddit
I wouldn't be surprised one bit.
sharkbomb@reddit
rent > pay
kitty60s@reddit
It’s assume it’s a mixture of long covid, increased rate of people caring for relatives and increased deaths (especially working age deaths) because of covid plus corporate greed manifesting in several ways: not filling positions to save money which overwork current staff; such poor pay that young people who live with their parents chooses not to work low end jobs; a parent from a 2-adult household with young children choosing to be a stay at home parent because childcare is more expensive than what they get paid.
I have long covid I personally know 5 people who have had to drop out of work because of it. We are in our 30s and 40s, in the prime of our careers. Three of them are like me, and are so disabled they had to drop out of work entirely and go on disability, the other 2 are struggling but still working part time. Most people with long covid don’t announce to others they are struggling so unless you are close to them, you wouldn’t know. It also forced a lot of boomers to retire early.
bananapeel@reddit
Long covid here too, pal. I'm sorry for what you are dealing with. Still struggling to work every day and I often ONLY have energy to work and nothing else at all. Not a good way to live.
500_server_err@reddit
Population - With a Disability, 16 Years and over:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU00074597
(US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
LowChain2633@reddit
Not just extra covid deaths. Excess deaths are still way up, not all of them covid related, may due to fetanyl but many still unexplained. Plus generation z entering the workforce is much smaller than previous generations. Plus the fact that immigration decreased during the pandemic. I also have noticed a lot less old people in public since 2019. Older people are still not working and staying home because of fear of covid.
Corrupted_G_nome@reddit
I also have the long covid and had to change jobs from one I enjoyed to one that pays the bills. Its a shitty place to be but sure beats ei payments.
financeben@reddit
Lot of people died plus mass immigrants coming in now not working just given a bunch of shit for some reason
beland-photomedia@reddit
1.2 million were lost to Covid and 10% of people have Long Covid.
WSBpeon69420@reddit
Another thing to think about is how things are being reported. We hear record numbers of jobs being created but most of these are just paper jobs being reported on job boards by the government without any real hiring happening. It’s a nice way to spin that the economy is doing better than it really is when it’s just the government “creating jobs” that don’t really exist and then not hiring anyone to fill them. Many private companies aren’t hiring or are cutting yet post on job boards only to pretend they have openings and then hire from within.
Onewarmguy@reddit
Because nobody wants to work for the tiny wages employers pay, but they all demand experience. That's why unemployment rates are so high.
Tight-Reward816@reddit
Only two insights here:
1) the US Postmaster General owns much stock in USPS competitors and in I'd position as Postmaster General order the out & out destruction of sorting machines that were well maintained and in use causing chaos USPS nationally. 2) 1,000,000 Americans across a wide swath of life are dead, imo killed by Trump. That said what did we lose? A generation of a wealth of knowledge of experienced workers, their outlook on life, their interpretation of art, science, movies, literature, ... stories their children and grandchildren will never hear, never to aspire to.
a) it's always either political, or of faith, sometimes both. Shalom ....
Agape ...
🙏✡️✝️✝️✡️🙏 🫡🐾🐾
Snoo23533@reddit
In addition to retirees and covid deaths/disabled, an oddball factor is a large number of people are supplementing their income with a side gig or micro business. $15/hr is easy to beat if you have a skill in something. Esp if you have kids, it just does not make financial sence to pay for daycare. So one when the kiddos nap their working from home on ecommerce biz amoung other things.
SnooLobsters1308@reddit
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191750/civilian-labor-force-in-the-us-since-1990/
OK some maths ....... more people were working or seeking work in 2023 than in any other year back to 1990. So, no, we haven't had so many deaths or people leaving the workforce to take care of children or retirements causing a reduced labor force. I'm not saying all those things didn't happen, but, not enough to reduce the labor force.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate
We see a very slight reduced labor participation rate, just eyeballing, but, maybe a quarter point?
https://seidmaninstitute.com/job-growth/year/
Now, what about jobs? We are seeing more jobs in the USA than any other time in history, total jobs are up about 14% ish since 2018 (2024/2018). But we haven't come close to increasing our labor force by 14%.
LOT more jobs, just a few more people to do those jobs. So we got low unemployment and shortages of workers.
What happens when demand > supply? price (wages) go up.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
REAL wages are way up since the 1990s, ROUGH pattern is flat early 90s, up 1997 to 2002, flat 2002 to 2014 (roughly, some ups and downs) then steadily increasing 2014 to 2024, with a blip WAY up during pandemic then way DOWN post the pandemic, then recovery to today. But if you look 2022 to 2024, the real wage going up about exactly on where the trend line 2014 to 2019 was. The real wage adjusts for prices, so the spike UP during the pandemic was likely some lower prices during the pandemic (gas fell through the floor cause no driving) then the supply shortages just after the pandemic, as well as simply a return to normal prices, cause an inflationary spike that temp caused real wages to drop.
Lots of shocks during and post pandemic, but, trends over the last 30 years is jobs increasing faster than workers.
Now, NOT trying to bring in politics (though someone always gets upset oneway or the other). Immigrants are workers. Yes yes, not all, some are families, some children, but, SOME/many are workers. (separate debate on if they contribute more than they consume).
But when you look at the slow increase in US workers, and the sheer number of known illegal immigrants in the USA, its very likely the US job force would have shrank over the last 20 years, causing even greater shortages. Again, I'm only using this as an observation of the work force in the USA, and noting that worker shortages (the OPs original question) would be much greater with reduced immigration. (that may be a good or bad thing)
joegtech@reddit
Some combination of the pandemic and pandemic response are likely part of the problem.
This is a clip from a former nursing school teacher showing graphs of data from the UK, working aged folks dying in higher numbers than expected well into 2023. You'd expect less than normal numbers of deaths after a pandemic took out the sickly folks who were likely to die in the coming years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHXICFnF-do&t=79s
At around 3 minutes he shows the excess mortality is due mostly to vascular disease--cardio and cerebral (stroke). Shortly after he shows LESS then expected mortality due to lung and respiratory diseases.
This article by a former chief of emergency med at a US med school hospital addresses the increase in disability in working aged folks in the US.
"But among the labor force, in particular, the disability number grew an astonishing 33 percent since January 2020. Over the same time period, America has seen what one insurance insider calls an "open secret" of increased excess deaths—the number of people dying above what is expected. These shocking developments are surely contributing to ongoing labor shortages."
https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-death-disability-rising-among-young-americans-opinion-1837006
Then you have the number of people who decided to retire early during the pandemic or in response to the vax mandates.
International_Bet_91@reddit
1 million people died of covid. 17 million people in the USA have been diagnosed with long covid.
Moreover, many more people have had to reduce work in order to take care of children whose parents died of covid and family who have long covid.
lemonjello6969@reddit
People don’t want to work for nothing especially on demanding jobs. Double that when the money are you paid buys you half or a third of what it did before it even that. Combine that with companies trying to milk their employees for all they are worth and the productivity rate just plummets.
