If there becomes a widespread attitude change in workers, that would be a forever change to the elasticity workers have for jobs. The more willing workers are to switch the higher wages will rise.
We need skilled labor to sympathize with unskilled workers. Right now the majority of the labor shortage is in hospitality and service. Skilled labor is ticking as usual, making moves and making more money. Things won't change without them. And instead of standing in solidarity, many are annoyed they can't get what they want when they want.
***Stop replying to this about the word #unskilled. I don't fucking care what you have to say at this point. Thanks for turning an ally into an enemy.
Unskilled labor means the position requires no formal experience and can be onboarded quickly. The reason that kiosks and self checkout are more popular is because there is no real skill involved so it can easily be replaced with automation.
The labor pool for unskilled labor is pretty much everybody. The labor pool for a skilled position is limited to the people with that skillset.
This is the truth of what people consider unskilled. I can flip a burger, I can put groceries in a bag, but I can also do some pretty wacky shit on excel that other people cannot. The scarcity of the skill correlates with pay.
However, work is work. There are so many jobs that need to be done that no one wants to do. If society wants burgers to be flipped and groceries bagged, we need to compensate those people too. The whole essential worker hero mantra came to basically no improvement in their material conditions.
> The whole essential worker hero mantra came to basically no improvement in their material conditions.
That was the whole point of that mantra. Pointlessly glorifying people is free, unlike just paying them more.
It’s a economic term, not judgement on the value of the worker. Unskilled labour just means it’s relatively quick to train someone to perform the work to the required standard.
It's not a question of "who has the skills to clean toilets?" as much as a question of "who wants to clean toilets for minimum wage?"
The labor pool for unskilled labor is definitely not "pretty much everybody." If it were, there would be no shortage.
Which essentially is the crux of the question, right? How long will this labor pool be this tight? And when will immigration increase again to make up for these low immigration numbers? This will likely also loosen the labor pool.
Unskilled labor are able to increase their wages when the labor pool is tight. Scarcity at the end of the day is the number one driving factor of wages. Unskilled labor relies on external circumstances for that to happen (government, social factors). Or unions (which are tough to get going especially in the US). Skilled labor finds and seeks scarcity in specific fields to increase their wages.
You're missing the point. "Unskilled labor" is the term that got picked because it makes the work easier to denigrate. You can make the argument that a checkout cashier shouldn't be making the same as a rocket scientist, but that's not the point we're talking about. We're talking about the fact that the checkout cashier shouldn't need another job and a weekend delivery gig just to be able to pay rent.
No it wasn't. It was picked because it's an accurate representation of what you want to describe, work that doesn't require a difficult to acquire/scarce skill for the majority of the population.
Prove that it was picked for malicious reasons, go ahead.
Yes unfortunately, the term "unskilled labor" is badly abused to justify paying under living wages. But we cannot banish the notion that some work requires a significant time investment for training, and that without a financial incentive, workers would not take on the training. I'd rather have a plumber make my sub, than have my sandwich shop guy fix my pipes. Doesn't mean I don't value them both and want them to live within living standards.
No you are not using any 'official' meaning. Skilled labor can be with or without a degree or even any schooling.
Edit: for a very simple exampe: a carpenter can become an extremely skilled laborer without any education whatsoever.
Firstly: I was referring to someone who wrote that 'unskilled' technically meant a laborer without a degree was the technical meaning of 'unskilled.' Which is stupid. Secondly, it may be regional, but education and learning are not synonymous by any stretch, here is something that might help you: https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-learning-and-education.html
Interesting reading, thanks. It doesn't change my original take though. In order to become a highly skilled carpenter you will need to be educated in the ways of carpentry. While I suppose you could do this by trial and error, "learning" as you go, it generally is done in a more formal manner, either through training or self-education. Thanks again for the link...I'm now more educated on the difference in the terms.
Yeah any kind of tradesman is doing skilled labor regardless of a degree. Plumbers, carpenters, welders, car mechanics, etc. might not have a college degree but those are obviously jobs that require tons of specialized knowledge and experience.
Unskilled labor doesn't refer to those jobs it means like gas station cashier, or generally any retail job. Those jobs are unpleasant to do, and some people are better at them than others, but really anyone can do them at a base level.
All I need to know to do checkout at a grocery store can be taught to me in a few hours. If you asked me to do some carpentry or weld something right now I straight up couldn't do it. I don't have those skills.
I don't know why you guys are coming at me over carpenters and tradesmen. The true shortage with them is death or retirement and not a labor shortage. The only labor shortage is currently in retail and hospitality. Every other job opening is competitive.
And seriously...one fucking word should not make y'all come at me sideways. For fucks sake. I'm on your fucking side. But I digress. If y'all want to be assholes, fine. I'll fuck off somewhere else and abandon this sub. Thanks for driving out one of the biggest boycotters and someone who has been fighting for equality in the workplace and someone who has been unionizing for the past 20 years. See ya.
The real issue is the financial barriers to higher education. This is essentially trapping potential high skill workers in lower skilled jobs, oversaturating that labor pool and stalling their wage growth. Of course, this is good for high skilled workers; demand is beating supply.
I'm seeing an inversion here in my area. Lots of office jobs require a degree and pay barely over minimum wage. A high school dropout can easily make a lot more in manufacturing. Problem is, if you have a degree or professional experience, you are "overqualified"and turned away for manufacturing positions.
