I am also having trouble hiring people: I need a senior software engineer. Pay is $12/hour. It's taking me a long time to find workers. I guess people are just lazy and don't want to work.
I can't imagine why no one is taking the position. It sounds like a fulfilling opportunity to install auto glass while living on the poverty line.
It's like employers don't even attempt to think about anything from the employee's perspective -- even after they've struggled to fill their own positions. "Cheap business owners" couldn't be a more accurate byline.
There have been a number of headlines recently about how corporate profits are near record highs.
Isn't paying employees enough to buy the product considered capitalism 101?
Or maybe the job their trying to fill isn't worth that much to them (the employers, that is)?
As an example, let's take a speech-writer for a presidential candidate.
Company X (let's say it has 100 billion in the bank) wants a website, so it looks for an SEO firm, but it's cheap and not interested in investing in the website.
X doesn't get skilled SEO consultants.
X now has three choices - get minimum quality workers, drop the website project or pay more for better workers.
Obviously, workers would prefer if X choses 3, but there are times when it just doesn't make sense to do so (or the company doesn't _think_ it needs to do so, and goes out of business):
What if a company has a small audience comprised of people who don't find things online.
Let's say the company runs a program only senators would use. That's a hundred person market which practically requires personal connection to their staff to make a deal.
Hiring someone for $250,000 website is just not worth it.
Practically, in a capitalist environment, workers are "contractors" selling themselves.
The same way I would not pay for a big-iron computer when all I need is a laptop, companies don't want to pay $200,000 when they can find someone for less.
Just imagine the businesses that suddenly become profitable if employers could provide nothing beyond room and board and employees weren't allowed to quit!
In the US you can quit and look for another job, the same way how MS can exit the OS market.
The same way MS doesn't leave the OS market (too lucrative), most people don't walk off on their jobs.
But companies also have non-compete (or other exclusionary) clauses which are legal outside of anti-trust laws.
I agree it's not a fulfilling job, but I wouldn't characterise it as "living on the poverty line". The job pays $24,000 per year but for a single person the official poverty line is $11,770 [2].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite...
[0] Based on the recommendation your housing cost you around 30% of your gross income.
I don't know what's a fair price in every area of the country for all of these jobs, so beats me if $12 is good or bad, but beyond this one anecdote, people have been saying for years that there was a shortage of skilled labor in the country. So aside from whether this one guy is paying fairly or not, it does appear to be a real issue.
It's just that engineers and scientists are typically trained to know that anecdata is a very poor way to reason about the world, it consistently leads you into the wrong conclusion, making you feel like you have support for a fact when you actually don't.
If the good journalist has hard underlying data, I would not at all begrudge them the anecdotes, and yet I'd still like to see their data thank you very much.
If I say something and I make $N per year for believing that.
Why would they stop saying it?
The truth is, the "shortage" is largely in the poor quality of hiring screens and and a desire to pay the real market rate (rather than the lowest # they can hire the bare minimum of workers to function and work them 50 hours a week).
If a shortage genuinely existed, you would see substantial wage growth.
We don't have such wage growth.
-------
Similarly, when labor organizations get too powerful you see the opposite effect that creates an artificial shortage:
https://members.aamc.org/eweb/upload/The%20Complexities%20of...
> The rapid expansion in medical education was halted twenty years after it started as researchers, policymakers, and the educational community reassessed the need for further growth. This change recognized that the doubling of medical school graduates would lead to a growing supply for at least 35 years. In 1980, the Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee (GMENAC) reported (based upon the number of physicians needed to provide “necessary and appropriate” services) that a surplus of 70,000 physicians would be likely by the year 2000.20 With the promotion of tightly controlled managed care in the early 1990s, many groups reaffirmed the belief that the nation was facing a surplus. The national Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME),21 the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM), the Pew Health Professions Commission,22 the AAMC,23 the AMA24 and other national physician associations expressed concerns about an impending potential surplus of physicians.
> The medical education and training community responded to these recommendations. The number of graduates from U.S. medical schools remained virtually unchanged between 1980 and 2005. Despite this stagnation in medical school enrollment, the doubling of medical school enrollment during the 1960s and 1970s led to a steady stream of new physicians entering the workforce at a rate greater than those leaving the field. Consequently, the ratio of physicians to population increased steadily from 1980 onward. However, few health policy experts in the year 2000 would have argued that this constituted a surplus of physicians, even though this number grew from 202 per 100,000 in 1980 to 276 per 100,000 in 2000. 29 Bureau of Health Professions projections had estimated that physician demand - not a defined need - would increase over time. In fact, per capita utilization of medical services did rise as they had suggested it would.30 Other analyses had assumed major cost and utilization controls in health care.31
https://www.aamc.org/newsroom/newsreleases/458074/2016_workf...
> Washington, D.C., April 5, 2016—Under every combination of scenarios modeled, the United States will face a shortage of physicians over the next decade, according to a physician workforce report released today by the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges). The projections show a shortage ranging between 61,700 and 94,700, with a significant shortage showing among many surgical specialties.
-------
We don't have such wage growth.
Actually we'd have growth in compensation (wages + benefits). And we do, in fact, have that growth: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB
The fact there is a consistent 50+ year trendline of compensation growth is simply caused by a combination of productivity gains and inflation.
You'd see a 5%+ jump in a single year if a legitimate shortage existed.
https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm
2007-2015 : +1.3% (nonfarm productivity gains)
2007-2015 : +1.8% (manufacturing productivity gains)
2007-2015 : +1.2% (total compensation)
Notice how similar these numbers are? That is a sign of normal compensation growth.
I agree with the article in that there are plenty of jobs out there. Just not good paying jobs.
There is not really a talent shortage. Instead there is employers who pay good salaries shortage.
Cities are becoming larger, small towns are disappearing. Agglomeration is playing an ever larger role in where people live and work. People are tending to cities which have more opportunities, entertainment, etc.
So my point is this, why would you want to live in North Charleston? Of course as I alluded too in my brief definition of advantaged millennial, not everyone has the choice/ability to move to wherever they want. But given that choice, why not move to another larger city where you have more options for better jobs with better pay?
I think in some places, even thouguh cost of living is low, employers will need to sometimes pay more to attract the talent they need, and not just say, "cost of livng is low, live with the $12/hr wage and like it." But of course, that's how capitalism is supposed to work. If you can't find employees, it simply means you're not paying enough. Literally Economics 101.
Granted, all of the above argument is a bit simple, and there's a lot of nuance involved in reality. Especially when it comes to peoples decision making about what job they choose and where they live. I also have little evidence to support my contention about less desirable places to live meaning higher wages, but it applies to jobs, so I don't see how it won't apply to places in the near future (well I do, it may never happen, but I think it's an interesting thing to keep an eye on).
The article isn't claiming people are lazy and don't want to work. It's claiming that plenty of jobs exist and people are already working at them. It's also claiming that if you really are having a hard time finding one, there are plenty of people willing to hire you at a wage possibly lower than you might desire.
I.e., no shortage of jobs.