Happy and rested people work better.
Rooooben@reddit
But what are they doing in the meantime? When I couldn’t find the job that paid what I wanted, my bills were still due and I had to take worse jobs until good ones came up.
How are people able to wait it out now?
lemonjello6969@reddit
Homeless, living in cars, multiple roommates, waiting until their unemployment runs out, taking shitty jobs they really don’t care about, living with their parents.
Additionally, retail theft/theft has reached huge proportions for a reason.
Have you seen the streets of an American city? I have lived in many countries and only when I go back to the USA is it so fucked up. It reminds me of something I’d see in India with the amount of homeless or even in Myanmar.
Rooooben@reddit
I’ve lived in India, Delhi and Hyderabad - US homeless is nowhere near those levels. We have infrastructure that they are nowhere near - in major cities people were having water delivered to towers that would empty before the next delivery, where you see one encampment, the whole city is covered with encampments. That level of poverty made wages so depressed it was cheaper to hire people to carry dirt in baskets over buying a wheelbarrow.
I’ve lived in Los Angeles, Dallas and Seattle. It’s far worse than it used to be, but we are nowhere near India or Venezuela or any developing nation.
Emperor_Dara_Shikoh@reddit
At least for India, the economy is growing at a good rate so it will be semi-decent overall by 2050.
The level of drug use is way worse here though.
lemonjello6969@reddit
No shit. India has over a billion people and many more are in poverty.
HOWEVER…
You didn’t really see tent cities over flowing in multiple US cities like they have had on skid row before 2015.
Yeah, I could’ve included S. America in this but I didn’t think I needed to give every possible example. Okay, in a “first world industrialized/post industrial country”. There. Done. You won’t find a comparison.
Rooooben@reddit
Yeah so India maybe is a bad comparison. Other industrialized countries - yes.
lemonjello6969@reddit
I meant a mass of people living on the street made out of tarpaulin for visual effect not by quantity, but take it whatever way you want. Going from city to city in the USA and just seeing homeless…. Everywhere is not a normal situation.
I guess we just need to wait twenty years. Of course, homelessness can be criminalized now so the problem will just move to less noticeable areas.
StrugglingGhost@reddit
I'm betting a lot of people are doing short term, gig work
wookEmessiah@reddit
Odd jobs, putting more time into their side hustle, unemployment, etc.
LadyProto@reddit
I imagine that’s why homelessness is high?
Corius_Erelius@reddit
There's a lot of people living their cars doing gig work right now
beerbbq@reddit
This is what I’ve always wondered too.
Strange_Lady_Jane@reddit
A minimum wage worker who can't rise above that and who lives in a multi person household is so valuable staying home. They can clean, organize, and upkeep the home. They can manage shopping and cooking. This one minimum wage individual can offset home expenses by simply being in the home and Paying Attention to the home. This is what people are choosing. IMO.
Pontiacsentinel@reddit
Childcare is hard to find and crazy expensive, too.
XaqFu@reddit
100%. I can't hire anyone below $15 an hour. Cool. I need to pay a worker more to make me more money. I get that. It is what it is and it should be that way. I'm happy. Why shouldn't my employees be happy? It's an ecosystem that thrives on mutual benefit.
SlartibartfastMcGee@reddit
Too many business owners these days will say “no one wants to work” and shut down their business rather than just raising their employees pay and increasing prices.
I saw so many restaurants do this and it was infuriating.
How can you hate your own employees so much that you’d rather shut down than increase your payroll amount?
lemonjello6969@reddit
Sounds like my father from twenty years ago not getting that the poors he wanted from the other side of the city couldn’t get to his hotel due to a lack of transportation.
Also, put the wages in the job advert, fool.
XaqFu@reddit
Short term thinking or they were about to close anyways and looked for an excuse.
qualmton@reddit
“You know there ain’t no rest for the wicked Money don’t grow on trees We got bills to pay We got mouths to feed There ain’t nothing in this world for free I know we can’t slow down We can’t hold back, though you know, we wish we could Oh no, there ain’t no rest for the wicked Until we close our eyes for good”
No_Section_1921@reddit
Truer lyrics have never been spoken 😔
Sapphire_gun9@reddit
I sing this to myself at least once a week.
Professional-Gear-32@reddit
The widespread labor shortage is largely driven by the retirement of baby boomers, who are exiting the workforce in significant numbers. This “silver tsunami” represents a mass departure of highly experienced workers, leaving gaps that are difficult to fill. As a result, less experienced workers are stepping in, but there are simply fewer people available to replace the retiring generation, contributing to labor shortages across many sectors. It’s not primarily about younger workers but more about demographic shifts as a whole.
lucylouwho1@reddit
I am hearing some rumblings that the number of people that are capable of working and choosing not to is increasing. My s.o. just gave me a statistic they heard that says, in KY, only 67% of the qualified and capable adult population is working. Worker disenfranchisement might be a bigger issue, and contributor to shortages, than we realize.
ColonelBelmont@reddit
The part of the formula I still don't understand is.... don't all those people need money to live? Like, it's always been the case that if you can't find a good job, you work a shit job so you can earn some money. What has changed about that part? How are they even buying food?
annethepirate@reddit
I wonder that too. I'll share my experience, since it's different from "living off government benefits." I don't take any money from the system.
I just graduated with an associate degree and am between jobs. (last job was tied to being in college; job before that was good, but a dead end.) I can't find a job in my field with just an AS. For now, I'm doing handyman work to make some pocket change for snacks and soap, being a "housewife" to add value to my family for hosting me. This situation is supposed to expire next year, though. Other than that, I've been selling a lot of my possessions on ebay, but I'm running out of stuff, lol. I have annual bills coming up that I don't know how to pay for.
People tell me to not settle for a non-software job, but I just can't find anything that isn't horrible. Some say that I have to wait until January for jobs to come open... I'm probably going to start applying to non-degree jobs or lower my standards next month, though.
youaintgotnomoney_12@reddit
To add on to this, if you live with your parents in a house that’s paid off your expenses are pretty reasonable. Most younger people’s income goes to housing so I think a lot of young people are realizing it’s better to just work a less demanding job or work part time and still be able to have some semblance of a life. It’s definitely better than working 50-60 hour weeks to afford an apartment you just sleep in and don’t even own.
ColonelBelmont@reddit
Thanks for your perspective. I guess the big part of the formula for your personal story is living with others who pay for most of the things. I guess I do know a lot of adults who live back with their parents, likely because of similar circumstances.
annethepirate@reddit
100%!
It's being a leech off somebody, whether it's the government or family. I'm trying to provide value, at least, and they've said I'm not being a burden.
It sucks for my self-worth, but I'm grateful and thankful. I have no idea how others do it.
MiskatonicDreams@reddit
Some of those shit jobs don't pay you on the table.
