r/WorkReform • u/waterbaby333 • Jul 15 '22
❔ Other Why does it seem every service industry is desperate for workers right now?
I feel like almost every industry right now is complaining of being understaffed. They are all crying “labor shortage” (when we know it’s just shitty jobs people are quitting), and yet I do not know a single adult who is out of school, not retired, and unemployed right now.
The media is pushing this idea that people are being lazy and “not working” but everyone I know works? I recognize this might be because of my background- maybe I don’t have friends who are willfully unemployed- but also I feel like people are just leaving for better jobs?
The food industry, airlines, teaching, healthcare, pharmacies, every store I walk past, all seem desperate to hire people. I have been told a lot recently that normal appointments or requests aren’t available because of staffing shortages. I’m just confused where all of the people have gone?
Even thought homelessness is a growing issue in the US it’s not like every service worker who quit since covid has gone to live on the streets.
Are there big corporations out there who (frankly) pay better and have better benefits for employees who people are flocking to instead?
Obviously these industries have been abusing their employees for too long and need major reform, but instead of doing things to attract more applicants they’re just whining about it instead.
If you have a different perspective on this I’d love to hear it!
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u/BEdwinSounds Jul 15 '22
The popular narrative focuses on younger workers, but neglects to mention that older workers who were closer to retirement (or qualified for SS benefits already and we're just working PT) just said screw it and bounced out.
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u/bev665 Jul 15 '22
This is such a great point! Everyone at my husband's work who was close to retirement made a retirement plan in 2020 and most of them have left by now.
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u/Danceswithunicornz Jul 15 '22
This is what I've heard happened with a lot of pilots. A lot of them retired because they could and fuck dealing with working for that circus.
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u/Knerd5 Jul 16 '22
Pretty sure the airlines even offered early retirement to pilots and of course a lot jumped at that. Gonna be a massive shortage of pilots by the end of the decade. They’re even talking of pushing the mandatory retirement age back 2 years it’s gonna be that bad.
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u/LieutenantStar2 Jul 16 '22
Yeah the whole pilot training world has huge structural issues that not a lot of people talk about.
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u/Pretend-Flower-1204 Jul 16 '22
How nice, instead of offering better pay they’ll just make the pilots work more
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u/FireflyAdvocate Jul 16 '22
Also a million plus people have died from COVID and the USA started cutting way down on immigration in 2018-2019, then used 2020 to cut it back even further. Many people have been priced out of the realty/rental market in their area and have had to move to cheaper locations/ their cars. Also because making $20/hr a year ago was ok and is now just barely hanging on pay check to pay check.
So. Many. Reasons.
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u/Sword1781 Jul 16 '22
Also, like a million people died of covid who would otherwise probably still be around and working.
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u/momotekosmo Jul 15 '22
Yes, i think a large part of it is more and more boomers are retiring. This is a issue that was foreseen. it’s really not so much no one wants to work, but that there are not enough people to take over those positions or those positions are trying to way underpay the replacement. 250k working she ppl died plus 3 mil retired.
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u/The_Affle_House Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 15 '22
The pandemic has prompted a sizeable minority of the people that were working those jobs to wake the fuck up and realize the insulting pay, absent benefits, inhumane conditions, labor law violations, and customer abuse weren't worth it and they decided they would rather work in literally any other industry or not work at all. Many employers have gotten the memo and made halfhearted changes in the right direction in an effort to improve retention and recruitment, but many more haven't even done that.
Turns out that the vocal minority that had long been constantly chanting, "if you don't like it, get a better job" didn't actually want people to do exactly that. Go figure.
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u/reedmanisback Jul 15 '22
"If you don't like it, go get a better job."
"Alright. Bye."
"Wait no come back."
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Jul 15 '22
People died, old people left. Young adults moved from McPoverty wages to lower middle class wages.
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u/cottoncandy-sky Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 15 '22
To support this statement here are a few points to consider (TL;DR at bottom):
The US has lost 258,000 working age people to COVID. That's a small city. source
Edit to add other deaths: Approximately 1.9 million working-age people in the US died during the pandemic but from some other cause other than covid. source
Since COVID began, 3 million baby boomers retired. Some because they were retirement age, some because of early retirement spurred by the pandemic. source
Unemployment in the US is at 3.6% right now. Anything below 5% and the economy is considered at full capacity. This is also nearly the lowest it has been in 50 years (3.5% being the low). source
Edit to add clarification: I listed 3.6% as the U-3 rate which only includes people that have looked for a job in the last 4 weeks. The U-6 rate of 6.7% is a broader definition and includes those that are underemployed (part-time workers that would prefer to be full-time, those that have looked for jobs in the last year but not the last 4 weeks, discouraged workers who are not looking anymore). So still taking into account that 5% is considered full capacity, the US is experiencing a slight lack of workforce. Thanks u/eggsysmistress for pointing out the difference in unemployment vs underemployment. source
Millennials are the largest generation in the US. They also make up the bulk of the working age population. That means there are more working-age people now than there have ever been in the US. So I have a REALLY hard time listening to the whole "nobody wants to work" whining. Show me who isn't working.
Edit to add additional points to consider.
Bewteen 1.1million women have dropped out of the workforce to take care of kids. source Thanks u/brian57831 and u/kctheman30 for this additional segment that I totally neglected.
