The serfs, they are REVOLTING!
WHERE HAVE ALL THE WORKERS GONE?https://t.co/uzlchcYNK5
JPMorgan guesstimate:
35%: financial cushion with unemployment benefits, stimulus, savings
20%: early retirees
10%: immigration and visa issues
10%: rise in self-employment
25% "other": COVID fears, child care constraints pic.twitter.com/eZuR1mlXgU— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) October 20, 2021
Or, as Karla L. Miller said in the Washington Post last month, “During the ‘Great Resignation,’ workers refuse to accept the unacceptable”.
Paul Waldman, also at the Washington Post — “Workers are feeling a bit more empowered, and Republicans can’t stand it”:
… This is an extraordinary opportunity to look at the economic life of the country in a slightly different way, an opportunity millions of people are already taking. But it may not last. We could look back at this period in our history as a watershed in our approach to work, but the forces of backlash are never far behind any hint of progress.
You can see it at the elite level, with those whose message to the public is Get back to work, you bums. And stop complaining…
What is now being called the “Great Resignation” has many causes. Many of those quitting are doing so because they think they can get a better job elsewhere. Some are starting their own businesses. Some have decided to retire early, even on a smaller income, because they’ve realized they value time more than money.
The quitting is happening at the highest rates in low-wage industries such as restaurants, hospitality and retail. Many have gotten fed up with low pay, difficult working conditions and abusive customers. And many who are still in their old jobs are thinking about moving on.
This isn’t happening by accident. From the beginning, the pandemic was a public health and an economic crisis, and the nature of employment was at the center. When we put the economy into an induced coma in early 2020, we began talking about “essential workers” who put themselves at risk for the rest of us. But what did they get from all those expressions of thanks? Not much…
We have long told ourselves a story about America as a land of limitless opportunity, despite the fact that we know it isn’t true. We tell and retell stories of the extraordinary people who pulled themselves up from dire circumstances to achieve wealth and success, never acknowledging that it’s precisely the exceptional nature of those stories that is the problem. In a just society, you shouldn’t have to be a one-in-a-million genius or a maniacal workaholic to haul yourself to a life free of deprivation…
Sounds about right, as long as for the service sector you convert the "other" to "Guests Behaving Badly" and "Employers with Broken HR Practices" – Your piece on the Great Resignation is brilliant. Thank you!
— FoodieFondo (@FoodieFondo) October 20, 2021
Yes, 700k+ COVID deaths contributes—and it is grim to think this way, even for a moment—to a shortage.
But those deaths skewered retirees and we are dealing with a depressed share of employment relative to living prime-age pplhttps://t.co/nlNN2yORc6https://t.co/OZvLCJJOui
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) October 20, 2021
Here's why the workforce is leaving. I don't wanna bust ass, for admittedly high pay, for a house I'll never be able to afford, to raise kids I'll never be able to afford, and send them to school I'll never be able to afford, and then retire, which I'll never be able to afford.
— ?? UAE Exotic Falconry & Finance (@FalconryFinance) October 13, 2021
Container ships are lined up for FIFTY MILES waiting to unload at clogged ports. Where are the workers? Grocery store shelves are suddenly missing items. Where are the workers? Brunch meals are running late, waitresses are slow, hours reduced. Where are the workers? WELL WE QUIT!
— ?? UAE Exotic Falconry & Finance (@FalconryFinance) October 13, 2021
Thank you, sorry about that, I kinda spaced out there. Yeah, I'd like a Baconator and a Wendy's Frosty Dairy Dessert.
— ?? UAE Exotic Falconry & Finance (@FalconryFinance) October 13, 2021
Also, there’s reason to suspect these business whiners are also liars:
This is great. A Floridian got annoyed at the annecdata about how nobody wants to work and created a spreadsheet to track applications he made to local businesses. <2% interview hit rate. https://t.co/jZi24zWJQq
— George Pearkes (@pearkes) October 20, 2021
HumboldtBlue
Before we get any further into more political weeds, let’s savor this little man and his new Halloween costume.
Sure Lurkalot
https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/moral-panic-journalism?r=ag5pd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=
This excellent article, the Methods of Moral Panic Journalism, by Michael Hobbes, is a fine read and illustrates this phenomena very well.
eclare
@HumboldtBlue:
So cute!
Soprano2
I read that Florida guy’s story. All I can say is I’m somewhat skeptical, because what he did wasn’t random. My manager has had a lot of “ghosting” of interviews, which is just rude. Where she used to get a dozen or more applicants pre-Covid, now she’s lucky to get 6, and maybe 2 actually show up for interviews. Some of you may think that’s hilarious “sticking it to the man”, but really it’s just rude and inconvenient.
I think that first tweet is pretty accurate, although I wish someone would actually do some research to find out.
Ken
There’s the problem. Seize the 401K accounts and force those lazy sixty-year-olds back to work! If that’s not enough, cancel Social Security and get the seventy- and eighty-year-olds back.
Next, my plan to restore coal jobs by nationalizing the companies that have shuttered the mines because they’re “unprofitable”, then using the National Guard to force the lazy moochers of West Virginia back under ground for eighteen-hour shifts.
rikyrah
@HumboldtBlue: Such joy?
Ken
@HumboldtBlue: Sigh. As we get older, when do we stop jumping up and down for joy? In my case it was long before it started hurting my knees.
Baud
There’s a hot subreddit dedicated to the issue of people leaving their jobs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/
Baud
So I take it Dems are going to be blamed for 35% of the labor shortage, but not get any of the credit from workers.