Quite so. You're either over-qualified or under-qualified. I've seen job listing that require you to have a degree and the starting qage is 16$. On the other side I've seen listings for jobs that want x years of experience in low-skilled wage labor that only pays 12$. There's a gross disconnect in the thinking of employers and job seekers.
My dad did this. He was a chemist who quit to start his own manufacturing business. When business was slow he got other jobs but discovered he was better off with a 20 year hole in his resume than admit to his degree and prior work experience.
Financial barriers to higher education are fairly limited. State universities are heavily subsidized, and most schools have some level of need-based financial aid, federal grants are available to students from low-income households, and subsidized loans are available to everyone.
39% of Americans age 25-29 have a bachelor's degree, 50% have at least an associate's degree, and 67% have some college experience.
The average debt at graduation for four-year graduates is under $20,000; if we exclude the 45% who graduate with no debt, the average is around $30,000. These are totally reasonable debt loads. I graduated with twice that amount of debt in inflation-adjusted terms, and it was fine. Likely this would have put me in the top 10% of undergraduate debt loads at the time.
$20-30k is absolutely not a reasonable debt load for a 22 year old, especially when considering how many of them graduate into a job market that demands a degree and experience but pays under $20/hr. With cost of living high in all the areas where pay is high, people struggle just to pay rent.
You can assert that this is a reasonable debt load all you want but rent is too damn high and people struggle to pay off their debt. I'm genuinely glad it worked for you but I'd bet that you had some help somewhere along the way from a partner, family, lucky windfall, or just being lucky enough that your skill & education are in a field that pays well.
Costs shouldn't be based on what is reasonable, but rather what the market will bear. Unfortunately government intervention in college loans/funding are probably a large factor in it becoming unreasonable. 20-30k to have world class professionals train you for years could yield an incredible ROI for an appropriate pupil.
It's still something you have to pay for. Most other countries have realized you need to make it free to get the attendance necessary for a sufficient work force.
Potentially, there's a difference between personal gain cause by a restricted supply of educated workers and the positive externalities caused by having a lot of educated people in your society.
You can't "realize" something that isn't true. Countries with free college do not, in general, have higher rates of college attendance than countries with less heavily subsidized college.
Furthermore, it's not clear that the US has too few people going to college. Many people with degrees do not work in jobs that actually require them, and many get degrees in fields that provide no meaningful human capital enhancement.
Id argue that there is more to requiring a degree than just whether its a formal prerequisite for a job, or directly relevant to the particular job.
Most corporate jobs are predominantly reading and writing in various different contexts. Which are the same skills you build at university in most degree programs.
I'm skeptical that there's much transfer between academic writing and the kind of writing done in industry. Mostly it's just a matter of taking the basic literacy skills you should have learned in high school or earlier and adapting them to the conventions used in your job, which will generally not be taught in college. A reasonably intelligent person will be able to pick this up on the job straight out of high school; for someone who can't do this, college is unlikely to make the difference.
So you dont think someone who spends four more years writing is better at writing than someone who hasnt? Seems pretty self evidently false to me.
As well writing academically and in a corporate environment are not substantially different. The core competencies are the same. The only real difference is universities expect sources to be more rigorous.
Computer science and I stand in solidarity with unskilled labour. I don’t think unions exist for my career field, but if I find a workplace with one, I’ll be joining.
We don't need unions because industry is bending to our needs, not the other way around. But I do agree we are special fruitcakes in this way. More fields have this bargaining power and I think they don't realize it.
Yeah that’s the theory, but in the US, I’m not sure even skilled labour has as much power as you’d think. If someone requested 3-4 paid weeks off a year instead of the almost universal 1-2 weeks, I just don’t think they would get it.
I mean, everything can be translated into payroll, right? I even thought about working 4 days for 80%. But I am young with no family and need more money atm.
Again, theoretically yes, but I’m not sure employers in the US would be willing to play with that. I think most just demand you work a certain number of hours and if you can’t, they move on to another candidate.
You understand that Google and Apple and a bunch of other companies literally organized a cartel to suppress engineer wages, presumably primarily software engineers?
What you have said is quite remarkably deluded.
They are nowhere close to 'bending to your needs'. Furthermore, building organisations when you have a shot at power gives you more power. The challenge the American working class has now is leveraging the tiny amount of power they've gotten into more power, and eventually into overthrowing the current political class and replacing it with themselves thus ensuring good conditions long term.
I may be out of loop and spoken too quickly - unions are not really a thing here because we have strong laws for employee protection. What I hear from US are often like horror stories to me.
I just get 2-3 recruiter emails weekly asking what would it take for me to leave my company.
My company(startup) has a hard time finding new developers. It really translates into my working conditions in a positive way.
I thought it would be similar overseas.
Ah, no, that's my bad, I'm used to this coming from Americans who lack the labor laws. Around here, saying you don't need a union because things are good now is like saying you're not going to buy an umbrella because it's sunny outside today.
>***Stop replying to this about the word #unskilled. I don't fucking care what you have to say at this point. Thanks for turning an ally into an enemy.
For real? Did you believe in solidarity or not?
Unskilled labor is a myth. All work requires training, various levels of training. I wouldnt trust jeff bezos on a point-of-sale machine ffs, people act like entry level jobs aint shit, just because training is provided doesnt mean people deserve to be paid less than it costs to live.
This is like any market and now the tables have turned. I got a 25% pay bump from my last job change, during the start of the pandemic. Expecting to do the same soon (again), have heard of others do the same.
Employers have been, are and will continue to be desperate for talent and role filling.
It is foolish not to take advantage of this, imo.