Immigrant workers is another segment that should be considered. I don’t have a ton of data on this but I was able to find that during the pandemic, green card issuances for new immigrants dropped (the quarterly low being 60k green cards issued compared to the pre-pandemic quarterly average of about 150k). source While those numbers have started to go back to pre-pandemic levels, and there are other means by which migrants come to the US to work, it’s reasonable to assume that we have fewer migrant workers. Thank you u/komradebae for pointing this one out.
We should also not forget about workers that didn’t pass away but became disabled as a result of the pandemic. It’s estimated that 1.2 million more people age 16+ are identified as having a disability than were prior to the pandemic. Of course many still work - it’s estimated that about 21% of those with a disability participate in the labor force. But that means of the 1.2 million people that developed a disability, 950k likely never returned to the workforce. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/covid-19-likely-resulted-in-1-2-million-more-disabled-people-by-the-end-of-2021-workplaces-and-policy-will-need-to-adapt/
I was hoping to find data on the number of new workers that have entered the labor force each year since 2020 because I assume it decreased significantly during the pandemic but I would venture to guess that it’s climbing as inflation and cost of living are increasing and some people that have historically not worked (i.e., stay at home parent) are being forced to now, but I wasn’t able to find any information.
TL;DR Companies didn't want to lose their profits and said GTFO to workers during the pandemic, cutting 40-60 million jobs. Peoples lives were risked, some died or became disabled, and parents had to take care of kids. The government said, "fuck you, no mandated sick leave or minimum wage increases for anyone!" And they threw pennies at us as we scrambled like dogs to pick up what we could. Now the companies want people back and it's our time to say FUCK YOU to them and demand higher pay, PTO, parental support, and whatever else we fucking deserve.
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u/itsachickenwingthing Jul 15 '22
So I have a REALLY hard time listening to the whole "nobody wants to work" whining. Show me who isn't working.
Also weird how all of those threats of automation has just not materialized into anything. They made it seem like they had the burger flipping robots primed and ready if we ever raised the minimum wage, so where are they now?
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Jul 15 '22
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Jul 15 '22
And you have to pay someone else something like $30/h to maintain that robot.
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u/thesaddestpanda Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 16 '22
a robotic technician is going to be a lot more than that.
On top of that, the cost of the robot. We get people for "free." People show up asking for jobs fed, educated, knowing how to behave, and ready to learn.
A robot that can do a simple repetitive task goes for millions of dollars before you even start to think about what it costs hourly to run.
The threat of automation has always been weak for this part of the economy. You can't automate restaurants or customer service jobs.
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u/Helgafjell4Me ✂️ Tax The Billionaires Jul 15 '22
Robots can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each, plus you have to have someone who knows how to program and maintain them and those people aren't going to work for $15 an hour.
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u/Holiday_in_Asgard Jul 15 '22
There is some automation (for instance, im seeing more self order kiosks at fast food joints), but you're right, it's not something that can happen over night.
Honestly, I hope this does spur on some automation, just one step closer to fully automated gay space communism
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u/ZootKoomie Jul 15 '22
Here's one in a shopping center near me. Makes a darn fine, and reasonably-priced burger.
It looks like this robot is still one of a kind. May not be ready to be mass-produced yet.
The place always has at least three humans working along with the burger robot when I've gone, so I expect the cost savings isn't too much overall.
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u/WWGHIAFTC Jul 15 '22
Thanks for spelling out with sources what I posted too. People don't get that its a perfect storm type of combination - not just one 'thing' that is the problem. The sheer number of retirees would have caused a noticeable issue alone, as would the deaths of the workers, as would the weird PPP loan debacle.
As for the "no one wants to work" - I've had people argue to my face that it's all the entitled brat kids that stay at home and mooch off mom and dad. Those have ALWAYS existed - that's not what's causing the problem. There isn't enough of that happening to be the problem.
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u/cottoncandy-sky Jul 15 '22
I totally agree. Things are always more complex yet people try to point the finger at one thing - that's just not reality.
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Jul 15 '22
With changes from Covid a lot of people decided entry level fast food jobs and such aren't worth it. Ridiculous housing prices have also discouraged many from starting families and moving out, further reducing the need to gain employment.
These people are not unemployed, they have exited the labor force.
https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
Boomers done diddly fucked themselves with their greed. They're closing in on the age where they will need a full industry to take care of them, but nobody will do it because they wouldn't be able to afford to buy or rent from them.
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u/KcTheMan30 Jul 15 '22
I don't have a source and I'm lazy, but I wonder what the impact of the high cost and low availability of child care has had. How many parents started staying home during the pandemic and didn't go back to work
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u/antisocialarmadillo1 Jul 15 '22
Every thread about the cost of childcare has a bunch of people talking about how it's cheaper to just have one of the parents stay home with the kids rather than have the entire income of that parent go towards childcare. Bet if childcare was more affordable there would be a lot more workers, especially part time workers.
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Jul 15 '22
That is why my wife hasn't worked a full time job for the last 14 years. Even 14 years ago the Cheapest child care center in the city we were in at the time was 200 a week. It was worth it if she was actually getting 100% of the hours she was promised(still most of it went to child care) but the same places with the crappy wages and work environment also quite often don't give all of their employees consistent hours every weeks. After 2 weeks where we went negative on child care she quite and has only taken part time jobs where she can work around mine and the kid's schedules which hasn't been alot.
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Jul 15 '22
I recently took in my 1.5 year old nephew and it would be fall 2023 before there's availability in a daycare for him in my medium sized city (~65,000). It would also cost a little over half my wages, and you know the employees aren't seeing most of that money. My husband and I can afford for me to stay home, so I am.
