Employers Are Baffled as U.S. Benefits End and Jobs Go Begging

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

(Bloomberg) -- Emergency unemployment benefits in the U.S. expired two weeks ago, but employers who expected an increase in job applications are still largely waiting for them to roll in.

Federal programs that had offered an extra $300 per week for jobless Americans, provided extended benefits for the long-term unemployed and gave special aid for the self-employed expired Sept. 6. Economists and companies expected a wave of interest from workers as the financial lifeline was pulled away, hoping it would provide the incentive to get back into the workplace.

That hasn’t happened, according to employers across industries.

“People who have been on the sidelines have by and large stayed on the sidelines,” said Richard Wahlquist, president of the American Staffing Association, the country’s largest recruitment-industry group. “Nothing has changed in regard to the benefits that have fallen off and the need for people continues to grow.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/employers-are-baffled-as-us-benefits-end-and-jobs-go-begging/ar-AAODTmI

Two words, livable wage.

[ret5hd]

1. What we've got heah is failure to communicate!

You servants was supposed to return to the plantation!!!

[malaise]

2. Maybe Beth can explain the situation to them

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215877167

[ret5hd]

3. Maybe "Beth" could be coined as the term...

for the anti-Karen, or maybe the righteous-karen

[malaise]

4. What a great idea

[PatrickforB]

19. Now that was a great post! Good for Beth McGrath.

That took some serious guts to get on the loudspeakers like that.

[relayerbob]

6. Wow, unemployment benefits aren't being used by lazy workers to stay home?

Whoda thunk it?

[monkeyman1]

7. people get tired of working 3 job's just to pay the damn rent !

employers should know how to do the math & treat a employee ! but ,now day's who knows ! profit margins do the talking & I don't feel sorry for employers one gad damn bit !

[crickets]

8. They keep telling themselves it was all about lazy people staying home

while living on benefits instead of working. Turns out, people got some breathing room to go find jobs with better pay and less aggravation. Can't imagine why they aren't lining back up to work in public facing jobs (while the maskless public gets more combative every day) for less than a living wage. It's a stumper.

[love_katz]

9. I agree with Yo_Mama.

Living wage, decent working conditions, decent benefits. Treat workers like we are valued as much as management. What workers too often get instead of the above is phony lip-service about how much they value us, coupled with crap wages, few or no benefits, and a gargantuan disparity between the wages and benefits for management. For too long, American business has gotten away with mistreating the people who do the actual work that supports the organization in the first place. Add in a deadly pandemic and it should be no surprise that people are not stampeding back to work. American businesses are reaping the consequences of over 40 years of treating their workers with contempt and abuse.

[Arazi]

10. We have lost at least a million workers. Data indicates we're under counting Covid deaths

Then there are how many disabled by long-haul Covid?

Boomers who decided to retire early rather than face going back into a Covid infested workspace.

Parents without childcare.

So many other variables.

It was never about the unemployment dollars but you could never tell that to the willfully blind employers who refuse to recognize the dynamics have changed

[StClone]

13. Am I wrong to suspect these reasons?

-Lower immigration rates, in turn, means fewer workers who take those jobs.
-Families having zero, one, and two kids in the last 30 years means fewer workers
-Baby boomers are aging and retiring in doves (and needing more services).
-Covid deaths, quarantines, lingering effects of the virus disrupting viable workforce.
...others?

[mountain grammy]

24. Exactly

[Bettie]

42. I also know a handful of people who realized that

they could get by just fine on one income, so one parent quit to stay home.

In the end, without the cost of day care, commuting, work clothes, and the aggravation of working at a crappy job, they are happier and in about the same place financially.

[The Jungle 1]

11. I never had a job I did not richly enjoy quitting.

There is nothing more fun than sneaking up on an employer and quitting. Especially when you know you are critical to the operation and it will cost the employer a lot when you leave. Now that is capitalism.

[Progressive Jones]

14. Ha! Same here. I temporarily and single-handedly brought a business to it's knees when I quit.

My employers were complete assholes. They didn't pay me enough (reneged on 2 pay raises that were promised), and treated me like shit, even though I was the only one who could run their money-making equipment.

I gave them 2 weeks notice, and they laughed. They thought I was bargaining for a raise.

On my last day, I gave them a business card from my new employer. I went to work for a competitor that they absolutely hated.

[The Jungle 1]

45. Last employer before I retired

That was the only company that was aware enough to realize I was getting ready to leave. They never spoke to me but they hired a replacement. Might have been they were getting ready to dump me but I beat them to it.

[hibbing]

16. Life goal

Unfortunately, I'm just a drone, so I wouldn't cause any problems if I walked out, but it is in my plans.

Peace

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. Similarly, I have never had a job that was better than not working.

And I was never quite at the bottom of the work barrel.

In recent years I've come across people who retired from some job (usually a local government job with an excellent retirement plan) and then decided they were "bored" staying home and took another job. At the risk of repeating myself, I have never had a job that was better than not working, so I honestly cannot begin to comprehend taking another job when you have good retirement. That's just me, I guess.

Maybe it's because most of my jobs have involved shift work, meaning NOT having weekends and holidays off. Meaning working extra hard on holidays because regular office workers have their joyous time off and haven't a clue that the people who are serving them on those days are also real human beings.

As an aside, this is why I oppose Election Day as a holiday. Trust me, if that happens then every single, wait, maybe I should shout this, EVERY SINGLE RETAIL WORKER WILL BE WORKING A 12 HOUR SHIFT THAT DAY TO STAFF THE ELECTION DAY SALES!!! and have zero opportunity to go out and vote.

Really, everyone should be obligated to work retail or food service or as an airline ticket agent (what I did for ten years) to understand the nature of shift work, and why those who work ordinary 8 to 5 jobs with weekends and holidays off haven't a clue.

[The Jungle 1]

43. I hear that.

One job I quit was the printing of junk mail. I worked maintenance repairing the machines. Printing presses are very complicated machines. That company worked 7 days a week with only Christmas shutdown. On labor day all of management had off we had to work. They would buy pizza just show how little they cared. I was a lead guy and when they called for me to come get the pizza for my guys I refused and told them to get someone else to do it. I would not eat that crap.
When I quit it cost them dearly in down time. I knew those machines and how they operated.
My advice to all young folks is pick a trade or skill and get good at it.

[DBoon]

55. or when you quit and they have to hire 2 workers to replace you?

[Iggo]

12. Pay. More.

[Demobrat]

15. People in two-parent households are finding out that

it’s better to have one income and one parent at home when the second income barely covers working expenses.

The intangible benefits are worth more than the pittance the lower income worker adds to the household budget, especially when schedules are unpredictable.

My evidence of that is anecdotal but still …

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. That is much truer than most people realize.

Nearly 40 years ago a financial advisor I knew talked about how much a wife needed to earn (and this is predicated on the traditional "The man makes the primary income" model) to pay for the added expenses, especially in terms of child care, to pay for those additional expenses. I forget the number, but it was astonishingly high.

Not long after, at a company picnic for the company my husband worked at, I was talking briefly to a wife who was (unexpectedly and unhappily) expecting their third child. When the new baby would be born they'd have three kids under the age of 5. Maybe 4. She was distressed that infant and daycare was going to be more than she earned at her reasonably decent job. I said something like, "Why don't you just stay home for the next few years?" and was stared at as if I was speaking Martian.

I persisted in being a stay-at-home mom in no small part because I did not have academic credentials, did not have any kind of well-paying job, and so staying at home was definitely cheaper than going to work and paying more than my paycheck for childcare.

Even though there were some downsides, I'm extremely glad I did that. I'm very glad for the time with my sons when they were young. I'm very glad I could respond to various crises and problems. It was incredibly convenient that I could be home when we scheduled some kind of service thing. My staying at home allowed my husband to have his career.

I don't every want to sound like I'm suggesting no woman should have a career of her own. We all have different circumstances. And I'm continually enraged that we don't have decent child care for all, that parents (mostly women, but some men) have to make hard decisions about their job and their children. People like me should have not trouble staying home. Others should have no barriers to going to work.

[Demobrat]

30. There are jobs and there are careers.

A person who invested in a degree and pursued a career may not want to throw that away, and that makes perfect financial sense. That person is assumedly making enough money and getting good enough benefits to make the trade off worthwhile.

A person who would consider taking one of these retail or restaurant jobs that nobody is showing up for, OTOH, may very well decide that being at home is more beneficial to the family.

I keep saying person rather than woman because I personally know two couples where it’s the man who stays home. Everyone’s different.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. Excellent analysis.

While I attended college for many, many years as an adult, I didn't get a degree until I was about 58 years old. I got a paralegal degree, which I'm still proud of.

But your essential point about person, not woman, is very important. I'm clearly guilty of the gender bias. I've experienced it more than once, and I really do appreciate your calling me out on this.

Several decades ago a woman I know who was an attorney took some kind of low-paying job (we're talking some 40 years ago and so the details are long since lost) because she had a gut feeling she might need it in the long run. Sure enough, two or three years later her marriage fell apart and having that job was crucial to her being able to go forward in her life.

Honestly, I cannot imagine how difficult the day-to-day arrangements of her life must have been. But I salute her and every other parent who has navigated these shores.

[Demobrat]

32. That would be the scariest thing about making the decision to stay home.

For me anyway. You become a dependent.
That’s the real downside.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

34. Just sent you a PM.

[tblue37]

18. And lack of childcare.

[AllaN01Bear]

20. we had a chance to raise the minimum wage to $15.00. the rs and businness blew it.

now their whining no one is shwoing up to work. how much do u pay. give your employees a fair and living wage . treat them right and no more cheep wages illusion.

or

[mountain grammy]

22. Two words: less people

How many died? How many still suffering long effects? How many people were deported?

Less people.

[onenote]

35. "Less People" is probably not a significant factor

Almost 78 percent of the COVID deaths (510,000+) are people aged 65 or older.

Low wages, holding out for a better opportunity, staying home with kids, elderly parents all probably are more responsible.

[sammythecat]

36. fewer

[ThoughtCriminal]

23. We may be seeing and undeclared general strike

It's not complicated: start paying better, offer better benefits, and quit treating employees as disposable.

[AllyCat]

25. Why should they go back to work crap hours

crap conditions, dangerous times for CRAP WAGES???

I’d stay home too.

[former9thward]

33. Who pays the bills?

[AllyCat]

47. Do those jobs pay the bills?

No. Raise the wages do people have a future.

[former9thward]

49. Deflecting the question.

[AllyCat]

51. Not really. Those jobs do not pay the bills.

It is time for employers who have benefited from the marked increase in productivity to pay for that productivity. People are finding better jobs.

[former9thward]

52. So when people are sitting at home -- as you put it -- how do they eat?

Pay utilities? Rent? And a hundred other expenses in life? If people were able to find "better jobs" how come they didn't before? And what exactly are these "better jobs"?

[AllyCat]

53. Same way they were doing when the economy was bad

And they were the first to lose their jobs /be displaced.

Business has gotten all the benefits. Time to pay up.

[GoodRaisin]

26. Maybe some of the workers found better employers. nt

[Xolodno]

27. Pretty simple to understand.

1. Many boomers decided to retire.

2. Less people, COVID wiped out a few people.

3. Some no doubt moved to areas that have a lower cost of living...and got a job there.

4. Many probably got new job skills and now work in different areas.

5. Some probably found out they could live on a single wage if they cut back expenses.

6. Some went back to their home countries.

There are numerous variables. But one thing is for certain, the labor market changed.

[Leith]

28. Just a little clue for employers

Don't hold companywide meetings bragging about their stock value and how much this year's dividends will be - right before annual employee evaluations where raises are not possible this year (again) because things are so tight and just hang in there because it might get better next time.

[GopherGal]

50. Or talk about your lovely executive retreat in Florida (in January)

to set company fiscal year goals. Then announce a hiring freeze and belt-tightening. ("No Coffee or lunch for meetings less than two hours long&quot

[twin_ghost]

29. It doesn't pay to have employment that doesn't pay for medical plus benefits.

You are just a chump working for nothing.

[Steelrolled]

37. I think it will just take more time.

People don't rush back to work.

[Captain Zero]

38. Maybe they died of Covid, or got evicted, and

Can't pass the background check to get a new job with an eviction and/or foreclosure on it?

[DFW]

39. Things must be different all over the place back there.

My elder daughter, who lives in the U.S., lost her job a few years ago when her employer (Lord & Taylor) went bust about 3 years ago. She went back out and looked for a similar job, found a prospective employer, asked for more money than she was getting before, and got it.