Lt. Condition
Living abroad and talking to people from other countries has made it exceptionally clear how broken our work culture is.
The only countries that work the kind of hours we do are Japan and Korea, but these countries have robust employment protections (you basically have to go to court to fire someone, at least for full-time workers), medical systems that don’t make people choose between crippling debt and basic care, and livable wages. They’re not perfect, but a damn sight better.
But even outside of them, even in Russia there isn’t at-will employment, to say nothing of the rest of Europe. US work culture has so thoroughly normalized overworking, and overworking for absolutely no guarantee you’ll have a job tomorrow or even have enough to keep yourself alive that it really is monstrous. I left the country back in 2015 for a lot of these reasons, and it’s heartening to see this action now. Only hope it has a real impact.
debbie
@Soprano2:
Really? Submitting resumes and getting no response is what’s pretty fucking rude. I know this because I was unemployed for 18 months and sent out dozens of letters for jobs I was overqualified for.
Maybe step back and take the long view now and then.
MagdaInBlack
@debbie: …or being expected to go to a series of interviews and then never hearing a peep. I’m sure we both could make a list
Eta: Bauds reddit has a pretty clear list.
Ella in New Mexico
@HumboldtBlue: So. Frigging. Dear. <3
raven
@Soprano2: I immediately thought of you when I read it. I told my buddy that your and his stories are interchangeable.
Ella in New Mexico
@Ken: The knees. Definiitely the knees.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: Can you be clearer about what you think is going on, at the business end, that explains and justifies this? B/c it’s not at all clear.
Baud
@Lt. Condition:
Racism backed conservativism is the reason we can’t have nice things.
Betty
@Lt. Condition: Just learned about a health insurance company that laid off 89 people after upping sales quotas causing them to work overtime and weekends while giving the CEO a 66.6% raise. Yeah, God bless America.
raven
@debbie: And maybe her experience and my friend who runs an eatery are exactly the same for a reason.
Another Scott
@Ken: It would be a perfect time for Keynes’ famous comment (from his 1936 General Theory):
The DOE could buy the coal piled up at the closed power plants, hire truckers and railroads to take it back to WV, hire miners to carry it back into the mines, etc., etc.
But, yeah, it would make more sense to do something productive and forward-looking for WV…
Cheers,
Scott.
HumboldtBlue
@eclare:
@rikyrah:
@Ken:
@Ella in New Mexico:
Much-needed tonic, as I expected.
Roger Moore
The problem with the JP Morgan thing is that they’re reductively assuming people fall into only one category. I’m guessing that a lot of the early retirees, self-employed, and people who aren’t working because of enhanced unemployment are also dealing with COVID problems or are fed up with their working environment in general. That’s why ending enhanced unemployment benefits didn’t make people come back to work; it wasn’t the only, or even the most important, reason they weren’t working.
Ohio Mom
@debbie: 18 months is a long, long time and a scary time. I know you are working now but that has to leave a scar.
Ohio Dad (computer engineer) worked in the same place for fifteen years, the company closed his division, he had two short term jobs and now has been out of work looking for a full year. At 64, I think he’s entered unintentional early retirement.
I keep saying this: there are plenty of people who want to work who are not recognized by the job market. There is lots of ageism (older engineers have been out of luck since forever), people with disabilities continue to be hugely under- and unemployed, and anyone who is too: too fat, too funny-looking, too not-white, the list goes on.
There isn’t one job market, there are multiple job markets, and this focus on entry-level job openings is distorting the conversation.
And for what it’s worth, has anyone considered the idea that we have overbuilt the restaurant and retail sectors, maybe past the point of viability?
Chetan Murthy
@Ohio Mom:
How could that possibly be ? [says a guy who hasn’t been in a restaurant for 20+ months, nor any store except his local grocery and a bagel store next door, for same]
jackmac
@HumboldtBlue: Very sweet!
Another Scott
Anecdotes are almost always misleading. The economy is going through wrenching changes now, and labor is finally getting some more power. But what’s happening at any particular place probably doesn’t have a simple explanation. I remember companies collecting resumes decades ago and rarely getting a response…
In other news, SouthPaw was right to be very skeptical about the story:
Always beware of hot takes that sound incredible.
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@raven:
Or maybe she assumes too much. Maybe the applicants had received another offer in the meantime. “Ghosting” implies something she has zero evidence of.
raven
@debbie: Well obviously you have your mind made up and so do I. I think it’s bullshit.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
Absolutely. Hoping Ohio Dad finds something great.
Ken
Next you’ll be saying that there are too many mini-malls.
HumboldtBlue
“Daddy, what’s a wanker?”
Just thought I’d drop that here.
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: In the past twenty months, I have been to Kroger a few times (I usually do curbside pickup), Walgreens, and the liquor store. No Home Depot, no Target, etc. And I have not replaced spending on retail with online. I am probably going to get together with my fully vaxxed relatives for Thanksgiving, I honestly have nothing to wear but pajama pants.
Roger Moore
@Ohio Mom:
I don’t know how you decide whether they’re overbuilt or not, but I think they’ve been built around the assumption of endless supplies of cheap labor. They’ve been able to expand because the labor market has been incredibly anti-worker for a generation. They’re ripe to have problems as soon as there’s a labor shortage rather than a glut.
Baud
I’m surprised JP Morgan ignored the effect of vaccine mandates.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: @raven: I think you’re both arguing that there’s a certain lack of etiquette, of politeness, of adherence to the forms, in the ways that job seekers behave towards prospective employers. to wit, job seekers “ghost” prospective employers’ interviews. And that this is the reason for this guy Joey Holz experiencing what you see as “ghosting” by prospective employers.