And as someone else mentioned in this post, doing work around the house and being thrifty when shopping for food lowers your expenses by more than 16 dollars an hour.
theyareallgone@reddit
They are going many places.
Some are the other half of a couple who both used to work, but discovered during Covid that having a homemaker is often worth more than whatever wage they would net after taxes, additional services to replace a homemaker (eg. cleaner, more restaurant meals, hiring a handyman, etc.), and the cost of going to work (eg. second car & fuel, clothes, daycare, road tolls, work lunches, etc.).
Some are adult children who just never left home. They don't need much money since the big expenses like housing, heat, and food are already covered by their parents.
Some other men have given up on the mating market and so have no ambition for the finer things in life. They work irregularly and/or under the table to make just enough to get by with their TV, lawn chair, and cheap beer. The cost of basics (except rent) has fallen so much in the past few decades that if you are willing to live in a hovel you don't need much money at all.
Some have gone on disability, commonly for issues which wouldn't have prevented them from working forty years ago. Often these issues have a root cause in being unable to ever get a 'good job'.
A big group simply retired early during Covid, often when they lost their jobs, and either lost the drive work or have enough money to scrape by such that they don't need to work.
annethepirate@reddit
Housing is so prohibitive. It's the #1 expense when I try to budget how to move out and makes it feel like it's pointless and hopeless to be on my own. (It's around 40% at my current job prospects, and I don't live in a fancy state.)
lucylouwho1@reddit
I’ve run into several people that don’t work. All of them are on assistance, get food stamps, and tons of handouts from the charities. I am not sure of any ratio for changes to government assistance, but it stands to reason that’s it’s become easier to get by without a job. It’s crazy.
ColonelBelmont@reddit
I know people who do that too, and they are not "living" by any reasonable standards. Extreme poverty, constantly getting utilities shut off, kids suffering, etc. That's a tale as old as time. This new thing of one-third of people apparently choosing not to work... they are not all on welfare. They are not all living in absolute squalor. What i don't quite get is how.
LowChain2633@reddit
People who invested in the stock market or crypto and living off that. A lot got rich during this decade of QE.
Rooooben@reddit
That’s a question I keep asking and I haven’t heard a response.
Wise_Mongoose_3930@reddit
Well, if I knew anyone like that, I’d ask them.
But somehow, despite supposedly making up one third of the adult population, I don’t know anyone fitting that description, which, to be honest, makes me question the accuracy of the statistic.
frozencupcaked@reddit
They stay at home you wouldn’t see them. I lived with family for years and never left and never worked. Started with covid and then I just stayed in permanent lockdown because I couldn’t get a good job
Rooooben@reddit
So where are all the people who did that work go?
frozencupcaked@reddit
I lived with family for years not working. I can seemingly only get part time retail work, where I’m abused by managers and customers, hardly paid, and zero benefits. Still can’t afford to move out or anything of substance. I was better off not working.
If I can’t have a normal 50k job with health insurance provided and an apartment/ house that I can afford, then I’ve basically been forsaken by society and I should just stop working. My money now just goes to hobby stuff, even if I saved every penny there’s nothing useful I could buy
hungrydyke@reddit
In rural areas, there simply aren’t jobs where there used to be. People stay and cobble together income, manage to get on assistance, or they leave. Rural Kentucky is among the top of the list for depopulation.
The other variable that isn’t mentioned in here is the horrific opioid problem in rural America. Can’t hold a job if you can’t hold yourself upright. Recent estimates are at 7.5% in Kentucky.
Rooooben@reddit
It’s like we have more of a distribution problem. Out here we have every blue collar job hiring. Construction permits are 8 months out. We need those middle class workers, but housing costs is too high to get them here.
Maybe we can get workers from Kentucky to migrate to the coasts for temporary work, have the construction companies house them while they can send excess pay home. Some of them will like it and stay while others go home to try to make it there with their extra money.
ThrowTortasAlPastor@reddit
Hi, i am one. I made a shitload of money (loan officer) during covid, and left the workforce in june 21. I would be happy to work a decent job (not doing sales again) that pays me a quarter of what i previously made, but all the job listings are for about 1/10th of what i previously made or just fake postings. I still have savings for another 5 years without tapping into retirement, so i will wait out the corporate fuckery. I should mention that i could go get another loan officer job at any point, but there isnt enough business to justify it in the refi world.
Puzzleheaded_Town_20@reddit
The CDC website says that in Kentucky, 1.25 million people have a disability, out of a population of 4.5 million. 34% of the population. Too bad the state votes Republican, because the GOP wants to cut disability and Medicaid. A lot of these folks survive on government checks, work for cash or live off relatives.
lucylouwho1@reddit
We live in rural KY. We moved here from Michigan. I am blown away at the level of poverty and the number of folks on government assistance. I know a mentally disabled woman, whose disability is just borderline, who should be able to work. In Michigan, people like her would work their butts off and make a good bit too. This woman though, she doesn’t see a need for it. Her housing (trailer) is paid for, she gets free medical and cell phone, food subsidies, the works. She watches TV and smokes cigarettes all day and lounges around. I’ve run into several people like her. It’s bizarre. There little trailer communities all over. With our church, I went to hand out some meals in one of these communities. There was one couple, out of 30 homes, where they had jobs and were working. The others, similar situations. It’s depressing.
Dry_Car2054@reddit
I suspect that cutting disability is part of a plan to get people back to work for low wages.
GWS2004@reddit
Can you get a source on that? Because that's a huge right wing conspiracy.
deiprep@reddit
A lot of the late boomer generation are retiring or considering retiring. From the people I've spoken to who are close to retirement, they could easily go on a whim.
I can't say I blame them, IMO.
lucylouwho1@reddit
Agreed. I wouldn’t say that it creates the problem of shortages but it certainty isn’t helping it.
LastEntertainment684@reddit
Working in a manufacturing related industry it’s a combination of factors:
People died during Covid, this either reduced the work force or had an impact on other people’s ability or desire to work. (i.e. Grandma used to watch the kids)
The Baby Boomer generation has come into prime retirement age. A lot of these knowledgeable people are leaving the workforce.
People, but particularly young men, have withdrawn from the workforce in record numbers. For a variety of reasons they don’t want to or are unable to work, which means less of a pool of potential workers.
Work from home/gig economy. A lot of manufacturing jobs are 40+ hours a week on a plant floor. If you’re a single parent or don’t have a partner/family to do basic errands for you, a lot of these jobs don’t provide the flexibility you need. Many prefer jobs that are either work from home or allow flexible hours.
Lack of education. Not to disparage people, but the number of applicants I see that are missing, what I would consider, fundamental life skills is higher than ever. We’ve had to redo a lot of our processes to make them essentially fool proof because an operator can’t be trusted to do basic math with a calculator or read a label to know they’re grabbing the correct material or tool.
It doesn’t look like it will be getting better any time soon either. Generation Alpha is the smallest generation in 100 years.