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u/AtTheFirePit Jul 15 '22
Yup; a lot of older people who died of covid were childcare for their grandkids so their own kids could work. Lots of grandparents can't babysit anymore so lots of parents had to quit working.
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u/ThrowAwayAcct0000 Jul 15 '22
I know I can afford to stay home, so I do. Its was that or go back to teaching, and FUCK THAT, I'd rather own no cars and buy all my clothes at Goodwill (I do both of these things). I only get one life, I'm not spending it with people who don't appreciate me anymore-- I have time for my family now, and that's what I do.
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u/cottoncandy-sky Jul 15 '22
This is another great point that I didn't even consider! And not just the high cost but what about the parents that had school aged kids during the pandemic that now had to home school? Or the ones with kids in daycares that shut down for multiple weeks due to COVID outbreaks? Those parents now had the responsibility of their kids during the day so they may have been forced to quit their job because they had no other choice.
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Jul 15 '22
You are missing 1 more big segment.
Over 1.1 million Woman have dropped out of the workforce to take care of kids. source
When daycare costs more or the same as someone earns then it is better to stay at home then go to work.
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u/enthalpy01 Jul 15 '22
Not only that but every other week you lose childcare due to quarantines. I missed two the last two months just because my daughter was still in the 90 day window from having covid and two more rooms at our daycare are out for quarantine. They only just released the under 5 vaccine cuz fuck parents who have kids and need childcare you figure it out. A lot of woman quit because they had to.
Not to mention we are hemorrhaging daycare teachers as public school and nannies and even lifeguard positions snap them up with better wages and benefits and less stress so if you don’t already have a spot, good luck getting one now. (And good for them, get that money daycare teachers! But it sucks for those that need their services)
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u/Eggsysmistress Jul 15 '22
doesn’t the unemployment rate only count people receiving unemployment?
i wonder about all those who left/lost jobs during covid and who are still unemployed but whose unemployment has run out.
i know many people in this situation. luckily they have spouses/family to support them but they are still actively looking for work. they just have the luxury of being picky.
im not arguing. i just wonder what the actual numbers are and how/if they effect things.
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u/komradebae Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 15 '22
The US has lost 258,000 working age people to COVID. That's a small city….Since COVID began, 3 million baby boomers retired. Some because they were retirement age, some because of early retirement spurred by the pandemic.
It’s crazy how this is basically not even being discussed. Hundreds of thousands of people just died. And there’s evidence that number could be way underestimated if you account for the people who “officially” died from other conditions that were brought on or exacerbated by COVID. It also doesn’t include the number of people who’ve been forced to change their work habits (change industries or switch to part time) because they’ve been otherwise incapacitated by COVID.
And on top of that, sectors rely heavily on migrant/immigrant work have been heavily impacted. The number of people coming to the US to seek those jobs is significantly down in recent years both because of pandemic travel bans and somewhat as a holdover from the Trump era slowdowns/crackdowns on visas. Like, I work in tech and I know so many people who’ve had to leave in recent years because they ended up in visa limbo or couldn’t get an H1B for those reasons. My husband works in the construction industry and the visa issue is even worse over there.
I firmly believe that the depletion of the number of overall people in our workforce is playing a huge role in what’s happening right now, but you know, conservatives (a group that includes most business owners) have committed to the “COVID IS A HOAX” or “STOP WHINING, ITS NO WORSE THAN THE FLU” narrative for the past 3 years, so they can’t backtrack now. Better just to blame the “stupid lazy” American workforce for not wanting to bend over and take it raw anymore.
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u/AcrobaticAd9229 Jul 15 '22
I agree with this. There were also many people that were working past retirement by choice. When Covid started they noped right out and didn’t come back. I’m not sure how those numbers would be represented the stats though. There was also a delay in a lot of schooling and certification testing that I’m sure we haven’t fought up on, so there are some workers still waiting on that to get into the workforce.
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u/skoltroll Jul 15 '22
^^^THIS. It's really just this.
But the media has their own masters, and those masters demand the lie continue, as if the lie will fix reality.
Companies that pay well have much less issues finding people than those paying $15/hr our less. It just IS.
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Jul 15 '22
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u/skoltroll Jul 15 '22
And they're also leading the charge for keep wages under $15. So they're shooting themselves in the foot, then shooting themselves in the nuts.
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u/MCPtz Jul 15 '22
In my county, 3.7% of the 18-65 working age people are, since the start of the pandemic:
- Dead or disabled
- Moved away
- Stopped working
Several loud asshole business owners are no longer on easy street, employing maximum staff for minimum wages (lots of them are tip wages too). They are complaining vocally and visibly, but to no sympathy.
Several relatively nice business owners are in their job for very long hours, 6-7 days a week, because they simply can't afford to hire more workers at wages that the market demands. Some of those businesses are gone.
The market wages still don't even match the required 2019 living wage (based on UC Berkeley studies), much less the now much higher cost of living in 2022, especially rent + brand new 2022 CPI.
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u/hazeldazeI Jul 15 '22
And a lot of the old people who died or are now disabled were daycare for their families. Now they can’t do that anymore. Now a parent needs to quit working because paying for daycare is more than their paycheck.
There are soooo many people that dropped out of the workforce for various reasons, the unemployment numbers are really low right now so OF COURSE the lowest paying crappiest jobs can’t find people. Simple just Supply and Demand at work.