But this is not at all what he is pointing out. Not. At. All.
What Holz is arguing, is this:
This has nothing to do with politeness, or the forms, or etiquette, or whatever. It’s got to do with whether or not these employers are actually looking for workers, and his argument is that they aren’t really, b/c if they were, then they’d be responding, or they’d have taken down their help wanted signs after filling their hiring quotas.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Just in time labor.
Chetan Murthy
@eclare:
heh indeed. same here. I think I’ll buy some sweat pants to wear once I can start going to the gym again, until I can drop this pandemic weight. I’ve bought some kitchen implements and an instant pot, but that’s it for durable goods. No apparel so far. Yeah: for some of us, our consumption patterns are changing.
Soprano2
@debbie: Yes, that is rude too. We don’t do that. Don’t project other’s rudeness onto me or my manager.
Soprano2
@raven: All these people rejoicing are going to be unhappy when the only restaurants left are places like McDonald’s and Applebee’s.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: If you’re talking about the “ghosting” of interviews, I think it’s people who are applying for jobs to satisfy state unemployment who have no intention of interviewing or actually taking a job. Either that, or they find a job before the interview but don’t have the common courtesy to cancel it.
khead
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, thanks for posting this. Didn’t want to stop and take the time to address everyone in that exchange and you did a fine job. Forget etiquette.
The issue is… if it’s as bad as businesses say, those businesses should be beating down his door to offer him a job.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Interesting.
Who’s number three? Coons? Carper? Feinstein? Back in the day Leahy was known as one of the old bulls who opposed any change to anything, but I think he’s come out for some degree of at least reform
also, funny
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: Well, they were going out of business constantly before Covid. The sector has always been overpopulated because people get bored easily.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: With respect, I will continue to rejoice:
NotMax
@Soprano2
What, no ‘heartland’ diners?
//
Soprano2
@debbie: I’m not imaging people scheduling interviews and not showing up. I suppose you think it’s OK to do that and not cancel the interview if you took another job. How does my manager know what happened? It’s rude no matter what the cause is.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: Again, you’re focusing on the prospective employee’s “bad behaviour”. But Holz is not talking about bad behaviour: he’s talking about whether these employers even want to hire at all.
Mai Naem mobile
Maybe Mr Sav-A-Buck CEO(enabled by Congress) will wonder about the intelligence of outsourcing everything to the rest of the world when they see all those container ships waiting. I know I should give a crap but I don’t. I have never understood why alcohol wipes need to be imported from China.
MomSense
@HumboldtBlue:
That was so sweet. I also love the old dog who is so nonchalant about all the excitement.
Wakanda forever!
Steeplejack
Joe Weisenthal:
“Incredible. One of the most crucial links in the supply chain has been for years built on the premise that some workers would provide labor for free.”
Bloomberg:
debbie
@Soprano2:
It is no less rude to not get a response after submitting an application or resume. Stop assuming applicants are rude and uncouth.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
But it’s fine for you to project rudeness onto the guy whose article you’re criticizing?
CaseyL
@Lt. Condition: The work culture is a reflection of how broken American society and culture are.
The traits that matter most, in terms of material return, are the worst ones, and we have built a parasitic, predatory, downright brutalist culture on that foundation.
The Right uses “socialism!” as a bogeyman. I’ll give them socialism, by God: I would dance in the street if we could nationalize banks, hospitals, and break up any corporation with a vertical or horizontal monopoly.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
Welcome to the world of at-will employment, world that [checks notes] is much more to the advantage of employers than employees. There are downsides to treating workers as replaceable cogs, to be thrown away when they no longer fit perfectly: workers, bit-by-bit, return the favor.
Perhaps you might reflect on the value of a union for the workers in your sector, region-wide, so that there would be structure and manageability to the hiring process, and a partner to work with you in that.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: I know what he’s arguing – I read the article. It costs money to advertise jobs, look at applications, and interview people. Everyone is not suitable for every job. (It’s also possible he radiated “asshole”, too.) Plus, he says he deliberately picked certain places to apply. Every restaurant in my city is not advertising “help wanted” just for shits and giggles. You should see our total outlays for Indeed this year – it’s a lot more than we’ve ever had to spend before.
Percysowner
@Soprano2: Restaurants have always had a pretty large failure rate. I live in a restaurant heavy city, and many of the non-McDonalds,etc. are transitioning. Carry out is big. They are starting to handle delivery themselves vs. Grubhub. Curbside pickup is at virtually every restaurant in town.
Ohio decided to allow restaurants to sell alcoholic drinks for carryout/curbside (2 per meal ordered) and restaurants can now deliver. That will help restaurants that rely on liquor sales.
Yes, restaurants that have been around for a while have failed, although a LOT did so early pandemic. But all in all, mid-priced restaurants are coping and even the upscale ones seem to be finding their footing. Patio dining is BIG if they can find the space.
khead
Anyone else remember the Biden Town Hall from Cinci with this jackass?
Restaurant bro owner actually asked Biden – “How do you and the Biden administration plan to incentivize those that haven’t returned to work yet?” Uh, that’s your job bruh.
Matt McIrvin
@Steeplejack: It’s kind of reminiscent of the old “shape-up” that longshoremen would do to get hired for the day in the time before containerization. Of course, that was usually completely corrupt, and jobs were awarded through mobbed-up organizations and required kickbacks to the hiring managers.
ian
@debbie:
@Soprano2:
Guys, both of these things can be rude, and both of them can be reasonable responses by people who have a lot going on and haven’t experienced the other side of the equation. This is not an either/or
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: A business that advertises open positions for hiring, and then doesn’t respond to suitable resumes, is one that is not advertising honestly. That is all.