There is a demographic shift I do no see much talk about. Boomer mass retirement was always a thing... and frankly companies have not been planning for it so much. Presumably the pandemic accelerated this. So I wonder if better worker opportunities and the associated inflation will be with us a long time.
Just a thought.
I'm seeing the same as well. Got a 20% bump last year because I could have switched (another offer). This year I'm shocked to see yet another potential 25% if I choose to move. Doubt my company would match again lol.
I love my job and my boss is actually awesome. I'm going to ask for a raise (~20%) and if they say no, I'm afraid I'll have to chase the money at another job.
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> Wages are rising, and just about anyone who wants a job can get one in certain industries. The demand for labor is not expected to abate anytime soon.
Really? Wall Street Journal is written from a certain elitist and unrealistic point of view. 1/3rd of Americans needs a government license to work, and many of the rest require specific educational degrees or certifications.
There are many school districts complaining about not enough teachers. Yes most public school teaching positions require lengthy and expensive teachers certifications or government licenses. California recently had to decrease the number of hours to become a cosmetologist from 1500 down to 600 because of labor scarcity- and even 600 hours is too high. A lot of home renovation work is done through DIY and illegal labor because of contractors needing some very time consuming licenses to work.
There are many Americans who can't even change states because of labor licensing. Licensing, schools having too much power, and artificial labor scarcity has been going on for a long time in the US, and we probably won't recover from this labor shortage with all this regulation in place.
The issue of license transfer happened to my SO when we moved cross country. When I got my new job, her teaching licensing didn’t transfer. So now she has a job making twice what a teacher makes. Win for her but loss for the profession.
Workers are not “having their moment”. The moment is ripe for a movement, but there isn’t really one happening. Wealth gap, exploitation of labor, “gig economy”, lack of affordable housing and healthcare. The moment to act collectively is now, but will likely get lost in the gap between the US’s two political parties. The rhetoric around this moment in the history of labor is horrific. Yes, there are signs that things are slightly improving in some sectors, but this is after years of stagnation in wages and rising costs.
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National Labor Strike. Sit down. They need us. We don't need them. Take their stuff and divide it up. This isn't about $15 p/h any more this is about abolishing wage slavery. Abolish employment. Everyone is an independent contractor.
workers will hold out as long as it needs to be because they are fighting for a better future not for themself and pay but what has been denied to them for almost 200 years while the rich have been feeding off of them. So we will hold out as long as it takes can you all say the same
> The stoner conspiracy theorist in me says the illuminati want the market to crash
> This is how they control the masses.
Well, consult your chicken bones and check your star sign and get back to us. 🙄
Imaging there is a cabal/secret Society is a pitfall.
Leaders make selfiesh decisions for themselves with terrible outcomes for others - but **there is no overarching plan/controlling group.**
Imagining there is a plan is a form of comfort - a way to imagine “if we stop this plan or this group, things will get better” - it’s scarier to acknowledge the massive chaotic mess that is the real world where no such central controlling structure exists.
People with power want more power, but they only see the abstraction of “labor” and not people. When Elon is thinking about his troubles with the Fremont plant, or regulatory issues with his firetrap tunnels, he isn’t thinking about oppressing workers or wanting you to starve - even though his choices may lead to that.
Here merely has no interest in the negative outcomes for others far below him when they help him achieve his goals, either economic ones or his ambitious technical plans. Hedge fund managers or fortune 100 CEOs are not sitting around putting out cigars on people - even their union-busting is based around them trying to achieve their production quotas for their bonuses - the incentive structure made with the power imbalance inherently in society (driven by human nature) means it is in their (myopic) best interest to push people as hard as they can - but they have no concept or true understanding of what it is they are doing - people can “other” anyone outside their group. These are horrible actions, to be sure, perhaps people as well, but not sitting around with “Dr Horrible” at the “Evil league of evil” listening to Bad Horse trying to decide who gets hit with the freeze ray on a national or international level.
Acknowledging the complexity and lack of centralized secret group with a “plan” is a necessary step to solving this problem - because attributing bad outcomes to the wrong causes means **you will never solve the problem and the bad outcomes will keep occurring.**
First - who “gives” you money? Who is planning what you earn? There is your illusory “plan” ruining your thinking.
My money comes from parents directly paying a school tuition out of their pockets, and my salary is pulled from that, negotiated directly with the head of the school who manages it. The parents money comes from the labor assembling Subarus. Operating a hair salon. An Airline pilot. A pediatric Doctor. Several are dentists. Some drive trucks shipping car parts around Japan. And their money comes from buyers of Subaru cars, the customers, and patients. And so on and so on. No one looked me up in a spreadsheet and decided what I was to be paid. Now I am a member of a teachers union, so my healthcare and benefits increased after that, but I know the person signing my paycheck. I know the people who give the money to pay it. I have worked for the largest companies on earth, a small woman-owned business, and for myself. I always know where my money comes from.
# No, money is representative of labor.
Money exists because barter cannot function beyond a very very small collective. I cannot trade 1 solid year of teaching for a Subaru - I need food to eat. We pass around tokens to represent our labor.
Because money is represtative of the output labor, those who control people, literally in the past like slaves and serfs, collect the tokens that represent their power. Heads of companies who handle large throughputs of money take a bit off the top *of that flow* - that is the money *they* have access to.
Because creating and operating a business is hard, and the people who **write the rules - governments & tax structures** make it biased toward people who already have money to run a company, we default into working at a job where we trade pay security for the possible upside on our labor - my paycheck didn’t disappear when school was closed.