All this combined is why companies are making massive investments in Automation and AI, but these projects take years to implement, require very specialized workers to maintain, and a huge amount of capital, making them a significant risk.
From a basic level companies are worried about their future right now, which is a big part of why you see prices being raised on everything (despite often providing a worse product.) They’re trying to cover things looking 5, 10, 15 years out.
youaintgotnomoney_12@reddit
Why do you think young men have withdrawn from the workforce in such large numbers?
canisdirusarctos@reddit
The mystery to me, being in a tech role that is tightly tied to the manufacturing industry working on automating many processes: Why are so many of these lines down for extended periods while seemingly nobody cares that they’re down? On any given day a third of our customers (some of the biggest multinational manufacturers of everything from construction materials to CPG to aerospace to automotive) will have their lines down. Defense is the only industry that seems to be running at full capacity all the time.
Corrupted_G_nome@reddit
Thank you for such a comprehensive take.
TinyEmergencyCake@reddit
Covid is literally raging the same as it ever was. Wym why is nothing back
2019 is gone. Forever. People have decided to literally do nothing in the face of contagion just like the people who don't evacuate despite forecast of 20 foot storm surge
mortimusalexander@reddit
Millions died during Covid.
Millions became permanently disabled.
Countless others either became full-time caregivers to a loved one.
Others went back to school and are still in school exclusively.
boobookitty2@reddit
Top comment is paying low wages and blah blah same as r/antiwork.
People that should have stayed left in Covid, young people suck in the workforce and have no one kicking their ass.
Satchik@reddit
I think the standard response should be flipped to "Employers just don't want to pay for good work these days"
GeneralCal@reddit
OP, this is more of an r/economics question at some degree. I've studied this in developing countries as well, and it's complicated.
The short version is that it's very easy to sit at home getting dopamine hits all day long from your phone, it's very cheap to watch stuff online and entertain yourself for far less than previous generations, there's far less incentive to work hard or innovate or take risks because the threshold for being successful at risk-taking in a traditional context is much higher and there's also entire industries built out of hedge funds literally doing the opposite and anti-innovating, wages haven't risen in line with inflation in most jobs, inequality is made worse as a result. That highlights and makes worse corruption, undermines rule of law, and makes people think there's no systems left in which its worth trading time for labor and effort.
BiluochunLvcha@reddit
imo it's a design feature, not a flaw. we need to lose it all to be willing to die in the next war. great reset. until AI can take over for most of us, it's not quite there yet.
I think it's all part of the plan.
pcsweeney@reddit
There’s only a 4% unemployment rate. The country usually has a 5-7% unemployment. People are more employed now than ever. Folks are working, so who’s gonna take these jobs? There’s no enough unemployed people.
flex674@reddit
Companies purposely understaffing, more profit, you ll wait….monopolistic behavior
Infamous-Object-2026@reddit
all I see are 'ghost' applications that are only meant to scare the understaffed employees
golsol@reddit
There is an interesting book called the accidental super power that discusses this in detail. We are basically in a 10 to 15 year period where the boomers are retiring with not enough people in gen x and y to take their jobs. There is still the consumer demand but a population decline affecting the producers.
Magnus919@reddit
There aren’t worker shortages.
There are employers who are too cheap to offer fair market value for workers.
Turbulent-Pea-8826@reddit
The big reason is because baby boomers retired. They are the largest population segment and it was always going to be a problem and then when it actually happened everyone acted shocked. Covid accelerated their retirement (or killed them off).
Also, younger people don’t start working as much as they used to. I have worked since I was 14 and most teens did too. My SIL never worked here first job until after college.
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
I'm not spreading generational hate by saying this, but my wife said she gets quite a few requests from 20 year olds that their parents come in for the interview for moral support because it is their first job. I thought she was making a joke that I just didn't get but apparently she was serious, and this is a regular-ass thing now.
BB123-@reddit
Why the fuck is the grocery bill becoming such a burden
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
I grow mushrooms and the cost of grain and sawdust has gone up a lot. I imagine the same has happened to fertilizer but worse due to the Ukraine war. Devaluing our dollar has hurt a lot. While the media likes to blame corporate greed, i think it's like 5 or 10% of it at best.
Quite a few local farms have started throwing excess food away. Farmers dilemma.. grow too much and throw some away, or grow not enough and run out of food to sell. So it is pretty wild to me to see peppers cost $2/ea and then hear a local farm is planning on throwing away at least 30 tons of food this year.
spinbutton@reddit
IBM just had a giant layout. A friend of mine lost 8 teammates, just two of them on the team now
capt-bob@reddit
I think older workers retired in larger than normal numbers, new workers figured out ways to not work and survive (a coworker said doing only fans and selling drugs and more roommates lol). Also Businesses realized they could get by working fewer hours with half staff killing themselves to get by and don't want to give up all that juicy profit. I said at my job that was down to ¼ of our previous man power where is all the money from people not hired going?!? They are sticking it all in their pockets and not raising starting wages because we are injuring ourselves enabling it, and they miraculously found money to raise starting by 2$ and we got 3 people instantly. I feel like if we didn't get so close to Mutiny and leaving en mass they'd still be giving it all to themselves in bonuses.
GatorOnTheLawn@reddit
Long Covid, yes.
Everybody screamed at Boomers to retire, so a lot of them did. You’re welcome.
ILikeCoffeeNTrees@reddit
People are lazier than a pile of cow shit
motsanciens@reddit
I have no figures on this, but I saw some older workers retire earlier due to covid than they would have, otherwise.
375InStroke@reddit
Record profits, low pay, no competition in markets because of illegal anticompetitive policies and actions by corporations.
notparanoidsir@reddit
Deaths and retirements. Millennials have been in the workforce so can't replace them. The generation replacing them is Gen z which is the smallest we've ever had.
Mr_Dude12@reddit
Many independent shops were closed during and after CoVId, many were owned by older people who elected to retire. The largest generation of workers are the Boomers, half have retired, the rest within the decade. The Gen-X is the smaller generation, gen y smaller still. After looking at the numbers I am beginning to chang my mind on immigration. We need workers
dnhs47@reddit
The US has a labor shortage = there are 8.2 million unfilled jobs.
But there "only" 7.2 million unemployed workers. If everyone looking for work got a job, we'd still have 1 million unfilled jobs.
The US labor participation rate - the percentage of adults working or looking for work - has been declining for years. It was 67.2% in January 2001, but 20 years later, in February 2020, it was down to 63.3%. That's ~16 million fewer Americans who've chosen to leave the workforce. (Same source as above.)
The Baby Boomer generation are retiring (leaving the workforce) at the rate of ~2.2 million per year since 2011; that's 44 million retired since then. That's despite a higher percentage of Boomers remaining in the workforce after age 65 than previous generations.
As smaller generational cohorts replace the departing Boomers, there is a ~500,000 worker shortage each year. Each year's shortage adds to prior years, so over the next 20 years, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates a shortage of ~10 million workers. The worker shortage will get much worse before it gets better.