Now, you could argue that his resumes aren’t suitable. But that’s not what you did: you argued that he was impolite, or rude, or whatever. Your arguments simply aren’t relevant to the situation being described in the story.
phdesmond
@HumboldtBlue:
it was sweet indeed.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: Man, all I’ll say to that is you have no idea. Many of the people piously ordering takeout and buying stuff from Amazon so they didn’t have to go to the store didn’t seem to have any idea how many people had to actually go to work so they could safely stay at home. If our government had actually supported small business instead of saying “fuck you open up” after two months things might have been different. Good luck finding a restaurant that hasn’t been open since March 2020, because they’re all out of business.
Mary G
I’m listening to “State of Terror” by HRC and Louise Penny. It starts out kind of wooden and stilted, but once it gets rolling it’s not bad. She flies all over and when she gets back to the State Department, it’s really busy and the person who was overseas with her says “oh noes, is there another crisis?” and she says “oh, every day at least one country falls in the crapper.” She takes some good shots at the fictional former president standing in for TFG. The plot is silly, with her best friend and senior advisor, a former schoolteacher, as her sidekick.
‘
Soprano2
@debbie: Geez, I’m not talking about everyone. I know they’re not all like that, but it seems like more of a problem now than before Covid. Sorry, I didn’t mean you.
Soprano2
@Roger Moore: No, just speculating. What he says he found seems strange to me is all.
dman
@Soprano2:
do you own a restaurant by chance
Because you sound like every self absorbed, Ahole owner/boss type I have come across in my life.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
Poor-mouth much? You’re the boss. It’s your responsibility to provide a safe workplace, and if you can’t do that, then to stay closed. Jesus, how can this be so hard to understand? Line cooks are literally the most dangerous job for covid risk.
Now you can see why I have a hard spot in my heart for every restaurant that was open during the pandemic. B/c I pretty much assume they all were run by people who believe as you believe, and I want them all to go bankrupt.
I was watching during the pandemic, as I was stuck in my house, and associations of restaurants and other small businesses were bombarding public officials with demands to reopen too soon — demands that ended up killing many, many people. And I will not forget.
It is attitudes like yours that prolonged this pandemic. And I will not forget.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: Good to know you think rudeness is ok. I would never behave in that way because I don’t let other’s behavior determine how I act. I’ve worked for shitty people too.
MomSense
David Chang has a new series on Hulu called The Next Thing You Eat. A lot of the issues that have come up in this thread about the restaurant industry are discussed on the series.
Steeplejack
@Matt McIrvin:
It reminded me of those background scenes in old movies and newsreels where lines of sweating lascars in loincloths are lined up to hump huge bales of whatever off freighters. One of the lowest forms of piecework. It’s unconscionable.
The pandemic has turned over a lot of rocks with a lot of creepy things underneath.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: he’s on Marc Maron’s podcast today, too, I haven’t listened yet
Richard Fox
All I can think is I lost my job last month and I’m scared silly. 61 years old and mortgage and all of it. Looking through job postings is nightmarish and difficult. Posts like this give me some perspective on how others perceive this economic situation -which helps. I just wish it didn’t happen this time of my life.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: So cute.
Steeplejack
@Richard Fox:
God luck with your job search! Reach out here for help and advice when you need it.
zhena gogolia
@Richard Fox: Oh, I am sorry, that is so tough. I wish you the very best of luck.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: Until around 2010, I used to never tip at coffeeshops: after all, I was there for my espresso, and not for anything else. And my coffee was fine. Of course, I always paid my seat-rent in espressos — I wasn’t a “camp all day with a single drink” guy. Then one day, I decided to start an experiment, and always tipped at least a dollar. Always. Miraculously, workers in coffeeshops would remember my name; they’d bring me out extra espressos as I sat typing away, etc. They would always shout out when I came into the store, and on and on and on.
It was truly embarrassing and shameful, just how much they would do, for what amounted to maybe a buck more an hour, divided across all the workers in the cafe.
What is rude, is at-will employment. What is rude, is the tipped minimum wage. What is rude, is that female waitstaff …. ugh, I can’t go on.
The balance of power in our country is *hopelessly* tilted towards bosses. Until that is redressed, there is simply no way that anything workers do to reclaim some power for themselves, can be called rude.
ETA: why “at least a dollar”? b/c that means you’re dropping a -bill- into the tip jar, not change. So the workers can see that you did so. And that’s actually pretty rare. It’s all disgusting.
Richard Fox
@Steeplejack: that’s very kind. Thank you. Have to gather my game plan. It’s very fuzzy at this point. But I’ll keep this in mind. Much appreciated.
Jeffro
@Ohio Mom: yes on the restaurant and retail overbuilding
kind of shocked no reporters are ‘connecting the dots’: Amazon is growing by the equivalent of what, 50 shopping malls’ worth of sales per day?
debbie
@Richard Fox:
I really feel your pain. Don’t think about a career. Apply for every job you think you could do. Fight against any growing panic you’ll never find anything. Stay present and open to possibilities.
Richard Fox
@zhena gogolia: thanks very much. Kindness- that’s always balm to the spirit. :-)
Kay
@Soprano2:
I have a lot of sympathy for restaurant owners. You got slammed and it went on and on and on. I like owner operated restaurants. I don’t go to them that much, admittedly, but you need them in towns and cities – our sort of dying “uptown” would be just horribly depressing without them and I always hope they make it when they open. Try to stick it out a while longer. It’s a weird time and I don’t think anyone knows what’s really going on with workers. It’ll settle down.
