"Oh noes, think of the businesses...."

[irisblue]

for safety
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/05/the-us-labor-shortage-is-reaching-a-critical-point.html?__twitter_impression=true

From the article...."America’s labor shortage is approaching epidemic proportions, and it could be employers who end up paying.

A report Thursday from ADP and Moody’s Analytics cast an even brighter light on what is becoming one of the most important economic stories of 2018: the difficulty employers are having in finding qualified employees to fill a record 6.7 million job openings."
snip..."Business’ number one problem is finding qualified workers. At the current pace of job growth, if sustained, this problem is set to get much worse,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said in a statement. “These labor shortages will only intensify across all industries and company sizes.”


& because I saw this last night( I have no affiliation with this company in any form)
Jorge Guzman (@GuzmanJorge_) Tweeted:
Compensation, $15 dollars per hour. PhD strongly preferred. https://t.co/IcopoedPto

Link to tweet

That company wants a PhD level worker for $15/hr.
Well that's going to inspire so many applications

[zipplewrath]

1. At the price they want to pay

There is no labor shortage. There is a shortage of labor willing to work for what the companies are offering.

[irisblue]

3. And it is a suprise to them..

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/01/business/economy/wages-salaries-job-market.html
From the article...
1-Declining Unionization-snip...“If you work for a nonunion firm and your employer is worried about the possibility of a unionization drive, one way to dampen down that possibility is to pay workers at the union rate,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis."

2-Restraints on Competition...."Contract restrictions, such as noncompete clauses and no-poaching agreements, that prevent workers from quitting their jobs for better ones have grown across the work force. Once reserved for highly paid, highly skilled employees like doctors and engineers, these contracts have filtered down the ladder to nurses, laborers and even retail clerks."

3-A Lagging Minimum Wage...snip "response, some state and local governments have passed laws raising minimum wages to as high as $15 an hour, arguing it is the best way to ensure that low-wage workers who otherwise have little leverage are able to earn a living wage and share in the country’s economic growth. That movement has produced a backlash in Republican-controlled statehouses, where lawmakers have tried to pre-empt localities from enacting their own minimum wages.

Opponents maintain that raising the wage floor is a job killer and reduces the number of hours worked. Most of the recent research, however, shows that a moderate increase in the minimum wage has little or no effect on overall employment. Whatever negative effects there might be, some economists say, are offset by workers’ greater purchasing power and revved-up economic activity. "


The article was interesting to me. Lots more at the article

[Bettie]

2. Oh no!

They will have to pay more...still not what the people are actually worth, but more than they do now.

[irisblue]

4. Another view of this from Erza Klein at the Atlantic

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/564527/

I found these paragraphs interesting...
..."What I’ve seen in the past two years is employers really forcing — and I really mean it when I use that word — forcing themselves to be more nimble,” said Laurie Phelan, who heads Iowa Jobs for America’s Graduates, or iJAG. It is an initiative that seeks to prevent drop-outs and help students transition to work, aimed at kids who have grown up in poverty. She said businesses were more willing “to grow their diversity IQ, and to look at their expectations for education and their willingness to spend time in mentoring and shepherding this new young workforce into their world.”
snip
"
Yet the experience of towns like Ames and Des Moines show that such “labor shortages” might be due to insufficient wages and crummy working conditions — not an unwillingness of workers to switch industries or improve their skills for a job. The trucking industry is instructive here: Trade groups have argued that it is facing a shortfall of 51,000 workers, yet businesses have not yet shown much willingness to cut hours, boost pay, and improve conditions to lure workers in. Indeed, across the economy, companies have shown a remarkable unwillingness to boost wages, with growth barely keeping pace with inflation even as the unemployment rate has dropped to 4 percent.

Low wages continue to be an extraordinary problem preventing workers from connecting with a good job and keeping potential employees on the sidelines — in Iowa and across the country. “Even though we’re such a low unemployment state, we are also low-wage state,” Buck of the United Way said. “People think that when you have a state or a community that has low unemployment, that everyone's doing great. That is not the case. We still have about 34 percent of central Iowans who are not making enough to be financially self-sufficient.”

The state has relatively low housing costs, unlike in many big cities and coastal areas. But the steep and rising cost of child care has proven particularly daunting to young workers, single mothers, and families with multiple kids, experts said. “There are are a couple of companies here that do have child care on site, though I don’t think it’s easy to get your kids in there,” said Julie Fugenschuh, the executive director of Project IOWA, a training initiative for local workers. (That is where Salmond found his leg-up into the jobs market.) “But there’s still this cliff, around $13 or $15. If you are making less than that, you can’t take a job. And we are not seeing too many companies go over it.”

Plus, though central Iowa’s low jobless rate has helped people who are working multiple jobs and are still living in poverty here,” Fugenschuh told me. “The unemployment rate is really not a number that says we're doing super great.”

[irisblue]

5. Just got this tweet from my rep.

Joyce Beatty (@RepBeatty) Tweeted:
FACT: American workers are still struggling with low wages and little to no wage growth.

Get more info now.
https://t.co/k14KC4B8Hj

Link to tweet

Longish read but interesting in light of todays job#s
snip


"Key numbers on nominal wages
Growth target for nominal wages: 3.5-4%
Actual year-over-year growth for private employees: 2.7%
Chart: Nominal wage growth has been far below target in the recovery
Chart: Mind the wage gap
Chart: Labor’s share of corporate income hasn’t recovered
NOMINAL WAGE TRACKER"

[gratuitous]

6. We can pay higher wages or repeal the 13th Amendment

Whoa, get a grip there, pally! You're talking patent nonsense there, real Looney Tunes stuff! I mean, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself, know what I'm saying?

But tell me more about this 13th Amendment idea . . .