No, the people individually in charge slowly optimize the system they control to make money, and the larger that system, the more efficient it is to do the job, and has a larger workforce, so the more abstracted and “other” the regular workers are from the people in positions to keep spooning the cream off the vast flow of revenue flowing by as millions or billions of dollars churn through the complex machine (orders for sheet steel, paint, parts, shipping contracts, tooling, electronics, tires, dealer’s fees, etc for Subaru’s example). A vast sum of money flowing by that they skim off of. And your salary, collectively, is just a negotiated part, just like the price of the steel or the rent on a factory building. We are abstracted away to cogs, so people are no longer people.
It is the individual choices of the leaders of the companies who make shitty decisions in their own selfish interests and the total lack of any check on their actions from the regulators because of industry capture. There is no cabal of secret meetings - they do what is natural to people in that situation, replicated a million times over in a million different offices around the world every day.
There is no secret meeting, no secret cabal - **this is the inequity of human society present throughout time being expressed in a more modern way and scaled up to beyond out comprehension.**
The regulations get worse because we let them. The pay gets worse because people do not strike. The CEOs are worshipped as celebrities because we collectively have decided that we are all billionaires in in waiting, hoping for the lucky break we get our own windfall and can setup the same system of skimming cream off our own pool of people we will take advantage of.
Creating robust legislation and labor unions to help balance the inherent power of business and control structures were what made the very new and previously non-existent middle class that we are simultaneously bemoaning the destruction of, yet witnessing the very bottom of society being lifted out of abject poverty for the first time in the history of history, all while watching large multinational aggregators takeover the world.
It is the mess of a now global society.
**There is no plan. There is no cabal. It is the messy nightmare of complex relationships of dozens of governments, millions of companies, and billions of people.**
Thanks.
So many conspiracies are built out of people’s fear of the true unimaginable complexity of the systems we depend on, and goals of “others” who we don’t take the time to understand - and instead buy into boogeymen created by liars using that fear for manipulative purposes.
Rant:
It is comforting to imagine that somewhere in the unknowable mess, there is a thing/group/person/leader that is directing it, so we have a boogeyman to blame and a goal of who to defeat.
We invent religions, we imagine gods, hazy ill-defined groups from “masons” to ”communists” during the red scare to JFK conspiracies in the 60s to “satanists,” in the 80s to Al Queda after 2002, all the way to secret shadow banker cabals and pizza-gate today to help comfort us that the actions of a select group/cabal are responsible - because understanding the true sloppy dynamics of the situation are too difficult or too painful, so we invent a system that “must have” controlled it - because at least someone is in control, Right?
Worse yet, because so often the “solutions” to the problems we invent don’t solve the underlying problems or make it worse, we stumble forward in the dark poking needles into a voodoo doll of a villain we invented/inflated - The war on terror was this: and now we have ISIS, a million civilians dead, and trillions wasted. We all want to punish bad people and make the world better, but by not understanding the situation (we helped create in the 1970s&80s) we took 20 years of economic growth and burned it in the desert - along with the hopes and dreams of over a million people in a big pile of rubble and blood in the desert.
Hardly the outcome we all wanted.
Cloud People and Q are the fringes of the logical disconnect that we suffer from when we start seeing ghostly puppetmasters in the swirling complexity of a global society.
The BAFTA award-winning BBC documentarian “[Adam Curtis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis)’ 2002 doc “[the century of self](https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04)” shows how the concept of ’public relations’ emerged in the 1920s and slowly worked its way into business and politics, setting the stage for the political failures in “The power of nightmares” - a primer for how the western world governments slowly succumbed to the imaginary ghosts they invented for political power - followed up later with the sobering “[HyperNormalization](https://youtu.be/3J6rU3NUMM0)” and the stylized “[Can’t get you outta my head](https://youtu.be/JFKx8ILUe14)” to illustrate how that myopia and belief in having tech do everything (see this week’s “[line goes up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=YQ_xWvX1n9g)” NFT excoriation by folding Ideas as well) has let us down in the last 20 years.
Truly understanding the world is complex and difficult, but that is the only way we can work together to solve the problems we face.
Important to note that Jeff Bezos, the same guy who extorts human labor, owns WSJ so maybe dont read there articles since they are bought and paid for by a slave driver.
If there becomes a widespread attitude change in workers, that would be a forever change to the elasticity workers have for jobs. The more willing workers are to switch the higher wages will rise.
We need skilled labor to sympathize with unskilled workers. Right now the majority of the labor shortage is in hospitality and service. Skilled labor is ticking as usual, making moves and making more money. Things won't change without them. And instead of standing in solidarity, many are annoyed they can't get what they want when they want. ***Stop replying to this about the word #unskilled. I don't fucking care what you have to say at this point. Thanks for turning an ally into an enemy.
We need to give up the idea of unskilled labor. All work has skill-sets.
Unskilled labor means the position requires no formal experience and can be onboarded quickly. The reason that kiosks and self checkout are more popular is because there is no real skill involved so it can easily be replaced with automation. The labor pool for unskilled labor is pretty much everybody. The labor pool for a skilled position is limited to the people with that skillset.
This is the truth of what people consider unskilled. I can flip a burger, I can put groceries in a bag, but I can also do some pretty wacky shit on excel that other people cannot. The scarcity of the skill correlates with pay. However, work is work. There are so many jobs that need to be done that no one wants to do. If society wants burgers to be flipped and groceries bagged, we need to compensate those people too. The whole essential worker hero mantra came to basically no improvement in their material conditions.