They pumped a ton of money in so the economy wouldn’t crash and it (mostly) worked. It’s better than a decade long recession, right?
zhena gogolia
@Richard Fox:
I have no idea if this site is of any use, but it’s AARP:
https://www.aarp.org/work/job-search/
Richard Fox
@debbie: what’s painful is to see jobs where I have some of the skills for sure, but there’s so much more being asked for which involves more training. I’m a permissions photo guy in publishing. Photo researcher too. I also did those paintings a few weeks back.. so I create artwork when my mind allows me serenity. But trying to siphon my talents into jobs with social media and all manner of photoshop requirements- well it’s daunting and dispiriting and a bit beyond me. I’ve spent two days looking through jobs and seeing none where I fit. But at the moment I am overthinking and anxious, which doesn’t help. On a positive note I did have an interview with one company I thought had potential. Just waiting to hear back from them. Regardless it’s just all so irritating. Anyway thanks for hearing me vent. Cheers.
Richard Fox
@zhena gogolia: I’m going to bookmark this link and look at it with a clear head. Thanks so much. :-)
Ken
Either because the company saves three cents per hundred units; or because somewhere in the manufacturing process some hideously toxic waste is produced that’s tightly regulated in the US. Most likely both.
debbie
@Richard Fox:
This was back in the last recession, but I joined a lot of groups and did a lot of reading on LinkdIn about the parts of social media I wasn’t familiar with. It at least gave me a basic understanding so I wouldn’t look like a total idiot at interviews. They also have job listings that are more reliable than Indeed.
Kay
He dislikes her as much as we do. “She will not raise taxes a single penny on wealthy people” – ooof.
Richard Fox
Bill Arnold
@MagdaInBlack:
I spent all of 2020 looking for work in corporate tech (not desperately hard, since I had some retirement savings to start burning through). I’ve experienced that; interviews, with absolutely no communication from the employer after an interview (might even be a second+ interview). I talked with an HR person socially and this is, according to him, a common and accepted practice; employers don’t want any grounds for discrimination and they have no (or not much) legal exposure for rudeness. (Yes, IMO HR people are Evil until proven otherwise.)
Stacib
@Richard Fox: There are also industry-specific temp agencies. Unfortunately, many companies have resorted to using them for a labor pool, but I got the best job of my life through one. Good luck, and know it’s not only you who has submitted hundreds of resumes with few, if any, responses.
Ascap_scab
I’m one of the retired. I quit a year ago, a year early, because after a 24 year career of working 50-60 hours per week in electronics, then a 16 year career of 60-70 hours per week in trucking, I couldn’t take it anymore. Covid certainly played a part, but wasn’t the deciding factor. I’m just completely worn out with physical and health issues.
Initially, I looked for something part-time just to keep active, but “part-time” was mostly full time (30-34 hours) for slave wages and no benefits, so I said screw it.
I’m done and not going back.
James E Powell
I thought the federal UI benefits ended in September.
Also, spending savings is not a cushion, it’s a reduction in wealth. And often it’s a desperate, last ditch thing.
James E Powell
@Kay:
Biden can’t possibly dislike her as much as I do. He’s much too fine a person.
Bill Arnold
@Richard Fox:
One thing that helped me was spending an hour or four a day working on both specific skills and broad knowledge (sci/tech). The mental exercise is good, and sometimes you get lucky and surprise an interviewer. There is definitely age discrimination; breadth of knowledge helped me land a job.
MomSense
@Richard Fox:
I’m sorry to hear you are going through this. If you want a fresh pair of eyes to look at your resume and maybe talk or zoom about your search I am off work next week and have time to help. I’m not a professional but I have helped a few friends and myself (learned a lot from a long round of searching and from having to reimagine myself a few times). I’m Maine coast made at the google mail.
catothedog
@Ken:
I had speculated here previously that older workers retiring was driving a chain reaction — workers moving up the food-chain was the reason the shittier jobs are begging for workers.
20% is huge, if this data is correct. Social security will be on the chopping block for sure when Rethugs will get back power. Guaranteed.
Expect to be drowned in messaging about how retirement is bad for you. All sugarcoated like this..
Why Retirement Is A Bad Idea, Financially And Psychologically
Coming soon – “Eat catfood or keep working”
Soprano2
@dman: My husband and I own a pub, yes. It’s a local place we bought in 2015. And you have no idea what kind of owners we are.
Kay
@James E Powell:
Biden wants to raise taxes.He ran on it and he talks about it constantly. I bet that pisses him off more than all the other things she/they are blocking. He’s right too- they need to collect more revenue. Money- not promises of trickle down or elaborate financing trickery. “Budget hawk” my ass. She’s opposed to paying for things.
JaneE
Ignoring resumes and job applications has been common since before I started working. I sent out dozens of resumes when I was a newly minted programmer in 1970, and got something like 5 replies, 4 thanks but no thanks and 1 that just acknowledged the receipt of my resume and said it would be filed for future consideration.
Not quite a decade later I changed jobs, and sent out more resumes. I also used a headhunting agency, which was how I actually got my new job. No responses at all to my resumes, but two years later I did get a call from one of them who had just “found” my resume and wanted to know if I were still interested in working for them. Strangely enough I wasn’t.
Soprano2
@Richard Fox: Oh man that sucks, I’m sorry. I wish you luck finding something. Ten years ago my husband lost his job at the age of 64, so he just took Social Security and retired. How far are you from 62?