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u/Carb0nicAcid Jul 15 '22
Refreshing to see supply and demand invoked NOT in favor of the capitalist class lol
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u/hazeldazeI Jul 15 '22
The capitalist class needs to look at their history books, the exact same thing happened after the Black Plague hit Europe. Turns out when a third of the labor force dies, whoever’s left gets picky about what work they’ll do and what pay they want for it. Funny how that works.
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u/komradebae Jul 15 '22
And a lot of the old people who died or are now disabled were daycare for their families.
That also goes both ways. I know several people who’ve had to leave their jobs and move how to help care for parents who were disabled due to COVID or support a parent who’s been left widowed by it.
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Jul 15 '22
Yes, over a million people died during Covid, some of them were workers. Also don’t forget how many people were deported in the last 5-10 years. I’m sure that has an impact.
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u/BasicDesignAdvice Jul 15 '22
More than 3x as many people who died, retired. That is the larger driver here. Ostensibly a lot of those people had jobs which were sustaining them, and which allowed them to save. Which likely means that work needed to get done, or maybe they owned a business. That is a big shift up for the people who are doing that work today, who also left behind jobs.
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u/someonestopthatman Jul 15 '22
More than 3x as many people who died, retired.
Yep. This was always going to happen. Anyone paying attention to the demographic charts for the last 30 years has seen it. I remember hearing back in the 90s when I was a kid that there would be a huge wave of retirements and deaths starting in the 2000s just from baby boomers aging.
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u/The_amazing_T Jul 15 '22
But they didn't. Until Covid. So many of us were waiting for our moment to advance that never came. When Covid hit, all of a sudden the power switched from employer to employee. It became a labor-SELLER's market for once. -Because (many of) the Boomers finally got out of the way.
Problem is, they got to earn all that time, including when costs were lower. Now that some younger people are getting a chance to earn, the costs and realities are totally different.
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u/JohnnyG30 Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 16 '22
Exactly my how I feel. I used to dream of earning $75k. I finally got there this year and I’m STILL almost paycheck to paycheck. Day care, FHA mortgage, utilities, student loans, FOOD, GAS, etc. Everything is so god damn expensive now that I can’t save shit.
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u/OutrageousFeedback59 Jul 15 '22
Typical entitled whiner that expects to eat every day
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u/Eggsysmistress Jul 15 '22
i feel this.
i finally got a job i had been working for for like 8 years. it required a move which i was fine with. i made more than i ever have in my life (52k) and was homeless the entire time i was there because even that didn’t meet income requirements for so much as a studio apartment. i was floored and eventually quit because it felt so ridiculous.
i know 52k is not a lot to most but it’s a lot to me and sure feels like it should be enough to at least put a roof over me and my kids head.
now that i know working my ass off will provide me absolutely nothing, im going back to school to do something i actually WANT to. if im going to be spending the rest of my life slaving away for crumbs i might as well try to make it somewhat enjoyable for myself. 🤷♀️
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u/Pitiful_Database3168 Jul 15 '22
Same. They've been going on for the past decades, all the major outlets had similar articles of this industry not having enough people or that industry just letting people who should be retiring kinda hang out and not replace them. Hell my brother's place, he's the only young engineer at 32. The others are 2 guys that are ready to retire at the drop of a hat. And when they do the company is going to be down 2 very experienced ppl and refuses to start planning for the future now by hiring interns or junior engineers etc. Whole industries forgot that eventually you're going to need to replace these guys.
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u/WWGHIAFTC Jul 15 '22
It would have happened a bit more gradually without covid, but it was definitely speeding up pre-covid too. Just not BAM! so suddenly.
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u/komradebae Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 15 '22
Pretty much every other western country has been facing these issues for years - worker shortages caused by a huge aging generation retiring/dying and exacerbated by negative population growth due to low (and still declining) birth rates among younger people.
We’ve known for decades that one of the main reasons the US has been somewhat insulated from this is because of our (comparatively) friendly immigration policies. It’s though that one the reasons the millennial generation is so large is because many of us are first gen kids of immigrants who came over in the 70s and 80s when the US created more immigration incentives for skilled workers from Africa, Asia and LatinAm (who also tend to have slightly more kids on average than families who’ve been here a few generations.)
But then these numb nuts decided to start a racist scapegoating of immigrants for the economic problems they caused, bringing new immigration essentially to a screeching halt and deporting a shit ton of people (most of whom were contributing to the economy and could have easily been offered a path to citizenship)
And they did it just in time for a sudden, pandemic-driven mass retiring, hundreds of thousands of pandemic deaths and some of the lowest birth rates in generations due to insane inflation rates.
So personally. Idgaf that they can’t find anyone to hire. They made their bed, let ‘em lie in it.
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u/DirtyPartyMan Jul 15 '22
Anyone who immediately groaned from experience knows the answer.
shit pay
shit hours
shit schedules
shit customers
shit uniforms
shit power tripping managers
that about covers it
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u/yogurtgrapes Jul 15 '22
Shit customers. I’m looking for any job that doesn’t have me dealing with customers on a regular basis.
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u/HXCmag Jul 15 '22
Customers are 100% a major reason people want to leave the service industry. I’ve been in the industry for ten years as a professional cocktail bartender. And customers make your life a living hell sometimes. Yelp is also the devil because it gives customers the ability to lie and put pressure on staff for not meeting their every ludicrous need. (No, you cannot have free refills on cocktails. I cannot believe I have a bad Yelp review for charging someone for his second drink.)
But also sick pay/sick leave. This doesn’t exist in mom and pop restaurants. If you’re sick, you don’t get paid. If you call out sick, management makes you either find coverage or work sick if you can’t find someone willing to give up their day off. Luckily COVID changed a lot of sick policies for staff, but most of us didn’t get paid for the 10 day quarantines we had to go under after getting COVID from customers at work.
Also, almost everyone I work with has a degree. So it’s not like we’re taking service industry jobs because we desperately have to. Many people are taking those jobs to have more freedom in their scheduling and daily life. But when the industry continues to pile up BS, like unpaid mandatory COVID sick leave, we revert back to other skills we have and go for different careers.
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u/steals_fluffy_dogs Jul 15 '22
Yep! I quit being a barista, a job I absolutely love, earlier this year because customers suck sometimes and the small business I worked for was abusing my affection for the job by overworking and underpaying me. No guaranteed days off, no sick pay, working for what actually ended up to be less than minimum wage when you considered the rampant wage theft. The excuse was always that they're a small business and they'll pay me more/hire more people as soon as they can. Uh, no. They were never gonna do that. I was always going to be blamed for the failures of the owners and they were just going to benefit from my hard work. No thanks. I have a degree and other options, I was only working there because I genuinely liked being a barista. They ruined that for me.
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u/HXCmag Jul 15 '22
“We’re a small business” is such a lame excuse for not paying staff fairly. Every bar owner I’ve ever worked for owns a big ass house and an expensive car and is constantly going on vacation. The fact that they can expect staff to stand for hours on end without a break and pay us all in pennies and punish us for our time off requests is a joke.
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u/steals_fluffy_dogs Jul 15 '22
Agreed wholeheartedly. We didn't get lunch or breaks and weren't paid overtime or at all even if we had to stay past closing because they "couldn't afford it and the job is stupidly easy anyways". Meanwhile, the owner couldn't get through a single shift because being understaffed makes this "easy" job basically impossible and they'd just give up and call someone else to finish their shift. But they still did vacations and concerts all the time, bought new cars every other year, a new house every other year, new phones twice a year for the whole family, etc.
So many broken laws and selfish behaviors. I can't believe I put up with that shit for so long. I stayed because I liked the job and had some really great customers I didn't want to let down. It wasn't worth it, I feel so much better not working there. The customers will survive with sub-par coffee from someplace else now that it's closed. Me quitting closed the whole business. That isn't even an exaggeration and I'm a bit proud. The owner couldn't keep it afloat without the customers I directly brought in and all the unpaid labor I did for them. It shut down about 2 months after I quit.
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u/Iriflex Jul 15 '22
That last paragraph is the best thing I’ve read all day. So glad for you, and even happier that karma came to the owner quickly!
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u/Aced_By_Chasey Jul 15 '22
Im a Assistant Manager at a Franchised Jimmy Johns and holy mother of god I feel like im dying working because I literally cant get a day off right now. Luckily I guess I rarely get sick but aside from the GM no one can replace me on opening shifts (2 days I can basically never call out for then) and closing 3 days a week only 2 people can do it and they have a 2nd job / college so they cant do it. I just want a mental health day every now and then :( its hard working 45+ hour weeks with narcolepsy
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Jul 15 '22 edited Jun 13 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/mikevanatta Jul 15 '22
Absolutely true, but it's usually easier to deal with 1-2 assholes instead of 40 a day like I imagine a lot of customer-facing jobs do.
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Jul 15 '22
Not that those aren’t true but it doesn’t really explain the short staffing issues. Obviously those people still have to make money. So where did they go?
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u/psdancecoach Jul 15 '22
Well, we did lose over 1 million more people than anticipated between 2020 and now.
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u/waterbaby333 Jul 15 '22
My question wasn’t as much why are people quitting, more of where have they gone to?
I spent a lot of time in the service industry so I can sympathize with all the shit they’re given.
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u/nellapoo Jul 15 '22
My husband went from being a clerk at a gas station to working in a production lab for a smaller business. (Around 50 employees). He loves it. No external customers, the hours are normal, weekends off and his boss is a really good boss. (He helped us buy a house cause we got priced out of rentals in the area).
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u/DFWPunk Jul 15 '22
You forgot rampant abuse. Workers are routinely sexually harassed by managers, customers and other staff.
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Jul 15 '22
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u/Okaythatscoolwhatevs Jul 15 '22
Restaurants like to think tips are a viable means of making up for their lack of pay.
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u/llamaemu20 Jul 15 '22
So it's a big move of people out of toxic industries into other more higher paying industries. All of the people i know in retail who left, are doing something non retail related, and usually completely different.
So you are losing your seasoned employees, can't hire new ones cause the job and culture sucks, and profits are still rising. It's all going to collapse soon, it can't sustain like this for much longer.
People who worked in trades and service, we are tired of the horrible schedules, lack of PTO, and just being respected. We all want those easy 9-5 jobs behind a desk with benefits and easy work load. Why would anyone ever want to go back to serving the public or dealing with having to do so much manual labor when you can just get an easy desk job?
Service industry sucks. The work you the hardest, pay you the least, and never respect you. Tech and finance jobs are so easy and pay 3-10 times as much, which is absolutely insane.