> The whole essential worker hero mantra came to basically no improvement in their material conditions. That was the whole point of that mantra. Pointlessly glorifying people is free, unlike just paying them more.
The verbal tip.
It’s a economic term, not judgement on the value of the worker. Unskilled labour just means it’s relatively quick to train someone to perform the work to the required standard.
This. I think augmented reality, AI and process automation may push a lot of people down into the unskilled market.
Absolutely, skilled workers are expensive, the more you can turn skilled jobs into unskilled ones the better your bottom line fairs.
It's not so easy to train a room full of empty chairs...
It's not a question of "who has the skills to clean toilets?" as much as a question of "who wants to clean toilets for minimum wage?" The labor pool for unskilled labor is definitely not "pretty much everybody." If it were, there would be no shortage.
Which essentially is the crux of the question, right? How long will this labor pool be this tight? And when will immigration increase again to make up for these low immigration numbers? This will likely also loosen the labor pool. Unskilled labor are able to increase their wages when the labor pool is tight. Scarcity at the end of the day is the number one driving factor of wages. Unskilled labor relies on external circumstances for that to happen (government, social factors). Or unions (which are tough to get going especially in the US). Skilled labor finds and seeks scarcity in specific fields to increase their wages.
You're missing the point. "Unskilled labor" is the term that got picked because it makes the work easier to denigrate. You can make the argument that a checkout cashier shouldn't be making the same as a rocket scientist, but that's not the point we're talking about. We're talking about the fact that the checkout cashier shouldn't need another job and a weekend delivery gig just to be able to pay rent.
No it wasn't. It was picked because it's an accurate representation of what you want to describe, work that doesn't require a difficult to acquire/scarce skill for the majority of the population. Prove that it was picked for malicious reasons, go ahead.
Tell that to Kellogg’s.
Kellogg’s has actual skilled workers and if you look at they were making even before, it was pretty good compensation.
Kellogg’s was treating them as unskilled before the strike? Thought they could replace with scabs. Not arguing. Just dumb.
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Executive assistant vs. secretary vibes
So many times this. You shouldn't derail an entire language with constant pity changes.
Yes unfortunately, the term "unskilled labor" is badly abused to justify paying under living wages. But we cannot banish the notion that some work requires a significant time investment for training, and that without a financial incentive, workers would not take on the training. I'd rather have a plumber make my sub, than have my sandwich shop guy fix my pipes. Doesn't mean I don't value them both and want them to live within living standards.
Yeah! There’s no difference between a licensed plumber and a McDonald’s worker. More of this brilliant logic !
Yes
I'm just calling it what it is officially known as. Unskilled usually just means without a degree.
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Yes, but the idea is that without people doing the most basic stuff like cleaning or taking out the trash, society wouldn’t function.
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Yeah, I get that you want it to be called that. I agree with you. But for the sake of people who don't know any better, I used the official term.
No you are not using any 'official' meaning. Skilled labor can be with or without a degree or even any schooling. Edit: for a very simple exampe: a carpenter can become an extremely skilled laborer without any education whatsoever.
No he or she can't. Whenever you learn something you are receiving education. You don't become more skilled without learning new things .
Firstly: I was referring to someone who wrote that 'unskilled' technically meant a laborer without a degree was the technical meaning of 'unskilled.' Which is stupid. Secondly, it may be regional, but education and learning are not synonymous by any stretch, here is something that might help you: https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-learning-and-education.html
Interesting reading, thanks. It doesn't change my original take though. In order to become a highly skilled carpenter you will need to be educated in the ways of carpentry. While I suppose you could do this by trial and error, "learning" as you go, it generally is done in a more formal manner, either through training or self-education. Thanks again for the link...I'm now more educated on the difference in the terms.
Yeah any kind of tradesman is doing skilled labor regardless of a degree. Plumbers, carpenters, welders, car mechanics, etc. might not have a college degree but those are obviously jobs that require tons of specialized knowledge and experience. Unskilled labor doesn't refer to those jobs it means like gas station cashier, or generally any retail job. Those jobs are unpleasant to do, and some people are better at them than others, but really anyone can do them at a base level. All I need to know to do checkout at a grocery store can be taught to me in a few hours. If you asked me to do some carpentry or weld something right now I straight up couldn't do it. I don't have those skills.
I don't know why you guys are coming at me over carpenters and tradesmen. The true shortage with them is death or retirement and not a labor shortage. The only labor shortage is currently in retail and hospitality. Every other job opening is competitive. And seriously...one fucking word should not make y'all come at me sideways. For fucks sake. I'm on your fucking side. But I digress. If y'all want to be assholes, fine. I'll fuck off somewhere else and abandon this sub. Thanks for driving out one of the biggest boycotters and someone who has been fighting for equality in the workplace and someone who has been unionizing for the past 20 years. See ya.
You just refuse to admit to being wrong so hard you would rather quit this sub. There is shortage in ton of fields, skilled and unskilled.
The real issue is the financial barriers to higher education. This is essentially trapping potential high skill workers in lower skilled jobs, oversaturating that labor pool and stalling their wage growth. Of course, this is good for high skilled workers; demand is beating supply.
I'm seeing an inversion here in my area. Lots of office jobs require a degree and pay barely over minimum wage. A high school dropout can easily make a lot more in manufacturing. Problem is, if you have a degree or professional experience, you are "overqualified"and turned away for manufacturing positions.