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: This is the second post in which your first instinct appears to be to kick down at workers. It’s a tell, y’know?
Richard Fox
@MomSense: that would be excellent. Thanks so much. I wasn’t quite sure of how to reach you based on what you had written. But my email is [email protected]. (If that’s okay to write that here.) cheers.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: Ah, so you think all restaurants and bars should have gone out of business during the pandemic. As I said before, if our government had actually supported small business during Covid like some other countries did, things would have been different here. Do you think all restaurants should still be closed?
Richard Fox
@Soprano2: just turned 61 in July. I have 6 years before Social Security. So it’s an odd spot in time.
James E Powell
@Kay:
My take is that the big money people had their plans in place in case the Rs lost both seats in Georgia. They knew who was weak, who was ready to be bought. While Trump & his mob were attacking the capitol, the big money people put their plans into action.
I don’t know if it’s promises they made to her or Senator Geary type stuff, but this isn’t her, it’s positions she has taken that she doesn’t really believe, but she’s going to stick to them anyway. Her remarks on the filibuster, for instance. Nobody in politics is that stupid or divorced from reality. She’s for the filibuster because that was part of the deal she made. Same with the taxes. 50-50 senate, they only needed one and they got her.
Richard Fox
@Bill Arnold: excellent. I intended to try training myself on a specific data asset management system; I actually enjoy that sort of thing. I’ve done work on a rights platform for assets but need more in depth training, and of course companies only want folks who have reservoirs of experience. But one has to start somewhere, and I have a bit of a head start. So it’s smart to try.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I hope you can ride it out. When the pandemic hit I was kind of energized to help our small business clients so was thrilled with all the subsidies, etc. I think I put more people on “shared work” – an Ohio unemployment deal where employer pays half and state pays half- that anyone else in the county. I’m the shared work expert :)
I wanted them to survive, not just because they pay me but because they’re essential to towns. We had two old fashioned motels- I honestly have no idea who stays there, not exactly a tourist spot- but someone does, because they’ve been in business forever. We lost one. I knew the owners slightly- they’re Greek and really friendly. Nice people. It’s sad. I hope they had enough to retire. The building is now empty. That’s not good for anyone.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
Two things I observed during the pandemic:
Lots of us did our parts: I did delivery and curbside (parking lot) pickup, which meant one few set of lungs and nostrils mixing inside the store: safer for the workers, b/c it’s the -mixing- that spreads the disease far and wide.
Small business owners (thru their associations), though? They were actively on the side of the virus. I remember a *number* of articles about Bay Area gyms and restaurants that refused to obey health orders, right down to In-and-Out Burger earlier this week. As if somehow, it isn’t their responsibility to work to end the pandemic, too. Never ate at In-and-Out yet, but I sure never will.
ETA: and of course, aside from 6wk when cases were 10/day here in SF, I was continuously indoors. twenty unendurable months of living in a 1BR apt. twenty months
ETA2: and because cases are still above “a bad flu year”, that “was” is a “continue to be indoors”.
Ascap_scab
There is one other reason there is a worker shortage not covered in the article. 670k dead people.
Richard Fox
@Stacib: I actually joined an agency last week. So I’m certainly on that wavelength. I’m totally open at this point.
Soprano2
@Kay: Thanks, and yeah it’s much better than a recession. We’re making improvements thanks to the Restaurant Revitalizatuon fund. They could have put $100 million in that fund and it still wouldn’t have been enough.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: How am I “kicking down at workers” in that post?
Kay
@Soprano2:
But “shared work” (my favorite government program, because you KEEP the employee) was useless for restaurants because you had no work for them. You would have been paying people 1/2 wages for a year. I have a tattoo shop client- bf and gf- they limped along for a year and finally closed. I helped them start. The place meant a lot to them. They wouldn’t have taken more than 80 a year out of it, and that’s if they did everything right, but that was enough for them. They can’t go a year without customers. Hairdressers and barbers too- my God. Catastrophe.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
The clear subtext of this comment, is that this guy Holz is wrong/rude/impolite. There is no attempt to take seriously his argument, and instead, it is taken as an oppty to bash workers.
And there’s a rule I learned a long time ago: kick down, not up. Defend those who are kicked-down-upon, not those who are kicked from below.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: You do know that doing pickup and curbside still means cooks had to work, right? People had to physically pick out stuff in the store for you. You seem to believe all small business owners were/are assholes who defied Covid restrictions, which is not at all true. And you didn’t answer my question.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: 1. I haven’t gotten takeout from a restaurant since before the pandemic.
2. we have to eat. So the only question is the *manner* of how we get our food, and I chose the manner that involved the least interaction with humans, and that, coincidentally, reduced the human interaction of the workers the most.
3. *now*, in SF, I am OK with restaurants being open: for outdoor dining, as long as there is adequate spacing, and for indoor dining as long as there is adequate ventilation. And in both cases, only for vaccinated customers, no exceptions, no tests, no bullshit.
During the heat of the pandemic, and in August 2021? No. Because when case rates are thru the sky, we have to reduce mixing. To this point, I’m vaxxed (April 2021). But I stayed indoors until case rates came back down. I went *back* indoors when case rates skyrocketed again. B/c I take seriously my civic responsibility.