There is a skills gap. As Boomers retire and remove their decades of experience from the workforce, they are replaced with less experienced younger workers.
Some jobs, like machinist or truck driver, are less attractive to younger workers than 50 years ago when the Boomers entered the workforce, so few younger workers are willing to learn those jobs. That's often a result of substantial changes made in those industries over the years, making those careers less profitable and more onerous, trucking being a great example.
Education and training are in flux. Colleges have produced less-qualified graduates over the years, causing employers to shift to skills-based assessments of competence, which have confirmed many college graduates are not competent to fill "entry-level" positions.
After investing their time and money, many graduates find they cannot get a job in their field of study. Employers find it takes longer to find qualified candidates to fill their open jobs, meaning they stay open longer.
Every link in the supply chain suffers from the labor shortage, so each contributes to the delays you're seeing.
Add all of these together, and things are a mess with no easy fixes, so they'll stay a mess for a long time.
BTW, it could be much worse.
Several other countries, like Germany and Italy, are much farther along in this process, with more severe labor shortages, much smaller generational cohorts, and other challenges. The US can watch those countries as they try to cope with their challenges and learn from their successes and failures. We have ~30 years before we'll face the situation they're currently in.
deaflenny@reddit
I work in Tv and Movie Production. Jobs started picking up finally after the strikes of 2023. There’s no shortage of workers. Big shortage of decent jobs. I have a feeling this is true in other sectors as well. If I’m going to work my fucking ass off I’d like to be able to afford a decent quality of life.
Analyst-Effective@reddit
Don't forget, there's plenty of people coming over the border that are willing to work for less
Analyst-Effective@reddit
As long as we keep the social safety net as high as it is, there will always be a shortage of workers.
When it makes more sense not to work, people don't work.
The workforce participation rate is pretty dismal right now. It should be over 90%
Mushrooming247@reddit
Companies aren’t motivated to pay enough, as long as they can barely scrape by with the staff they have and still make a profit.
And they know their quality and service can decline because so is every other company’s, for the same reason of $$$$$.
Workers are so expensive, their compensation is only part of the cost; companies don’t want to go through the expense of training someone who might not stick around, and workers don’t stay in one place for very long anymore due to income stagnation.
sploaded@reddit
Boomers retiring
MagickalFuckFrog@reddit
A million extra people died of Covid, three million extra people retired. We only add 400k jobs to the workforce every month so this will take YEARS to absorb.
Corrupted_G_nome@reddit
They retired. The baby boomers are retired/retiring and make up over 30% of most major economies.
From Korea, China, Russia and South Africa to Germany and Canada the largest generation of people are retiring or set to retire in a few years.
We have known since the 70's this would happen. Japan industrialized in such ways to need less labourers focusing highly on robotocs. Canada went mass immigration instead. Both strategies have pros and cons.
Canada's demographic pyramid in 2014 was a disaster but in 2023 looked more like it should. However madsive immigration during. Ahousing shortage has been very unpopular.
Japan is set to fall off the cliff in terms of population but retioled their military and industry to need fewer and fewer workers. This has led to insane working hours and a highly unmotivated and secluded population.
Same reason Russia and China have to fight wars this decade. Next decade they wont have enough men of fighting age to be effective as their population collapses will be truely catastrophic.
Some geopolitical tryes talk of deindustrialization of some nations.
To be fair some nations have very healthy populations amd they will be the centers of industry in the comming era. Mexico and Argentia are positioned to be winners.
Dry_Car2054@reddit
Japan also sent a lot of factory jobs overseas. Having something like a vehicle made in the country it will be sold in sidesteps both labor shortages in Japan and import tarrifs.
Laredo_10@reddit
I also would like to add that us and many industrialized countries are in the midst of a population crisis. To many people with specialized skills like doctors, plumbers, electricians, and so on are retiring faster then we are able to replace with younger generation’s. I believe COVID accelerated this EXTREMELY quickly. Many people went into lock downs and then just retired or quit their current job. I work in healthcare and this is an issue with every specialty, at every position, so all levels.
Alternative_Love_861@reddit
It's all BS, corporations are using it all as an excuse to run short staffed and increase stock buy backs and massive pay outs to their C level execs while their over worked and underpayed employees endure. Just another away the wealthy are getting over on all of us.
emk2019@reddit
Insufficient illegal immigration combined with employers offering jobs insufficient wages.
texxasmike94588@reddit
Low pay, crap benefits, and treating people as replaceable at a moment's notice keep employers without employees.
ninjaluvr@reddit
Not where I live in VA.
No problems with auto glass in VA.
No pharmacy shortages here in VA.
m0llusk@reddit
worker shortage zomg lol, have you tried applying for a job recently?
Vegetaman916@reddit
People are starting to realize that "working" doesn't work. At least not anymore. I quit back in 2019, a lesson I wish I had been smart enough to learn before I was in my 40s. Jobs are a trap.
First, they lock you down geographically. You end up stuck in some city somewhere, unable to leave for long or really travel freely based on whims.
Second, they monopolize the vast majority of your time. Without a job, I can now accomplish in a couple days the same amount of prep-work which before would have taken a month.
Third, they make you dependent on the societal system to live. You are caught up in bills and credit scores, worrying about gas for your commute across town, and so on.
Finally, they destroy your health and fitness. You start sacrificing time at the gym or going out hiking/rucking or other activities that contribute to fitness. Poor sleep patterns, the stress of deadlines and responsibilities, and the impact to your body from either hard labor or a sedentary desk-job type environment.
All things being equal, work just doesn't work. You need an income, not a job. "Hauk tuah" girl is doing pretty well, made 300k in the first month from merchandising. This is how it is supposed to work. Minimal effort and time expenditure for maximum return, so you can get on with the actually important parts of life, which are spending time with family and achieving your personal goals.
Younger people now are seeing through the illusion that is represented by the old way of doing things. They don't want to work, they just want to live free and easy. And if you put just a bit of effort into the transition, it is very, very easy to do.
No_Section_1921@reddit
I’m assuming you mean referral links? Is this an easy side hustle to try?
Vegetaman916@reddit
Yes, it is. Affiliate links probably account for about 40% of my income these days, and I don't really go hard at it. I don't usually do it with this account either, this is my real self.
But, I dropped that silly one above 2 hours ago. So far, on my Amazon dashboard, it shows that it has been clicked 13 times...
Now, when someone clicks a link, it links a cookie to their IP address. For the next 24 hours, if anyone connected to that IP address buys anything on Amazon, the credit goes to me.
No one has ever bought the tortilla, lol. But this link has already made me 4 bucks. After 24 hours... maybe it will max out at around 25 bucks, that's about standard for ones I drop on reddit. Drop five of those every day...
And links stay alive forever. Find a YouTube video for something like "fix AC compressor on 2004 honda accord." Whatever the top video for that search is, it will probably be the top video forever. And, while plenty of people have those accords, they aren't making anymore. So, that video will be there forever, right at the top. Drop a link in the comments for an AC compressor on Amazon. That link will keep performing for years.
