Its a temporary problem that will resolve as Covid resolves. And in the meantime, restaurants may need to pay more to get requisite number of employees.
In terms of fulltime opportunities, moving full time status back to 30 hours from 40 hours served to create incentives to keep people under 30 hours (where prior the incentive was to keep them under 40). Doesn’t help those looking for more hours.
There is this same issue of worker shortage in San Diego, and our restaurant workers are paid $14/hr plus tips. CA requires payment of minimum wage prior to tips. How much higher should a restaurant have to pay?
The good thing out of it all from the worker side of thing is many appear to have looked around and found something they like better that pays more rather than just taking whatever they saw.
If wages go up from that to attract employees, it’s a second positive added to the first for future workers. No one working should be barely scraping by to make ends meet (or need food stamps, etc), esp when at the same company the top levels are well into the Top 1%. (Small companies are less likely to have that happen, but big ones sure don’t seem to mind huge bigwig salaries while the minions get little.)
Seems to me that San Diego is a very HCOL area, so workers ought to make enough to live in the area. I doubt $14/hr does that unless tips are super, super high. 14x40x52 = 29,120. Can someone pay rent and food, etc, on that in SD?
Of course, it is the long time US tradition of tying medical insurance to one’s employment that is the source of various labor market distortions like this, especially as the cost of medical care and therefore medical insurance has gotten quite high in recent decades.
For comparison, Income Percentile by City Calculator in 2019 lists $29,120 as 30th percentile individual income and 15th percentile household income in San Diego - Carlsbad metro.
And the employer subsidies are part of the reason costs have risen so much.
If that income is from working individuals/families (vs retired and already owning their place purchased eons ago), then my guess is many are living in subsidized housing - meaning tax dollars are supporting them. I’d wonder if some would be getting food stamps too. If that’s a system we want to keep, so be it, but I like a method where one’s income can support them.
I simply like the idea if one is working, they can support themselves without needing to rely on “programs.” Subsidizing lower wages so companies can pay upper echelons and shareholders more isn’t my thing.
Most companies don’t have upper echelons or large number of shareholders being paid more. Should they pay higher wages too? Or should companies pay based on what they can afford rather than what the market dictates?
How do you define someone working being able to support themselves? In any city in the country? With kids? If so, how many? Two wage earners or just one?
I would look at minimum wage and see how many people are there long term versus transient on their way up to higher wages. Former group is an issue but not so much the latter. I didn’t make enough to support a family when I first graduated college. But I didn’t need to.
And raising minimum wage is fine (and index it to inflation) but should also look at why (if its the case) too many people are only bringing minimum wage skills to the table and what we can do to reduce that number.
@Iglooo something sounds very fishy about the story your landscaper gave you. Plenty of laborers are working for less than that and $25/hr would be a significant raise. Perhaps there is just an actual shortage of landscape workers. I know in my town, there is a dire shortage of construction workers. Regardless of what the pay is, all the construction workers have jobs and there just aren’t any to be had. The general contactor we spoke to (interviewing several for a major home remodel), said he’s scaling way back, because he’s not about to start training former food service workers.
I think, at least around here, the pandemic has shown many of these that they can get more/do better. The internet certainly helps.
It seems a lot of people have taken jobs because “it’s there” without looking around or looking at their own skills to see what they can do. A segment has found that they can do something that pays the bills sufficiently for them even if it’s not a traditional job. That’s a positive.
Not needing subsidized housing to live where they work (close enough for a reasonable commute with being able to afford the commute). Not needing subsidized food and heat/ac - plus any “basics” like health care bills if not covered by their job is important too. Then we talk about saving for emergencies, retirement, and college/trade school. And yes, kids are part of families. How many is up to them. Whether it’s one or two parents working is also up to them and can vary based upon the age of the kids. Heck, some will even be single parents.
HCOL areas will need higher wages than LCOL areas if they want to retain workers without subsidizing them.
Yes, sounds fishy. Perhaps the contract price was locked in before materials prices suddenly skyrocketed (as they did recently), and that was an easy excuse out.
This is true around here too - hence my much earlier comment about missing the immigrants (legal and otherwise). Often they took those types of “work” jobs at least while they were learning English - even if they had something much better in their home country (refugees on this one - war causes many to want to leave). H works as an engineer and many of his clients doing the construction, etc, can’t find help at pretty much any cost. They get paid well. That field isn’t a minimum wage job nor are they earning more on unemployment - at least - not in our area.
Why do you say it is fishy? I don’t have a reason not to believe him. If they are having trouble finding workers in construction and cutting down their business, I don’t see why a similar thing can’t happen in landscaping. The guy has to train them to install irrigation, etc. He said he is paying $2,500 to a hiring agency to find workers. It doesn’t matter to me that much that he quit. It turned out the landscape plan was overdone and I didn’t need so much.
We’re agreeing with you that this is likely the reason - not that folks are staying home for the extra $300/week instead.
But the family status matters in terms of how much you need make to be able to support yourself. Single person with no kids can support themselves on much less than someone with 2-3 kids. One versus two adults working makes a diference too. Someone can’t expect to go into a boss and say I need a raise because I am having a kid.
No doubt there. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make TBH. Are you implying that minimum wage should be based on a single person living with roommates? Or for students still living at home?
I imagine it should be “per person” to keep them above the poverty line if working full time. If a business can’t afford a worker unless paying them below poverty level pay, I’m not really sure they should stay in business (or really need that employee). It’s not a good business model anyway. Other businesses can pay more and still turn a profit, why can’t they?
And absolutely it would help if we pulled health insurance from being tied to jobs. That’s an expense the employer never should have had IMO. To me basic health care, like basic education, should be free at point of service for any first world nation. Taxpayers should be footing the bill for all, never knowing who is going to draw the short straw. If one wanted more than the basics, then they could pay for more themselves (similar to private vs public K-12).
Obviously it’s not a utopian solution working great for everyone at all times (nor is public school), but it beats what we have now with better outcomes in countries that have a system.
@igloo, if the reason he can’t hire workers is that all of them already have jobs, that is a very different thing than that the landscape workers won’t work for $25/hr. That is the part that sounded fishy to me. I live on the west coast in a high wage area, in a neighborhood where most people (not us) use landscapers. The laborers/employees are working for less than $25/hr. The wage is not the reason he can’t find workers. It’s something else.
And what about prior to the pandemic? They weren’t underpaid then?
I’d like to know where these $25/hr landscaping jobs are. My college kid would jump at one of those. Right now he’s comparing $18.25 from UPS vs $14 retail vs door dash at some unknown value.