Soprano2
@Kay: Yep, and PPP was useless for us because our employees were already getting pandemic unemployment. Some people have no idea how rough this whole situation has been for small business people, and the government didn’t do that much for them. Some self-employed people could get unemployment, which was a lifesaver. I heard a barber interviewed about how much harder their job was; because of all the cleaning between customers they could only have half the number of customers they had before in the same amount of time. They were doing the same amount of work for half the customers, which meant half the money.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
Yes. And so, if we are to choose who enters stores, mixing their air with others in the enclosed space, then we should choose that the people who enter any particular store are unchanging — so that if there is an outbreak in store #1, it will not spread to store #2. This is best accomplished by *customers* never entering stores.
And yet, I never saw associations of small business owners in the Bay Area arguing for tighter covid restrictions (which would have suppressed the bug faster). Quite, quite the opposite.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: You’re conflating two different things. I’m skeptical about his story, that’s true. It contradicts every person I know who has to hire people, including the city government I also work for. The comment about rudeness is about people who don’t show up for interviews they scheduled and don’t call to cancel them. I’m not going to apologize for criticizing rudeness.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
You’re a hard-working druggist in the 19th century, and one of your best-selling products is cocaine: the punters love it. Then one day, the government bans it: turns out, it’s highly addictive and dangerous to users’ health. Do you have a right to complain?
Fast-forward a century-and-change: you’re a personal-care worker, working inches away from your customer in conditions prime for transmitting a deadly respiratory pathogen. The government makes you take extraordinary measures to prevent trasmission of (again) this deadly and highly contagious respiratory pathogen. Do you have a right to complain?
Your argument is basically: “we are entitled to our business just as it always was, regardless of what changes in the world.” And to a great extent, I sympathize with this argument, except when it’s literally a matter of life and death: at that point, I expect that everyone, including myself, will put the lives of their fellow citizens above their own bank accounts.
LeftCoastYankee
So many good points in these comments. I love getting that “oh yeah… ah hah” vibe over and over.
The original tweet though is not a great source. Quoting JP Morgan about economics, particularly as it applies to the asset class (i.e. workers), is like quoting drug cartels on why rehab doesn’t work.
My own $.02: I know the IT industry is demented in hiring. There’s this completely insane idea that people who have spent their entire careers learning new technologies over and over are completely lost and unable to contribute if they take more than 6 months off. Never mind that there is a wide array of businesses whose size and business models (as well as technical savvy and organization maturity), require a wide array of technology.
This isn’t me griping about my prospects, it’s an observation from my time as an IT program manager and hiring great people, in spite of HR.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
Yes, and you were the one who raise this subject. You can search: Holz got one interview, which he attended. Your comment is the first that mentions interviews. And if you didn’t believe him, you did nothing to substantively impeach his story. Instead, you brought a totally unrelated topic, which (conveniently) was spun in a manner to impugn jobseekers.
It’s very, very hard not to see this as just “workers suck, amirite?”
Chetan Murthy
@LeftCoastYankee:
Remember those ads in 1999 for Java programmers with a decade of experience? Good times, good times.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: That is not my argument . My argument is that for some people it was easy to stay at home, keep working and getting a paycheck because others physically went to work. You can’t clean or repair sewers from home, for example, but you have to do those things. I’m not sure what you think people who can’t work at home should have done to survive. I still had to pay bills for our pub like utilities when we were shut down, and I got no help from the government for that. I could have gotten a loan to pay employees who were already collecting enhanced unemployment because we were shut down!! Business owners would have been more open to more restrictions if they had been offered more help with the expenses that don’t stop, but we didn’t get that.
Soprano2
@LeftCoastYankee: That’s why I wish someone would actually do the research. Anyone can make an educated guess.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: No, it’s “rude people suck”, and I brought it up because it’s become a much bigger problem since Covid started. Everything is not black and white.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
Your argument boils down to: “it’s too bad if my business kills people; I gotta eat; pay me to not kill people.” Or more pithily (perhaps): “I gotta eat; pay me, or the cook’s lungs get it.”
It was your civic duty to not infect other Americans in the course of conducting your business. It. Was. Your. Civic. Duty.
Can you imagine how different things would have been, if all the small business owners were standing shoulder-to-shoulder (virtually) with all the workers, demanding eye-watering covid restrictions to squash the bug soonest, and demanding that government keep them all afloat in the meantime? rather than standing *against* workers and *against* the restrictions that would end the plague?
B/c [as we well know] the kinds of lockdowns that American cities imposed were anything but. Anything but. And for instance here in California, the loudest voices for releasing whatever lockdown we had, back in May 2020, were coming from small businesses.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2:
Your comment was #4. I read above it, and found nothing to which such a comment could apply. You brought it up unprompted, in answer to this guy Holz’ story questioning just how eager employers were to hire workers. Nothing in his story smells of “rude people”. Nothing.
ETA: Oh, unless it’s “customers are too rude.” from one of the tweets. But your comment was about rude jobseekers, not rude customers.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Soprano2: If a business can’t support itself than it needs to pull itself up by it’s bootstraps, or go bankrupt to make a more efficient market. Why are you being so lazy?
*Literally what as been told to workers for over 40 years while real wages have been stagnant or dropping for the bottom 80% of the population*
The butthurt is amazing.
Dan B
@Richard Fox: My father quit his job at age 54 to get us out of the Jim Crow south. At that time leaving a big company was taboo. He did find a good job fortunately before we lost our house. I don’t believe these taboos are as strong today, still present.
Best of luck. Your skills are valuable.
satby
@Chetan Murthy: you’re really being a bit of a jerk about all this. Just thank your lucky stars it’s not you in the position so many people are in trying to keep a small business open.
debbie
@Richard Fox:
If you check back, I would also suggest coming up with elevator statements and PARs.