Amazon Affiliate program is a huge thing because of that IP address cookie. Everyone is buying everything on Amazon these days. The chances of someone in a household on the same wifi buying something within that 24 hour window are high.
And yeah, you make a dollar or two.
Thing is, how many links can you drop in a day? 10? 50? 100?
It isn't hard. On another account, I spend maybe 2 or 3 hours a week just posting comments and such in high volume threads of big subs. I jump into peoples political and religious arguments all the time, and when people are arguing and you drop a link in it... i promise, they are all clicking it. Paranormal and occult threads are good too. Here on reddit, you can drop anything, and I mean anything, into r/Therian and everyone will click it.
And this is just one of hundreds of little things out there, most of which I am only passing familiar with. However, my entire MAG has switched over from standard employments to some variation of this.
It is worth it.
No_Section_1921@reddit
Thanks I’ll give it a try, I’m unemployed with nothing better to do right now anyway
LowChain2633@reddit
You mean invent a product, then have a factory in China make it for you, and then turn around it sell it? I thought that ship had sailed. You still need a ton of money to start with anyway.
Vegetaman916@reddit
Nope. I mean drop a link, stash a cookie in every clicker, and reap the rewards of a 24-hour Amazon Affiliate window.
As I replied below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrepperIntel/s/CYGtcn0Ez7
va_wanderer@reddit
COVID killed off or knocked out a significant portion of an already greying workforce, and showed many businesses they could make do with crappy staffing and not lose much business. Add in the massive onset of "ghost jobs" for a ton of dubious reasons, and you both have fewer real positions and "shortages" boosted by openings that never were but pile up in enough numbers that employers feel comfortable underpaying and understaffing.
tamadedabien@reddit
Think a large section of the blue collar workforce died from COVID. 1.2mm people died from COVID. Let's say 25 to 50 percent of them were in the demographic. That's 300k to 600k workers gone.
irrision@reddit
Double the normal number of people retired for several years during and after the pandemic. We have less people in the workforce now than we had before the pandemic. The birth rate also dropped considerably during the same time window.
stuffitystuff@reddit
1.2 million people died of covid just in the US and estimates around 2 million people were disabled by it. That, combined with inflation (especially housing inflation), is all the reason in the world.
kobo_fan@reddit
The last company I worked at is currently struggling with their community reputation tanking as a result of this. During COVID (VIC, AU - strictest global lockdowns, I had to carry papers to go to work), we pared right back to a skeleton crew. 3 people per shift (down from 8) to run a manufacturing plant, 12 hour shifts/24 hour operation, 6 days a week. After the lockdowns ended, they never increased team size.
Since we were doing the same volume of work with much tighter crews, we started pushing for more pay as we were on minimum wage. Nobody received any raises - they were counting on the rural location and low job availability to keep us in line.
We all quit, and now they're having massive issues with their reputation. Due to their low wage offering, they're only managing to attract immigrant staff, which is causing issues A. due to language barriers, and B. due to the politically volatile discussion around immigration here right now. There have been some errors that have led to livestock deaths due to improper training and having to hire people who can't understand management.
🤷♀️ I went back to university.
RowanGiaBarlow@reddit
I used to work in insurance. And, my boss expected people to come in early and leave late just to make more money for the company. There were also some weekends required and also days like black friday, etc.
I left. And, I took a job at a locally owned physical therapy clinic. It's like night and day difference in how I'm treated as an employee and how my mental state has finally been able to recover.
8-5 Mon - Fri, no overtime, no weekends, 2 weeks paid vacation and all major holidays, plus Black Friday, Xmas Eve and even the day after Christmas off. Paid.
The problem is that, here in the US, companies don't give a single shit about their employees, you're just a number to them. If they can milk you, drain you and kill you, they absolutely will so they can line their own pockets and give you nothing.
I will never again work a job that isn't 8-5 weekdays only and gives the exact same, or better than what I have now. Never. Let those companies who scramble for people to abuse flap in the wind, I no longer care.
thenord321@reddit
Wage suppression is why many "posted jobs" aren't being filled. I see jobs being posted for pay from 5 years ago, when inflation has increase cost of living and wages at other companies. Please just aren't applying to those low wage jobs. The problem is HR and managers not getting with the times.
Able_Software6066@reddit
It's less a worker shortage and more a hiring shortage.
dodekahedron@reddit
Post office has hiring signs up but isn't actually hiring.
Think it's like that a lot of places.
melympia@reddit
Low wages nobody wants to work for.
No or few benefits.
Companies unwilling to hire (unless it's below minimum wage for a fully trained individual with at least half a dozen degrees and 12+ years of experience). Because less wages paid mean more profit for the upper class.
People aging out of jobs.
Now put all that together with high childcare cost - and you have more and more families going "traditional" with one parent being the provider an the other the homemaker. What good is a 2nd working adult if almost their whole wage goes into childcare, commute and extra costs due to them being overworked and overtired (like eating out / ordering food, not doing their own laundry and so on)?
Imagine those families where both parents are working in a field that is currently short-staffed. This comes with longer hours, obviously. Imagine what 50+ hour weeks (for each parent) do to two parents who still have to take care of their children, their home, their everything. This practically forces at least one parent to only work part-time, if not stay at home full time. Because as a part-timer, you always get asked to work overtime, too. After all, you're the only one who doesn't already work 60 hours... Which, in conclusion, makes you a full-time worker with part-time benefits.
Oh, what a brave new world we live in!
LrdJester@reddit
The answer to this is actually multifaceted.
Part of the problem is the fact that during COVID so many people went to a work from home position. After the restrictions were lifted a lot of companies went back to a standard in office work schedule and a lot of people didn't want to go back to it so they quit.
Also, another potential issue that I see is that when people were out of work during the pandemic, and then when they start to go back to work there's a gap in their resume and people aren't taking that into consideration and not hiring them or they're wanting to hire them for less than what they were making pre-pandemic and thereby getting people not wanting to take those jobs.
Another aspect of this and I think this is a big part of it is so many people during the pandemic turned to alternative sources of income. Some turn to drop shipping or doing consulting online or somehow starting their own business. If they can't find a lucrative job that's going to replace that or if they are making quite a bit there and don't have the need to go back to a job there's not going to be an influx of people coming back.
I've also heard that there are companies that are advertising for jobs but when people apply they don't actually fill them. I'm not sure why that is happening or if it's even true but that's what I've been hearing from people.
sasquatch_melee@reddit
At this point it's partially made up. Some of the postings / now hiring signs out there are to falsely placate employees and customers. Some companies have no intention of hiring and are not actively doing anything to find, interview, or onboard new workers.
Dramatic_Chest_9180@reddit
Why work.. democrats pay for everything.. no need to work…
NSlearning2@reddit
It’s not a shortage. People are looking for work. Companies are simply saying they can’t find people as they force their workforce to do more with less.
AdministrativeBank86@reddit
Boomers are retiring and there are fewer young workers to replace them. It doesn't help that companies are pretending this isn't happening so they don't have to raise wages to attract talent
BoboBabinsky@reddit
I just read an article yesterday that said over 10% of males age 25-54 are unemployed and not looking.
anony-mousey2020@reddit
Short answer: this well cited article explains Today, there are 10.5 million open jobs in the United States and only 5.7 million unemployed Americans to fill those vacancies
Long answer: An implosion of trends from covid employment exits, boom retirements, low birth-rates, lack of a real childcare (birth - 18) ecosystem for working parents, plus a rapidly aging population.
Most western countries are facing this reality. The answer is to understand and encourage healthy immigration at all stages of employment and skill, not be frightened of it.
itsorange@reddit
The demographic pyramid for the US shows that there should continue to be a shortage of younger workers to replace the retiring for the next 20+ years at least. If fact expectations are getting worse every year.
https://images.app.goo.gl/C2nqHc3McZYnocFm7
Cryptid_Chaser@reddit
The US is currently losing nearly a thousand people a week just to COVID, and it’s not even the top killer. A 9/11 a month being a slowdown in death has gotta have trickle-down effects. Graph
Forsaken_Bison_8623@reddit
And that doesn't account for the individuals dying from the long term effects of covid like heart attacks, stroke, blood clots, etc.
The top causes of death in this country are significantly impacted by prior covid infection.
JOliverScott@reddit
I think companies advertise for job opportunities but don't actually want to increase their headcount so they rachet up the qualifications to ridiculous levels for the job description and compensation figuring no one will apply or be qualified and those who take the long shot are rejected for dubious reasons or never get so much as a rejection form letter.
coffeequeen0523@reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/s/iS5LDgHrpX
https://www.yourtango.com/self/manager-proves-hr-system-auto-rejecting-candidates-using-own-resume
pekepeeps@reddit
Billionaires and profits.
The writing is on the wall, and in my opinion, the top is taking as much as they can before the bottom falls out and they hand the disastrous reins of that bottom falling out over to the new generation that will have to deal with collapse of agriculture and climate extremes.
Retirednypd@reddit
Wait till all these illegal invaders start taking jobs... lol, you think getting a job and obtaining a livable wage are tough now!?!?!
Rooooben@reddit
This thread is talking about missing workers - immigrants are actually filling those roles and helping solve that problem. Springfield was looking for workers because they didn’t have enough people to staff their factories.
If you are worried about them being here illegally, that is what we need to solve - funding for border and for more judges and infrastructure to process the people we need.
Retirednypd@reddit
It was solved. Harris and biden unsolved it. But now, on day one, she promises to solve it
s1gnalZer0@reddit
There was a bipartisan solution but then trump torpedoed it because he couldn't let Biden get a "win."
Retirednypd@reddit
She caused the problem, did nothing for 3.5 years to correct it, denied we had a border issue, then a few months before an election tried to "solve " the problem by letting in less people every day.
Close the border joe!
Rooooben@reddit
Immigration has been broken for 50 years. Trump didn’t solve it, it actually got worse. Building a wall around is a child’s solution, it doesn’t fix the processing problem that causes more people to be here illegally.
Wise_Mongoose_3930@reddit
Too bad we don’t all have taxpayer funded pensions to fall back on eh?
Retirednypd@reddit
I guess you should've taken the test like I did
Corrupted_G_nome@reddit
They were discussing the shortage of labor numbnuts. As in we need more people to fill vacancies... Not whatever replacement theory conspiracy you are peddling this week.
Bad Eth-nat! Bad! sprays with squirt bottle
GodOfThunder101@reddit
There are an increase in physically demanding jobs that pay little. No one wants those jobs.
Decent-Box5009@reddit
Because wages have been flat for about 15-20 years. So no one is going to do a difficult, demanding or stressful job because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. And governments are allowing large corporations to say they can’t find workers so they can bring in foreigners who will work for shit wages and in shit conditions.
hollisterrox@reddit
It’s a convenient excuse to say you’re short-staffed, so businesses (especially small ones) love to use it.
Being short-staffed annoys customers but doesn’t actually hurt the bottom line that much. So why would employers work hard to fix a problem that has little cost?
NewfoundlandOutdoors@reddit
In some cases it’s actually better to be on welfare than work for minimum wage. This is especially true if you have to commute long distances because rent or housing is unaffordable in the area you work.
Valuable_Option7843@reddit
Your wife is right on the money. Wages are not keeping pace with inflation. And many people are out sick all the time now, whether LC, active Covid or reduced defenses to other illness.
Agitated-Pen1239@reddit
I've watched my neighbor get fired, twice, from a healthcare roll, because she caught COVID. They got rid of the COVID protections and she was fired both times for attendance during the probation period.
Shipkiller-in-theory@reddit
LC has taken a toll on me, burning through hours at work just isn't physically feasible anymore.
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
We've made friends with farmers and trade goods with people now instead of buying stuff at the store. I assume others are doing the same. When groceries are this expensive it doesn't make sense to buy them.
jmnugent@reddit
As many others have said, its a combination of lots of small factors. But I’d agree the biggest one is that Employees are fed up and burned out and en mass have begun to realize that Employers have no plan to “take better care of people”. It reminds me of that phrase “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
Inflation and cost of living is high and wages dont pay enough to live on. Why bust your ass and sacrifice your health or time for an employer who’s just going to underpay and under appreciate you !
EmberOnTheSea@reddit
I work a WFH job in insurance, nearly my entire company is WFH and we are drastically short-staffed and have been for years. People love to blame WFH for this, but that isn't it at all. I know people at all the major insurance companies, most of which are at least partial, if not fully, WFH and they are all chronically understaffed.
There are two main reasons.
Companies are unwilling to move wages, so undesirable jobs remain unfilled because the pay does not justify how much the job sucks (these are usually either manufacturing or service jobs, especially either extremely repetitive jobs or customer facing jobs).
Companies are completely unwilling to train employees at a time our education system is in shambles and many of the skilled employees are aging out of fields. My company used to have a 9 month training program that kept you in a pod with a mentor while you handled a very small workload to gain experience and skill. Now we give you a couple videos on the basic concept of insurance and expect you to magically grasp statute and contract law from day one.
Silver-Honkler@reddit (OP)
Customers have indeed gotten exponentially worse. I'm a small business owner with a side hustle. Things devolved severely by the end of 2021. I thought they'd get better with reopening but they got worse. I've been selling things online for 25 years so I'm pretty positive this isn't a "me" problem. A lot of times, people become so unglued that I don't even respond, because what do you really even say? There's no consoling them or fixing anything without them flying off the handle even worse. I've never issued so many refunds and just fucking banned people. My shitlist was like a dozen people before covid now each one is like 100+ and growing every day.
fardandshid1821@reddit
Just a guess but one issue is childcare. Childcare is getting more and more expensive. You can't even pay for daycare for one child if you work full time for the minimum wage of $7.25/HR. So it's cheaper for one parent to stay home and take care of their kids.
https://www.self.inc/info/childcare-costs-by-state/
https://www.care.com/c/how-much-does-child-care-cost/
Pay does seem to be an issue. Money does not go as far as it used to. Everything is more expensive and many fields just don't want to accept that reality. Someone talked about how companies hire people: They post an open job and the salary, take it down and post with a lower salary until they find someone who they can pay the least. And everyone in a company like that is working harder until they find a replacement.
Personally, I think the main reason is retirement caused by the enshittification of everything. Older people that were staying in their career field chose to retire. And I've heard only a little about the pay not being enough. It's mostly just because working under the stress of everything going on can be miserable. Companies that hire us are bean counting and walking over a quarter to save a dime. Companies want one person to do the job of two or three. Software as a Service (SaaS) bullshit making everything more expensive and difficult.
So so so many things that turn a fun job with great people into a relatively miserable one. Why put up with it if you can retire?
This article kind of refutes what I've just said about retirement, but I'm going off of anecdotal experience in the construction industry:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/02/26/what-will-happen-to-the-labor-market-when-boomers-retire-or-yet-dont-leave-the-workforce/
Warm_Gur8832@reddit
It is impossible to have a partner stay home full time,
So we now have an economy where someone needs to take the kids when they are sick, when school is off, etc. and that person is more and more likely to also need a job.
So they are either calling off, getting canned, or can’t work
Dry_Car2054@reddit
The cost of child care is part of it. If you have to pay someone more to watch your kids than your job pays, it makes sense to stay home and watch them yourself. Also, we lost a lot of old people during covid. If grandma is retired she can watch the baby. If she is dead she can't.
Pre-covid, people in my town used to figure if you had one kid it paid to work, if you had three it didn't pay to work and if you had two you needed to sit down and do the math carefully. Now with the lack of child care and the cost, a higher percentage of families are having their lowest paid working adult stay home.
verge365@reddit
Ageism
CAredditBoss@reddit
Employers are unwilling to budge on wages.
Cuts into bottom line and heaven forbid they miss on quarterly profits or face some increasing risk to their sales/business/revenue.
Whatever the reason for stagnant wages, businesses don’t seem to be failing. That’s the challenge these days. Up to workers to demand better wages and to walk away when denied. Put pressure on businesses.
iMcoolcucumber@reddit
Need more people in prison to work at slave wages. Capitalism is awesome
asloppybhakti@reddit
I think it's partially because employees have been treated as expendable for so long that they can now confidently treat employers as expendable too. We have adapted to job hopping as needed. Another factor I like to credit is the pandemic- we got really good at changing the goal posts on what constitutes acceptable behavior for the public and the public did not keep up (understandably so). Now they're all frazzled and confused, with less patience than ever, seemingly consuming more than ever, with service providers that are less committed than ever.
No-Television-7862@reddit
I was in Walmart yesterday to buy a camp knife I found online. Nothing special, just a good size 11" overall Ozark Mountain knife made in China (of course). (It was $29.49 in the store, but $18.49 online).
The "app" said it could be picked up in the store only. I later learned they didnt have it in stock in the store.
The sporting goods department was devoid of help. I went to auto and they contacted "someone".
A nice, mature, but harried lady named Roxanne responded. By now there were three of us waiting.
After being assisted I asked her why things aren't staffed.
It was then I learned this nice lady in her 50's, at least, was covering 5 departments, and therefore was failing at unpacking and stocking her shelves.
If they say no one wants to work it is purely political. It's a lie to cover up unemployment.
They simply arent hiring.
She reported they had four associates and a lead in toys.
Why? I suspect they are unpacking and stocking halloween junk.
Millions are out of work.
Many did the math and determined they were better off on assistance, and working under the table, since Bidenomics taxation by inflation and currency devaluation.
uhbkodazbg@reddit
I work in a field in healthcare that is dealing with critical shortages and has been since even before covid. The salary is decent, the benefits are solid and I get more vacation time than I’ve ever been able to use but we are still chronically short staffed and are having a hard time recruiting new workers. The baby boomers left en masse at the beginning of covid. That seems to be the biggest factor.
SteveAlejandro7@reddit
Covid is disabling us.
pile_of_fish@reddit
Absolutely. I run a business,and I have enough core staff- we pay a better than average wage, and that's been enough to keep staff, but I know several people who worked for us have only maybe 70% recovered from covid, and might never be able to fully work again.
SteveAlejandro7@reddit
I hear ya, I am sorry to hear its hit your folks so hard, you bring up a good point, it’s not just outright disability, it’s productivity loss too! I hope they feel better, it’s frightening to think of a large % of our workforce’s output cut by nearly a 1/3rd. :(
hollyock@reddit
My adhd meds are back ordered AGAIN. And this is a regulation problem Not a supply problem. I think it’s all multifactorial. You have over regulation you have ppl holding onto raw materials for better price, you have destruction of raw materials for subsidy and insurance if the price isn’t good enough, lots of moms got out of the workforce to take care of kids during Covid and never went back. Those that could retire did. No one is filling the actual jobs that make society run, we have a whole generation that was sold a lie to go 100k in debt for gender studies and art ( no hate and there is a place for these things in society but they are not subsidized and they don’t generate income) trades were seen as Less then. And then you have shitty worker rights/no unions and we are in indentured servitude. I was on the government Tit when I was 24 newly divorced from someone who had a severe mental illness and was abusive and wouldn’t get help. And when I got remarried and all my stuff was cut off we were more poor then when I was on assistance. We aren’t poor now.. but I would have been better off financially never going to work. So there’s a lot of things causing the problem. Just like we lost rights after 9/11 and never got them back for the guise of safety Covid was something that was able to be capitalized upon in the upper echelons. it’s a marker in time where the epoch has changed forever.
semiote23@reddit
Baby Boomer Retirements.
zacrl1230@reddit
Labor is expensive and business don't want to pay a fair wage.
pinkowlkitty@reddit
It’s almost like mandating people inject something they didn’t want to inject did something to the labor market. What was it though?
zacrl1230@reddit
That is not it. . .
EspHack@reddit
printer go brr makes it all pointless at some point,
people often blame "the system", but lets refer to it as "the game", a set of life rules we choose over killing each other over stuff, and "money" is the score in this game that hopefully displaces violence, if you mess with the scoreboard, players quit,
society as a whole is mostly dragging its feet, and there's no consequences other than more general chaos, that's what you're seeing
DisastrousCoast7268@reddit
Enshitification... But in meat-space institutions.
bigbootywhitegirl78@reddit
Because people who could got better jobs. Lots of folks in the service sector went back to school and got more training. Now people won't do those jobs unless they desperately have to.
boracay302@reddit
Im not experiencing delays like you not see missing resources.