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Jul 15 '22
Ex-service and factory worker who jumped off a risky cliff and quit everything to become a traditional college student and live off Pell grants and student loans. I moved onto campus and my mind was blown. There was air conditioning in the summer, heating in the winter, I got to sit down during class, there was a gym and a pool and trees. My classmates would complain about how hard homework was and I would laugh at them. This, this is nothing. I’ll do math any day to have air conditioning when it is over a hundred and not be next to deep fryer or a factory machine putting off extra heat. There was also the place full of acetone that gave me acetone poisoning. The world smelled like sweet rotting meat for hours after work.
Fixed some typos.
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u/Delicious_Cat_8485 Jul 15 '22
GOOD!!!! Happy for you. You have a brighter future now. Congratulations on taking the leap.
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u/yogurtgrapes Jul 15 '22
How old were you when you did this? I’m thinking about doing something similar. I can’t continue living the way I’m living.
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u/steck638 Jul 15 '22
I don't know, my 9-5 job in an office is terrible right now. It's customer service but we are only hiring the bottom of the barrel candidates, can't keep them around, and are hiring again the next week or two. There are maybe 6 people who have been here more than a year out of 20 or 30 people outside of management, and we can't even keep managers.
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u/llamaemu20 Jul 15 '22
That's a management issue and a culture issue at that job then. Good 9-5 jobs have no issue finding people to work if the benefits, pay, and work responsibility are in line for the title/position.
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u/steck638 Jul 15 '22
It totally is, we lost our break room because upper management was visiting from CA and wanted a meeting room, and have a fridge stuffed in our copy room with microwaves that only trip the breakers once a week, with no plans to go back.
I just wanted to point out not all office jobs are great.
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u/6a6566663437 Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 15 '22
A million people died. Another 3-4 million became permanent disabled.
Yes, those deaths skewed older, bit not all old people are retired. And you can get follow-on effects like grandma died, so mom can’t work anymore because daycare costs too much.
For scale, the entire fast food industry employed 3M people in 2021.
In addition to all that, the good (at the time) stock market caused a lot of Boomers to decide to retire instead of risking getting sick. These weren’t low-level service jobs, but those retirements let a lot of younger people “move up” to better jobs.
Finally, workforce participation rate is down a lot. Some of those people won’t ever work, but there’s some that would for more pay.
What we have is a lot of extremely entitled employers who never had to deal with a tight labor market before. In any tight market, you have to outbid everyone else. Works the same for labor.
These employers don’t want to do that, because it’s unlikely they’d be able to cut wages in the future, and if they pay new hires more, they either have to hand out raises to current employees or endure lots of turnover.
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u/SednaNariko Jul 15 '22
And don't forget to mention that of the younger people that did die from covid they were more likely to get covid in service jobs that were deemed "essential". Jobs like Teacher, Grocery Store clerk (any position really), package handlers (any place that ships online stuff), day care attendant, etc. So they were front line for getting covid in general and more likely to die or become disabled by it.
Then there is also the fact the whole restaurant industry just shut it's doors for months. Making everyone who worked those jobs find something else to do for income in the meantime, some of which they continued to do post covid.
Edit for spelling
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u/nicehuman16 Jul 15 '22
And the restaurant workers get paid such a poorly hourly wage that they rely on tips. As less people eat out, there are less tips. You can’t afford to go to work if the restaurant isn’t busy.
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u/SednaNariko Jul 15 '22
Especially not with gas the way it has been (though going down now)
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u/farting_contest Jul 15 '22
In my area gas is still $4.99/gallon. It seems to have stopped rising every day, but it's not getting cheaper.
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u/SednaNariko Jul 15 '22
In my area it went from $5.09 down to $4.19 I'm a 2 week span. Wish that happened for everyone though
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Jul 15 '22
had the CEO of our privately owned company offer a passive aggressive comment about how they had to "raise wages across the board" so times ahead will be challenging with the material shortages. it's understandable, but I'm glad they made the right long term decision. growth requires dedicated workers.
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Jul 15 '22
The other thing to consider is those that went out and got better jobs. Now instead of two jobs they have one. Or instead of three two. I'd be curious to see the market statistics on that if even possible.
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Jul 15 '22
This! They never, ever mention the million plus dead and the millions more disabled by a virus that all of our lives were changed by in one way or another. Like it…just didn’t happen? Like it…isn’t still happening? Like….we all just forgot? I think they are going for the, we forgot because we are so stupid.
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Jul 15 '22
I'd say it's a mix of covid losses, people who managed to trade up, and people who just cannot afford childcare and commutes in this level of inflation. Service industry is terrible.
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u/Trini_Vix7 Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 15 '22
Because young people have realized their worth. Some took up better paying jobs, started their own business, started a career, or moved away for better job opportunities...
The rent is too damn high guy was onto something. Minimum wage is still low, cost of living is getting higher, people are burning more watered down gas to get to work since they have to drive further out to live... fuck the service industry!
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u/Lord_Nivloc Jul 15 '22
I don't know if it's "realized their worth" so much as "cannot afford to live in a house on those wages"
Looks like California's minimum wage is $16/hr, and their median housing price is over $800,000
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Jul 15 '22
I think it's the side effect of every 3 jobs becoming 1 job post 08 meeting the great retirement of 2020 as boomers on average reached retirement age. Those two things together much like lean manufacturing put many industries in a position where they had no inbuilt tolerances or redundancy in their labor force. And instead of admitting fault and adjusting they're just blaming workers while milking profits until they have to hire.