People may not even do them anymore, but I found that having figured out ahead of time what I wanted employers to know about me (elevator statements) and having examples in mind of how I’d resolved problems, actions, and results (PARs) for the areas where I hoped to convey my abilities really set my mind at ease going into interviews.
(I apologize for that last sentence, but am too sleepy to reconstruct. Hope my meaning somehow gets through.)
Soprano2
And that’s literally what happens to a lot of them, since the beginning of having businesses.
Soprano2
It would have done nothing where I live – NOTHING. It would have done NOTHING where you live, either. How about all the big businesses demand that, because they have a hell of a lot more clout than we do? Oh, that’s right, they’re the guys who have to be open in order for people to live their lives, so they weren’t going to ask for that. Do you honestly think a government with TFG at its head and Republicans in charge of the Senate was EVER going to vote for enough money for all small business owners in the U.S. to pay all their bills for even two months, let alone the six or so that it probably would take for your proposal to actually work? And oh guess what, all the businesses that employ lots of people STILL HAVE TO BE OPEN IN PERSON so that people can have utilities and phone service and internet and gasoline and food and clothing and all the other things people need to live, so all those small businesses being closed probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference to the spread of Covid anyway. How long do you think everything (except all the things that enable people to live their lives) would have to be closed in order to do this? Three months? Six months? A year? In the beginning, we had no idea. You are acting like we knew everything we know now in March 2020, but we did not.
Soprano2
@satby: Yeah, and I didn’t even bring up how hard it is when you have a great employee who “calls in” at least once a week (sometimes twice), which means once again your manager has to work five double shifts to cover for him/her, and it keeps happening over and over again (our manager finally had to let a server who was wonderful when she was here go because she was not here too much!) According to him we should all just shut down for a year (even though all the big guys get to stay open and spread Covid anyway) to signal virtue or some other bullshit like that. It’s really true that people who aren’t involved in it have no idea what it’s been like for small business people the past year. They seem to believe that if you’re shut down all rent, utility, phone, cable and internet bills are suspended or something, so you don’t have to pay them!
Soprano2
I love all of you who think businesses have an infinite reservoir of money to draw from to pay rent, utilities, phone, cable and internet bills that still come even if you have zero revenue coming in. I’m not sure what exactly you thought these people were supposed to do – all go out of business I guess.
OH, and that UAE Falconry guy sounds like a major asshole. I hope he doesn’t need to buy anything at all from a store to live, because it sounds like he hopes they have no workers to provide him with anything!
Soprano2
It’s so funny, I went back and read Holz’s story again, and he even admits that his results “may not be representative”, yet he’s representing his experiment as “proving” after two weeks that there is no labor shortage in the U.S.:
MagdainBlack
@Soprano2: No one thinks you have an infinite reservoir of money. No one doubts this is hell. It’s been hell for all of us, employees and employers.
However, as a working class schlub, I am gd tired of the hearing how people don’t want to work. People are taking jobs somewhere. Perhaps a more little research as to where and why instead of just the leap to “people don’t want to work” mode that I am constantly seeing in the media would be helpful
And, the major falconry guy sound like a lot of people I know, so there you have it.
ThresherK
@Mai Naem mobile: I don’t remember when, but I knew this was going to be trouble when I read that it was economically feasible to get granite from a quarry in North America, put it on a ship to the Far East, have the tombstone carved and “printed” with the names/dates/pics, and shipped back to this continent.
A blip of cheap labor and cheap oil occurred, that was doable at one point, and now the free ride is coming to a halt. I just hope I’m not the only one who knows this.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Soprano2:
Inconvenient like last minute shift re-scheduling?
Or rude like telling employees everyone is replaceable, and if they don’t like their wages/treatment/etc. they can quit and get a job elsewhere?
Kind of ironic that employers are now pissed off about workers taking their advice by quitting and looking elsewhere for a new job. Wait, no, that’s not ironic – it’s hypocritical.
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like I’m attacking you, but I have zero sympathy left for corporations and employers.
Low Key Swagger
@Soprano2: I don’t think I’ve ever been embarrassed by a thread…but this one comes awful close. There is no need for you to defensive about your take on the current labor market. People are inconsiderate. Job providers and job seekers alike. I’ve been in your business so I get why you feel how you do. I was lucky to sell at the right time. Best of luck to you and your place.
My god the self-righteousness of some people here is maddening.
Low Key Swagger
@Soprano2: I have a question…why bother to even set appointments? Now I’m not sure of your work flow, but it’s safe to say that in our business the lull occurs between lunch rush and dinner. Have someone available to interview on the spot. I assume your filling line positions, not management, so even though you and I know there is always work to do, it’s possible to accommodate walk-in’s between 2-3 or 2-4 and keep the place going. I always appreciated on the spot interviews when I was applying. Just a thought.
alikins
@Richard Fox: Look at your local non-profit lists. Some non-profits have survived with pandemic grants, loans, etc. Ours came out of the pandemic in far greater health than we anticipated. Additionally, I have found noon-profits to be far more humane than that of corporate employers. Good luck!
Ohio Mom
@khead: The restauranteur just bought himself a big fancy house in the most expensive area of town so he is managing, somehow.
Ohio Mom
Richard Fox (if you are checking back):
You can start collecting social security retirement at 62 but it is a reduced amount. You will want to look at the Social Security website for details, it is very user-friendly.
I think there is also an option — for the first year — of starting to collect and then stopping if you go back to work. You have to pay back what you collected though.
Your biggest issue may be health coverage. There is no early-option for Medicare.
Keep us posted, we are pulling for you.
@Richard Fox: