California Businesses Stop Hiring | Hacker News Reader

California Businesses Stop Hiring

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21 points11thEarlOfMar23 comments

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. You can usually prove whatever outcome you desire by choosing your starting and ending dates carefully.

While I don't doubt that CA has major economic problems, they chose their time range as Jan 2022 - June 2024. The huge tech layoffs began in ~mid 2022, largely as a result of huge over-hiring during the previous 2 years. So while CA indeed had abysmal job growth numbers over that period, I'd be very interested to know what, say, the past 5 or 6 years looked like in total, including both the pandemic boom and subsequent bust.

It really is correct though and 2 years is a pretty extensive time for the state to basically do nothing to stop it.

I think most general search engines can answer your question. Given the question, you won’t like the answer.

Used a search engine.

First result: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/08/16/california-created-nearly-...

Please explain.

That doesn't answer the question at all. That says that CA is adding jobs rapidly now, which does not contradict the claim that over the 2022–2024 window CA barely moved the needle, nor does it help to show that given a longer range the effect in TFA disappears.

Edit: here's some data that does answer the question:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LAUST060000000000005A

Approximately as many people were employed in CA in 2023 as were employed in CA in 2017.

You're telling me that at historically low unemployment, we can't magic people out of thin air to fill jobs???

I hope someone tells USCIS.

California also has one of the worst unemployment rates in the country, only beaten by Nevada and DC.

https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

Hey, if these businesses are upset about the cost of housing making people too expensive, maybe they should put their thumb on the scale regarding that political issue? Or does that make too much sense?

I mean, what are we keeping all of these SFHs in dense areas sitting around for? Just to get people to drive around more and be more expensive?

In a way, they are. E.g. look at Apple, which is relocating a ton of roles to the San Diego area (and Seattle some).

Um, as a former CA business owner, there isn't a significant cost to start or support a business - aside from the annoying $800/min LLC "tax". The real problem is the fact that most people starting small businesses that want to hire people end up with people that do not want to work, are flakey, etc. We had a "successful" (paid for itself) plant business in far north eastern CA in a traditionally Summer/vacation area (open year round - paid well above median wage for the area). My wife and I also had other lives. Reliability was a huge thing. Sure people want to work - on their own terms. We couldn't get consistent help and said "we are done". This was 2021-2023.

That's a way bigger issue than some state booga booga conspiracy bullshit.

When employers say “People that do not want to work” they ALWAYS mean “People that do not want to work for what I'm willing to pay”. Many US companies seem to feel incredibly entitled to cheap labor.

And people who have no experience feel incredibly entitled to judge others.

A job has a value. A business cannot pay more than that, or they will not be able to remain a going concern. Businesses cannot simply raise their prices in a competitive market, nor can they operate at a loss to pay their employees more.

You might be surprised how little bottom-line profit most small businesses generate. It's maybe a few percent above what a savings account would pay. If they can't earn enough to compensate for their risk and time, owners will just close up.

I've worked at a lot of family-owned medium-sized businesses and guess what, the owner and their family was always rich as hell. At one company the owner had a HUGE office but was basically retired and never spent any time there at all. His wife had a big office and was never ever there. One of his sons had a pretty big office but was also never ever there. Meanwhile they crammed all the IT staff in a ridiculously cramped cubical farm. Part of the underground garage in two different buildings was used as storage for the Owner's private car collection. He also parked his limo and giant boat in there.

This was a "small business" - plant/specialty item store, retail - in a county of 20k people (and a seasonal tourist destination) - it was not a "rich as hell medium business". So maybe curb your allusions/assupmtions to what small business may be.

This was a small business that actually paid more than most of the county's early to mid career hourly rates per govt employees - including sheriff's office jail staff.

It's not uncommon for people to not show up to work, just say "i don't feel like it", etc.

But sounds like they accepted the job but just didn’t do it well. There’s no excuse for that.

“People that do not want to work” is code for businesses not paying a living wage, forcing people to work multiple jobs to make rent with no health insurance

Let me ask you, would you put in 110% for an employer that would pay you less if they were legally allowed to?

Serious question: What wages and benefits were you offering for what jobs, and how did that compare to the other jobs available regionally? What kind of advancement did you offer?

If you are offering top compensation and still finding everyone flakes out, we have a serious problem.

If you are offering less than average for similar jobs, it is not the slightest bit surprising that the only people willing to start work at that job tend to flake out.

If you are offering less than a living wage, you did not have a viable business model (if you need to exploit other humans in dire straits to sustain operations, you have an exploitation model, not a business model).

Small retail business, paid $20-22/hr which was much more than many positions on the county govt job pay scale posting that they publish - for instance a sheriff's office jailer starts at like $17.

Interesting data there - thank you. Was there a big resort around paying much more, or is there just enough jobs in the economy that kids can afford to just flake out whenever they want and expect to pick up something later when they inevitably again need cash?

I can't believe that in a state with 40 million people, there was only 4700 hundred private sector jobs created?

Is this serious?

I'm no democrat but this article seems off.

This data says California created 17 million new jobs.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/job-growth-...

Wheres the disconnect?

The number "created" in TFA is just the delta in employed over the time period, with every person no longer employed in-state (for any reason) counting against the people newly employed in CA. Click the link in the article to see the graph of CA jobs, there's seasonal fluctuations but overall it looks flat over the last two years.

17.9 million in your link is "Total Jobs (Feb 2023)".

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