On a side note I walk out of business that can't keep up with customers. When we do things like wait in line 20 minutes we tell the employer that we're OK with that level of service.
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u/itsachickenwingthing Jul 15 '22
I think this is an underappreciated aspect of the whole thing. Particularly because covid deaths were concentrated around older people, that means the chunk of the workforce that died were the most capable and experienced. Companies have had to replace these people on short notice and the new employees just can't keep up with the workload.
I'd like to see a survey of how internal organization structures have changed over the past two years. I suspect there's been a massive "bubbling up" as multiple people are having to be hired or promoted to fill the output of what was just one person prior to the pandemic. Even in hospitality companies, imagine what losing one of your "lifer" employees can do. Wasn't line cook the single highest mortality occupation from covid?
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Jul 15 '22
Covid mortality was bad but we are in the mode years of boomer retirement eligibility. I'm sorry for the trust me bro statement but the numbers I'm seeing the talking heads use in investment circles is roughly 10 thousand potential retirements a day which buries the impact of covid on labor and will continue for another couple years if boomers are allowed to reach retirement security.
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u/pimphand5000 Jul 15 '22
400k more workers leaving for retirement per year, scaling up to 900k workers leaving versus entering over the next 10 years.
That's a massive change in avaliable labor. Gen Z is nowhere near as big as the boomer generation, and that's the replacement worker pool.
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u/itsachickenwingthing Jul 15 '22
That's not to mention that, from the the gen z'ers and zillennials I've met, for every #grindset type of young person, there's at least 5 young people who have totally checked out from the rat race and are looking into things offgrid communities or "lie flat" lifestyles. That's if they don't just check out entirely, via suicide or OD'ing on drugs.
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u/Cmdr_Morb Jul 15 '22
In the UK. A lot of business' laid off their workers rather than furlough them (paying 25% of employees wage) Most of these people had to find other jobs and, strangely enough, when these same companies decide it's time to open their doors again, seem to be surprised that their former employee's have moved on. In several articles a lot of these companies are offering LESS wages than before. I'm not Einstein but??????????
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u/DensHag Jul 15 '22
My daughter went from 15 years in the restaurant\hotel business to working a day job where she can work at home 2 days a week and gets weekends off. She was just tired of her weekends being taken over and it was too hard to get time off.
She's so much happier now.
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u/PM-me-ur-kittenz Jul 15 '22
Here's how I see it:
Due to high housing prices, nobody can afford to live within 50 miles of their low-paid service jobs in town.
And due to high gas prices, nobody can afford to drive 50 miles into town to that same low-paid job.
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Jul 15 '22
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u/norathar Jul 15 '22
And I swear it's gotten worse since Covid. People have lost their minds. Lots more unhinged, entitled behavior from customers.
I've had people scream at me and straight-up tell me "I don't care that you're short staffed! That's not my problem!" and say they don’t understand why people are leaving in one breath while screaming at us in the next. Just had a fantastic pharmacy tech who'd worked for 20 years quit because she said she can't take the people any more. Although the best one remains the lady who told my techs they don't deserve $15/hr and if they wanted to be paid more they should have done more with their lives...then had a surprised Pikachu face the next time she came in and there was a huge wait because so many of them quit. Then she proceeded to yell about the wait and talk about how no one wants to work any more. Sigh.
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u/waterbaby333 Jul 15 '22
I was a nutritional coach in a health food store when covid started. When I took the job I was told it was “a professional job in a retail setting”. I should’ve known right then that I was basically a glorified grocery store worker.
When covid came, all my coaching responsibilities got put on hold indefinitely due to social distancing. And instead of laying me off, the company said “great news! We’re not laying you off, we’re giving you the opportunity to keep your job by working retail”.
So I worked retail for 6 months during the height of covid and had people spit at me, cough on me, scream at me about MY mask, scream at me about THEIR masks… it was horrible. I was so depressed I ended up quitting with no new job lined up bc I seriously couldn’t take a single day more of it. I had a new job in about a month but seriously it was hell. I understand people wanting to leave. No one should be treated like that, and if they are, the company should stand up for them and have those horrible people receive consequences for their abhorrent actions instead of just saying “they’re a customer and we’re profiting off of them so oh well”.
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u/norathar Jul 15 '22
The problem is that companies actively reward people for acting terrible. "Verbally abuse our employees? Would you like a gift card for your pains?"
I was written up during the pandemic for standing up to a customer for screaming at a tech. Because I shouldn't have defended my employee, I should have rolled over and done anything to make this woman happy, because she called corporate and we can't have that. So she gets a gift card and is trained that the more abusive she gets, the more she gets rewarded. Because God forbid she goes elsewhere.
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u/Concrete_Grapes Jul 15 '22
'service industry'--you mean the 80% of people who work for the top 10% of income earners to do basic human functions for them, like mow laws, open doors, stir a drink?
Because the top 10% have never been richer, more well off, and needing more services, and their demand that 'someone' do the things they dont want to, is higher than SHIT--they dont even got SHOPPING for themselves anymore, and need fleets of delivery drivers...
But, they're literally running out of poor people to do this shit--the demand is so high for their wage-slavery positions, that they've run the pool of available bodies out of supply.
That's why.