My outfit in Dallas only has about 500 employees worldwide, but we are still (selectively) hiring, and we have extremely low job turnover at any level. Most people age 40 or over have been there their whole working lives. I think I hold the record. I was recruited when I was 23, and there were about 14 of us working out of one office. I'm now 69, and we have a dozen or so offices worldwide. We also have a caring top level group, who makes sure everyone makes a decent living, and provides small perks to all where possible. Example--since we opened the office in Hong Kong, we rotate the people occasionally sent there for conferences, so that a maximum of people who would never be able to afford to see Hong Kong on their own get to do it on the company dime. There is also the little stuff, like yearly BBQs and monthly birthday parties for everybody, but when you talk 500 people, it's no longer small change. When the spouses or children of employees get seriously ill, vacation rules go out the window, and the rule becomes "take all the time you need." No one abuses it, because they don't want to mess it up for anyone else, or, in case they really need it, for themselves. Not social-ist, but very social.

We're obviously not typical, but definitely proof that stereotypes don't apply universally by any means. I promise you, I would not have stuck around for 46 years if I didn't like the job or the people I work with.

[Hortensis]

40. So much good sense. In a wealthy nation, many people who aren't

considered well off are being seen to have choices and ways to cut back. Because, obviously, many who aren't showing up yet have found ways to go without employment longer, and in some cases forever. A year, and now going on two, is a long time; many people had to change, not just wait.

Savings.
Living on one income.
Spending less/wasting less.
Consolidating two or more households into one, probably often to a paid-off residence.
Renting out the house, or part of it; moving to smaller.
Early retirement, liked the forced try, less money works, "life is short."

Economists may be underestimating the effects of the disruption and changes to lives. Bet being forced to try out any of the economizers were big eye-openers for many. The great depression once turned many into savers and reusers for life, more sustainability felt right, throwing away felt wrong.

There's life without shopping for a hobby, and without paying retail prices.

What an eyeopener it would be to discover life was downright good, much easier and less frantic, and incredibly cheaper, when family pools resources by living together. Some may have taken lesser jobs where they took shelter temporarily and realized it all works well for them -- or will until this is really over.

Whatever's going on to allow many not to return to work yet, it's impossible not to believe that for many some effects will turn out to be positive -- and widespread enough to be good for society as a whole. Pandemic disease not only as an effect of climate change but a counter to it?

[Johnny2X2X]

41. This is pure awesome

The ruling class is going to whine and cry, and FOX News will do some of it for them. But this is the first time since the 1970s where workers in general have power.

If you pay well enough and treat your workers well, you'll have no trouble finding workers. Business managers and owners who understand that will out compete those who still want to pay slave wages. Figure out how to turn a profit while paying fair wages and benefits, because that's the model going forward.

Every article I see where businesses are having trouble finding and keeping workers warms my heart. After 50 years of being left out in the cold, workers are finally seeing gains because of this situation. I hope this "worker shortage" continues for years, heck, by the time it's over we might have a thriving middle class in America again.

They should have taken the $15 Federal Minimum wage because that's not enough anymore.

[durablend]

44. Many of them are too fussy

Begging for workers but those that do apply they want a masters degree, years of experience and other things. Oh and we can only pay you this much sry.

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

46. The number of baby boomers retiring at 62 has increased significantly because

of the pandemic. Better to live on less money than die because you got covid from some maskhole covidiot you were forced to work with, or were forced to engage with because of the circumstances of your employment.

[drmeow]

48. Surprise, surprise, surprise! nt

[librechik]

54. An ongoing study found there was no county in the US

Where 15 minimum wage could pay for a small apartment and little else. That was at least 10 years ago. That number is a farce

Not a livable anything.

[halfulglas]

56. Another factor is so many companies use screening software for online applications.

So many companies use screening software that looks for keywords and if the applications don't contain them a human never sees those applications. We know ourselves, doing some things online is great and saves time for a lot of things but leaves little room for explanation or expansion of something we want to say. Just the other day, my PCP's office sent me some questions and I tried to correct part of my medication list and it wouldn't let me. I have to wait until I actually see the NP to change it.

I was reading an article that said this one person sent out over 500 applications in online search for a job. And apparently the software people are saying the employer keeps adding things they want from the prospective employee. I certainly think the employer needs to pay more. According to some of the people interviewed in the article, many employers are offering less than the job seekers were making at their old job.

I certainly agree a livable wage is needed and is a long time coming, but I think we need better software more humans intervening earlier in the process might help.