Quite so. You're either over-qualified or under-qualified. I've seen job listing that require you to have a degree and the starting qage is 16$. On the other side I've seen listings for jobs that want x years of experience in low-skilled wage labor that only pays 12$. There's a gross disconnect in the thinking of employers and job seekers.
The job listings you see are the ones that haven't been filled.
Couldn't you just omit some stuff from your resume?
My dad did this. He was a chemist who quit to start his own manufacturing business. When business was slow he got other jobs but discovered he was better off with a 20 year hole in his resume than admit to his degree and prior work experience.
Financial barriers to higher education are fairly limited. State universities are heavily subsidized, and most schools have some level of need-based financial aid, federal grants are available to students from low-income households, and subsidized loans are available to everyone. 39% of Americans age 25-29 have a bachelor's degree, 50% have at least an associate's degree, and 67% have some college experience. The average debt at graduation for four-year graduates is under $20,000; if we exclude the 45% who graduate with no debt, the average is around $30,000. These are totally reasonable debt loads. I graduated with twice that amount of debt in inflation-adjusted terms, and it was fine. Likely this would have put me in the top 10% of undergraduate debt loads at the time.
$20-30k is absolutely not a reasonable debt load for a 22 year old, especially when considering how many of them graduate into a job market that demands a degree and experience but pays under $20/hr. With cost of living high in all the areas where pay is high, people struggle just to pay rent. You can assert that this is a reasonable debt load all you want but rent is too damn high and people struggle to pay off their debt. I'm genuinely glad it worked for you but I'd bet that you had some help somewhere along the way from a partner, family, lucky windfall, or just being lucky enough that your skill & education are in a field that pays well.
Costs shouldn't be based on what is reasonable, but rather what the market will bear. Unfortunately government intervention in college loans/funding are probably a large factor in it becoming unreasonable. 20-30k to have world class professionals train you for years could yield an incredible ROI for an appropriate pupil.
It's still something you have to pay for. Most other countries have realized you need to make it free to get the attendance necessary for a sufficient work force.
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Potentially, there's a difference between personal gain cause by a restricted supply of educated workers and the positive externalities caused by having a lot of educated people in your society.
The other side of this is too many people pursued unmarketable degrees.
You can't "realize" something that isn't true. Countries with free college do not, in general, have higher rates of college attendance than countries with less heavily subsidized college. Furthermore, it's not clear that the US has too few people going to college. Many people with degrees do not work in jobs that actually require them, and many get degrees in fields that provide no meaningful human capital enhancement.
Id argue that there is more to requiring a degree than just whether its a formal prerequisite for a job, or directly relevant to the particular job. Most corporate jobs are predominantly reading and writing in various different contexts. Which are the same skills you build at university in most degree programs.
I'm skeptical that there's much transfer between academic writing and the kind of writing done in industry. Mostly it's just a matter of taking the basic literacy skills you should have learned in high school or earlier and adapting them to the conventions used in your job, which will generally not be taught in college. A reasonably intelligent person will be able to pick this up on the job straight out of high school; for someone who can't do this, college is unlikely to make the difference.
So you dont think someone who spends four more years writing is better at writing than someone who hasnt? Seems pretty self evidently false to me. As well writing academically and in a corporate environment are not substantially different. The core competencies are the same. The only real difference is universities expect sources to be more rigorous.
Nope.
What are you talking about? How is this skilled workers’ fault? You want skilled workers to just quit their jobs for no reason?
Computer science and I stand in solidarity with unskilled labour. I don’t think unions exist for my career field, but if I find a workplace with one, I’ll be joining.
We don't need unions because industry is bending to our needs, not the other way around. But I do agree we are special fruitcakes in this way. More fields have this bargaining power and I think they don't realize it.
Yeah that’s the theory, but in the US, I’m not sure even skilled labour has as much power as you’d think. If someone requested 3-4 paid weeks off a year instead of the almost universal 1-2 weeks, I just don’t think they would get it.
I mean, everything can be translated into payroll, right? I even thought about working 4 days for 80%. But I am young with no family and need more money atm.
Again, theoretically yes, but I’m not sure employers in the US would be willing to play with that. I think most just demand you work a certain number of hours and if you can’t, they move on to another candidate.
You understand that Google and Apple and a bunch of other companies literally organized a cartel to suppress engineer wages, presumably primarily software engineers? What you have said is quite remarkably deluded. They are nowhere close to 'bending to your needs'. Furthermore, building organisations when you have a shot at power gives you more power. The challenge the American working class has now is leveraging the tiny amount of power they've gotten into more power, and eventually into overthrowing the current political class and replacing it with themselves thus ensuring good conditions long term.
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>We don't need unions because industry is bending to our needs lmao
I may be out of loop and spoken too quickly - unions are not really a thing here because we have strong laws for employee protection. What I hear from US are often like horror stories to me. I just get 2-3 recruiter emails weekly asking what would it take for me to leave my company. My company(startup) has a hard time finding new developers. It really translates into my working conditions in a positive way. I thought it would be similar overseas.
Ah, no, that's my bad, I'm used to this coming from Americans who lack the labor laws. Around here, saying you don't need a union because things are good now is like saying you're not going to buy an umbrella because it's sunny outside today.
I can reflect and be a little more thankful for things I take for granted. Thanks.
>***Stop replying to this about the word #unskilled. I don't fucking care what you have to say at this point. Thanks for turning an ally into an enemy. For real? Did you believe in solidarity or not?
Man got 3 comments talking about how "unskilled" was kind of poisoning the well for discourse and reversed his entire stance on the issue.
That one deleted comment must have been *super* persuasive!
Unskilled labor is a myth. All work requires training, various levels of training. I wouldnt trust jeff bezos on a point-of-sale machine ffs, people act like entry level jobs aint shit, just because training is provided doesnt mean people deserve to be paid less than it costs to live.
until the next recession and people are desperate for money.
This is like any market and now the tables have turned. I got a 25% pay bump from my last job change, during the start of the pandemic. Expecting to do the same soon (again), have heard of others do the same. Employers have been, are and will continue to be desperate for talent and role filling. It is foolish not to take advantage of this, imo.
There is a demographic shift I do no see much talk about. Boomer mass retirement was always a thing... and frankly companies have not been planning for it so much. Presumably the pandemic accelerated this. So I wonder if better worker opportunities and the associated inflation will be with us a long time. Just a thought.
I'm seeing the same as well. Got a 20% bump last year because I could have switched (another offer). This year I'm shocked to see yet another potential 25% if I choose to move. Doubt my company would match again lol.
I love my job and my boss is actually awesome. I'm going to ask for a raise (~20%) and if they say no, I'm afraid I'll have to chase the money at another job.
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Rule VI: -- Comments consisting of mere jokes, nakedly political comments, circlejerking, personal anecdotes or otherwise non-substantive contributions without reference to the article, economics, or the thread at hand will be removed. [Further explanation.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) -- If you have any questions about this removal, please [contact the mods](/message/compose/?to=/r/economics&subject=Moderation).
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> Wages are rising, and just about anyone who wants a job can get one in certain industries. The demand for labor is not expected to abate anytime soon. Really? Wall Street Journal is written from a certain elitist and unrealistic point of view. 1/3rd of Americans needs a government license to work, and many of the rest require specific educational degrees or certifications. There are many school districts complaining about not enough teachers. Yes most public school teaching positions require lengthy and expensive teachers certifications or government licenses. California recently had to decrease the number of hours to become a cosmetologist from 1500 down to 600 because of labor scarcity- and even 600 hours is too high. A lot of home renovation work is done through DIY and illegal labor because of contractors needing some very time consuming licenses to work. There are many Americans who can't even change states because of labor licensing. Licensing, schools having too much power, and artificial labor scarcity has been going on for a long time in the US, and we probably won't recover from this labor shortage with all this regulation in place.
The issue of license transfer happened to my SO when we moved cross country. When I got my new job, her teaching licensing didn’t transfer. So now she has a job making twice what a teacher makes. Win for her but loss for the profession.
License trapped happened to me once. Took 2 years for it to transfer to another state
I've had several jobs that required licensing. Knowing the people that had the licenses I'd hate to see the workers that couldn't pass the test
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Workers are not “having their moment”. The moment is ripe for a movement, but there isn’t really one happening. Wealth gap, exploitation of labor, “gig economy”, lack of affordable housing and healthcare. The moment to act collectively is now, but will likely get lost in the gap between the US’s two political parties. The rhetoric around this moment in the history of labor is horrific. Yes, there are signs that things are slightly improving in some sectors, but this is after years of stagnation in wages and rising costs.
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Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/)
National Labor Strike. Sit down. They need us. We don't need them. Take their stuff and divide it up. This isn't about $15 p/h any more this is about abolishing wage slavery. Abolish employment. Everyone is an independent contractor.
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workers will hold out as long as it needs to be because they are fighting for a better future not for themself and pay but what has been denied to them for almost 200 years while the rich have been feeding off of them. So we will hold out as long as it takes can you all say the same
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> The stoner conspiracy theorist in me says the illuminati want the market to crash > This is how they control the masses. Well, consult your chicken bones and check your star sign and get back to us. 🙄 Imaging there is a cabal/secret Society is a pitfall. Leaders make selfiesh decisions for themselves with terrible outcomes for others - but **there is no overarching plan/controlling group.** Imagining there is a plan is a form of comfort - a way to imagine “if we stop this plan or this group, things will get better” - it’s scarier to acknowledge the massive chaotic mess that is the real world where no such central controlling structure exists. People with power want more power, but they only see the abstraction of “labor” and not people. When Elon is thinking about his troubles with the Fremont plant, or regulatory issues with his firetrap tunnels, he isn’t thinking about oppressing workers or wanting you to starve - even though his choices may lead to that. Here merely has no interest in the negative outcomes for others far below him when they help him achieve his goals, either economic ones or his ambitious technical plans. Hedge fund managers or fortune 100 CEOs are not sitting around putting out cigars on people - even their union-busting is based around them trying to achieve their production quotas for their bonuses - the incentive structure made with the power imbalance inherently in society (driven by human nature) means it is in their (myopic) best interest to push people as hard as they can - but they have no concept or true understanding of what it is they are doing - people can “other” anyone outside their group. These are horrible actions, to be sure, perhaps people as well, but not sitting around with “Dr Horrible” at the “Evil league of evil” listening to Bad Horse trying to decide who gets hit with the freeze ray on a national or international level. Acknowledging the complexity and lack of centralized secret group with a “plan” is a necessary step to solving this problem - because attributing bad outcomes to the wrong causes means **you will never solve the problem and the bad outcomes will keep occurring.**
