I didn’t read the article, but I don’t think there is any instance where UMC are struggling with inflation more than poor people. Poor people even if they are making a couple of dollars more per hr, are still having to spend most of their earnings on surviving. They have zero savings!
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I’m looking to take a road trip in the fall. I am shocked by the cost of lodging. $300/$400/$500 a night for places that a couple of years ago cost half that. And service has deteriorated on top of it.
I’m on vacation here and I saw more vacancy rate than in 2019.
I agree the poor are suffering more and they thought they were promising better.
But everybody is affected by inflation, more so for the poor.
Perhaps not surprising, since hospitality is one sector that has long depended on lower paid labor, but now has to pay substantially more for that labor.
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Supply and demand as well. A lot of people are traveling this year and have saved the money for the cost. Places are full. If they aren’t, waiting until last minute to make reservations helps, but one is taking the risk that there will still be availability.
If people have given up travel, we certainly haven’t seen the results of it. Locally, Gettysburg has been doing extremely well in tourist revenue and numbers according to articles in our local newspaper. On our own travels, trains have been full (esp rooms and roomettes), and all but one motel we were in was full - glad we had reservations made early. On that one we could have saved $100 for one night. We know this because some relatives decided last minute to meet us there and shared with us their room cost. But not knowing ahead of time I have no regrets and wouldn’t have risked it.
Another note from recent news articles - casinos in PA have had their highest months of revenue ever in the past couple of months. It makes me think inflation might have people griping about gas and food, but if so many can still spend so much at casinos, certainly not everyone is hurting. I would think spending like that would be among the first things cut from anyone budgeting to eat or get to work. (Average age in the casino was in the 40 - 50s, online and actually at the casino, so it’s not all senior citizens.)
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Nearly all hotels are severely short staffed these days. Few of them provide daily housekeeping without special requests. If a guest needs some special assistance (room service, luggage handling, etc.), s/he can expect long wait. Their overall staff compensation costs may not have risen very much, if at all, yet.
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I haven’t requested any housekeeping for a long time, I joked this morning to the cleaning staff, I like to live dirty. But all kidding aside, I don’t really like people come into my room when I’m not there. So I just grabbed a few towels and that’s it.
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I am on a 3-year union-negotiated contract with specified percentage increases and those have already been completely eaten away by inflation so I am making less money today than the last three-year cycle. Our property taxes remained fairly steady, fortunately. I am about 8 years away from retirement but I feel much less secure about that than I did a year ago.
We are definitely not spending as much money on clothes, eating out, etc. We have not been this budget-conscious in 25 years. We are not struggling and are relatively blessed, but the days of wine and roses are definitely on hold if not over. I do not know how many hospitality and entertainment businesses will survive if people like us don’t patronize them. Our kid is through college and we are both at peak earnings (we are now DINKS, I guess). But I don’t feel flush at all. My priority now is paying down debt (mainly mortgage) so I can retire debt-free at 65. Inflation is making that harder to do.
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I have NEVER lived paycheck to paycheck before but we are now with the current inflation. Happy for those that do not have to access their IRA’s or 401K’s for many more years but for those of us in the withdrawal phase the stock market losses have hurt……A LOT
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Perhaps they are short staffed because (1) they do not want to pay more, so they attract fewer workers, and/or (2) they do pay more, but use up their payroll budget on fewer workers paid more, and refuse to increase their payroll budget to hire more workers at the higher pay rates.
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Inflation automatically makes the debt smaller in real terms. I.e., if inflation is 8%, then your debt becomes 8% smaller over the year. And if the interest rate is less than 8%, then your debt is shrinking faster than the interest you are paying on it.
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I wonder if this is due in part to the rapid and ever increasing real estate prices over the last 2+ years?
Long time landlords may have other price/cost increases relating to increases in employee and third party vendor salaries and fees as well as simply needing to make more income because of inflation.
Your second reason is probably closer to the reality. The cost of an individual worker has gone up significantly for all service sectors, including the hospitality sector. Hotels are in a competitive business and few of them are fully booked. They are constrained by how much they can charge. Hotels were also among the hardest hit by the pandemic so they aren’t inclined to significantly increase their expenses when the pandemic isn’t even over.
Same for where we are, excluding a pizza place or diner. We stopped dining out during the worst of Covid, and due to a combination of ongoing discomfort with being in crowded spaces and rising prices and declining service have not really started it up again.
On the original topic…we are definitely feeling the pinch of inflation – at the grocery store and at the pump, as well as at the car dealership (just needed to buy a new car…ouch!). We don’t live paycheck to paycheck, but a large percentage of our discretionary income goes to pay college tuition, so the little that remains has been stretched pretty thin this year. H got a 6% raise earlier this year and I just got a 3%. Neither of those are keeping pace with our increased costs.
Edited to add: I don’t consider us umc, given the high COL in our area. We are probably as middle of the middle as they come around here.
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When we asked a place about this, they mentioned, “not enough immigrants.”
I presume they meant those without documentation, but didn’t want to go there in the conversation. Thinking about it afterward, it makes sense, because many hotels I’ve been to have what seems to be immigrants doing the housekeeping - whether documented or not. It’s an easy job to do when one isn’t necessarily fluent in English.
I don’t have stats though - just hearsay.
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Most companies will not give raises above 5% regardless of what inflation is so if you are a professional worker, your income is probably not keeping up with inflation.
It’s basically the same as a tax increase.
The biggest issue is the large spread between savings rates and inflation. Savings rates are still hovering around 1% while inflation is near 9% with a wobbly stock market.
The Fed needs to nip this in the bud, probably a 75 basis point hike but that might not be enough. The economy is still sending mixed signals so doubtful the Fed will do anything drastic. They seem paralyzed and unsure - mostly because they got it completely wrong and are now being heavily criticized.
This is one thing I wondered too. If they could make more selling, then they might feel they want at least X in rent. But another possibility could be more renters out there due to not being able to afford to buy and basic supply/demand.
If our tenant were to choose to leave I’d consider selling our last place. If I didn’t choose that, I understand wanting to get market price for rent, but there’s no way I plan to raise the rent on the current tenant just because I can. He’s been there for years and is awesome at paying and taking care of it.
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Hospitality (hotels and restaurants) has long been one of the larger employers of unauthorized immigrants (along with construction and agriculture).
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Not in France, when I was in southern France, French people was cleaning the hotel rooms. I specially talked to a white woman with perfect French accent, ie non immigrant.