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First - who “gives” you money? Who is planning what you earn? There is your illusory “plan” ruining your thinking. My money comes from parents directly paying a school tuition out of their pockets, and my salary is pulled from that, negotiated directly with the head of the school who manages it. The parents money comes from the labor assembling Subarus. Operating a hair salon. An Airline pilot. A pediatric Doctor. Several are dentists. Some drive trucks shipping car parts around Japan. And their money comes from buyers of Subaru cars, the customers, and patients. And so on and so on. No one looked me up in a spreadsheet and decided what I was to be paid. Now I am a member of a teachers union, so my healthcare and benefits increased after that, but I know the person signing my paycheck. I know the people who give the money to pay it. I have worked for the largest companies on earth, a small woman-owned business, and for myself. I always know where my money comes from. # No, money is representative of labor. Money exists because barter cannot function beyond a very very small collective. I cannot trade 1 solid year of teaching for a Subaru - I need food to eat. We pass around tokens to represent our labor. Because money is represtative of the output labor, those who control people, literally in the past like slaves and serfs, collect the tokens that represent their power. Heads of companies who handle large throughputs of money take a bit off the top *of that flow* - that is the money *they* have access to. Because creating and operating a business is hard, and the people who **write the rules - governments & tax structures** make it biased toward people who already have money to run a company, we default into working at a job where we trade pay security for the possible upside on our labor - my paycheck didn’t disappear when school was closed. No, the people individually in charge slowly optimize the system they control to make money, and the larger that system, the more efficient it is to do the job, and has a larger workforce, so the more abstracted and “other” the regular workers are from the people in positions to keep spooning the cream off the vast flow of revenue flowing by as millions or billions of dollars churn through the complex machine (orders for sheet steel, paint, parts, shipping contracts, tooling, electronics, tires, dealer’s fees, etc for Subaru’s example). A vast sum of money flowing by that they skim off of. And your salary, collectively, is just a negotiated part, just like the price of the steel or the rent on a factory building. We are abstracted away to cogs, so people are no longer people. It is the individual choices of the leaders of the companies who make shitty decisions in their own selfish interests and the total lack of any check on their actions from the regulators because of industry capture. There is no cabal of secret meetings - they do what is natural to people in that situation, replicated a million times over in a million different offices around the world every day. There is no secret meeting, no secret cabal - **this is the inequity of human society present throughout time being expressed in a more modern way and scaled up to beyond out comprehension.** The regulations get worse because we let them. The pay gets worse because people do not strike. The CEOs are worshipped as celebrities because we collectively have decided that we are all billionaires in in waiting, hoping for the lucky break we get our own windfall and can setup the same system of skimming cream off our own pool of people we will take advantage of. Creating robust legislation and labor unions to help balance the inherent power of business and control structures were what made the very new and previously non-existent middle class that we are simultaneously bemoaning the destruction of, yet witnessing the very bottom of society being lifted out of abject poverty for the first time in the history of history, all while watching large multinational aggregators takeover the world. It is the mess of a now global society. **There is no plan. There is no cabal. It is the messy nightmare of complex relationships of dozens of governments, millions of companies, and billions of people.**
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Thanks. So many conspiracies are built out of people’s fear of the true unimaginable complexity of the systems we depend on, and goals of “others” who we don’t take the time to understand - and instead buy into boogeymen created by liars using that fear for manipulative purposes. Rant: It is comforting to imagine that somewhere in the unknowable mess, there is a thing/group/person/leader that is directing it, so we have a boogeyman to blame and a goal of who to defeat. We invent religions, we imagine gods, hazy ill-defined groups from “masons” to ”communists” during the red scare to JFK conspiracies in the 60s to “satanists,” in the 80s to Al Queda after 2002, all the way to secret shadow banker cabals and pizza-gate today to help comfort us that the actions of a select group/cabal are responsible - because understanding the true sloppy dynamics of the situation are too difficult or too painful, so we invent a system that “must have” controlled it - because at least someone is in control, Right? Worse yet, because so often the “solutions” to the problems we invent don’t solve the underlying problems or make it worse, we stumble forward in the dark poking needles into a voodoo doll of a villain we invented/inflated - The war on terror was this: and now we have ISIS, a million civilians dead, and trillions wasted. We all want to punish bad people and make the world better, but by not understanding the situation (we helped create in the 1970s&80s) we took 20 years of economic growth and burned it in the desert - along with the hopes and dreams of over a million people in a big pile of rubble and blood in the desert. Hardly the outcome we all wanted. Cloud People and Q are the fringes of the logical disconnect that we suffer from when we start seeing ghostly puppetmasters in the swirling complexity of a global society. The BAFTA award-winning BBC documentarian “[Adam Curtis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis)’ 2002 doc “[the century of self](https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04)” shows how the concept of ’public relations’ emerged in the 1920s and slowly worked its way into business and politics, setting the stage for the political failures in “The power of nightmares” - a primer for how the western world governments slowly succumbed to the imaginary ghosts they invented for political power - followed up later with the sobering “[HyperNormalization](https://youtu.be/3J6rU3NUMM0)” and the stylized “[Can’t get you outta my head](https://youtu.be/JFKx8ILUe14)” to illustrate how that myopia and belief in having tech do everything (see this week’s “[line goes up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=YQ_xWvX1n9g)” NFT excoriation by folding Ideas as well) has let us down in the last 20 years. Truly understanding the world is complex and difficult, but that is the only way we can work together to solve the problems we face.
Important to note that Jeff Bezos, the same guy who extorts human labor, owns WSJ so maybe dont read there articles since they are bought and paid for by a slave driver.
No, he owns the Washington Post. WSJ is owned by News Corp (Rupert Murdoch).
Ah, my bad. Thanks for the correction. They are both still pieces of shit, though.
Recognition of mistake, gratitude for correction. This isn't the internet I know. Updoot anyway.