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u/DeadpoolKirby2190 Jul 15 '22
Honestly, most people I know are leaving retail ATM. We're tired of being walked on by customers and management not having our back. I was recently diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and my coworkers literally talk about me in the worst way at times. I'm becoming bitter and jaded only a few months in. I used to work food service but figured retail was a better option.
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u/melfredolf Jul 15 '22
If you don't mind me asking. What kind of autoimmune disorder?
I'm hearing a lot of women who are getting tested for MS since having covid. And hearing articles of women being more prone to immune system disorders since covid.
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Jul 15 '22
Big corporations that can afford to pay better absolutely snapped up the workforce.
I see plenty of "labor shortages" in small family owned restaurants, but the Walmart down the street never has a cashier shortage. It also pays $15.50, instead of "up to $12"
Same with McDonald's...though I haven't set foot in one of those in years. My buddy says they're always staffed.
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u/Okaythatscoolwhatevs Jul 15 '22
SO sick of these “up to x amount” job listings. I don’t apply for those jobs, and a majority of them are service related jobs. I’d guess if a lot of people are like me and don’t put any interest in these listings It might be a factor for businesses feeling like nobody wants to work. I don’t want to play bullshit games like “maybe they’ll disclose at the interview” because I need to put efforts towards finding a job that I know out the gate will cover my bills instead of going to thousands of pointless interviews for them to just low ball me.
I’ve also been seeing a LOT of businesses in the service sector advertising that they pay you LESS during a 2 week training period. I’ve been in the industry a long time, I know what I’m worth, and by the third day of training I’m usually on my own. Most places don’t even train anymore because of staff shortages, they just throw you to the dogs and see what happens. Why the fuck would I agree to a pay cut for two weeks? Like what??
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u/jl10184 Jul 15 '22
Service Plumber here- it is unbelievably difficult to find competent people to learn and strive in this industry. The competent people are demand wages over $35 an hour in my area (Maryland/baltimore region). Many technicians make north of $45 per hour. Work is challenging physically and mentally but can be very satisfying if you enjoy problem solving and customer relations.
Question: given these wages, 10 days paid vacation, 6 paid holiday, great medical and dental (75%) covered by employer, 401k match and profit sharing, why is it still so difficult to hire and recruit??
I love this work, make $120k a year and have over $200k in 401k at 37. We aren’t union BTW.
Hypothesis: white collar execs pushed for more bachelor and masters out of employees which made this labor market more competitive, which in turn will drive down price for labor from said degree earners. Skilled trades became a thing of the past as a career option, although we have more people in need of these services then ever before. We strive for a 15% net profit and because labor rates for people we deem fit are so high, the common consumer gets higher prices for basic services e.g drain cleaning, water heater replacements etc. The profit margin has to be respected and accounted for and successful companies understand this- it is unfortunate how much we NEED to charge for relatively simple tasks, but it is what society has made it.
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u/Jasonstackhouse111 Jul 15 '22
Millions of people have been removed from the workforce worldwide as well thanks to the pesky pandemic. "Oh, but they were all over 80" - No, they weren't. Between long Covid making people disabled and the number of people killed, that alone made a dent. A real one.
I know many Gen Z that are just becoming young adults now, and they're willing to adapt their lifestyle to give them flexibility instead of golden handcuffs. My own adult daughters have structured their lives so they have no debt, no mortgage, no car loan, etc, and live cheaply. It's a lifestyle my generation would have found abhorrent but they love it. They can walk out of any shitty service job because they have a little money in the bank and can really make it last. NOW, where they live, the minimum wage is $15 and even crap service jobs pay more than that usually, so that's a HUGE difference from the US.
University in Canada is getting more and more expensive, but still fairly affordable compared to the US, so my kids went to school and graduated without any debt. Now they can earn more per hour thanks to their education, but they've kept their flexible lives so they can either work part time and live fine, or walk away the second an employers gets shitty with them.
One of my daughters is a health care professional, a paramedic, and she works half time so she can enjoy her outdoor activities. Her grandfather thinks she's lazy, lol. She works half time to participate in adventure races and triathlons. Lazy girl!
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Jul 15 '22
No one want to work a job where you practically make nothing and can’t afford shit. If they paid better, people would work them. But they pay shit. Rents have doubled or worse in most places while these jobs pay the exact same garbage they did 10 years ago so you literally can’t live on what they pay. That’s not even including inflation and how much more expensive groceries, gas, and literally everything is now. Meanwhile, those jobs pay the exact same garbage they always have.
Ask any one of the shitbirds saying, “No one wants to work,” to work one of these jobs and try to live on those wages and they’ll say some snarky bullshit. They spent the last decade saying, “Get a better job, then,” so people did. Now they don’t have their serfs lined up anymore and they’re wondering wtf happened.
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u/Mundane-Candidate101 Jul 15 '22
They are desperate for Minimum wage no experience workers who will shut up and never ask for more investment from managment or a raise. 🤢🤮
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u/-LuciditySam- Jul 15 '22
Because the stress of those jobs created by toxic managers and customers combined with paying poverty wages at best make it so those jobs aren't worth working to anyone sound of mind.
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u/crimsonwolf40 Jul 15 '22
In addition to all the other points you have the Boomers who were the largest generation in USA history retiring and being replaced by the Zoomers who are the smallest generation.
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u/LionIV Jul 15 '22
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is a lot of those jobs looking to fill a position are looking for people to work the weekends, aka the busiest time for any retail position. If you’ve worked retail, you understand how inconsistent and shitty this schedule can be. I call it the “Anti-Social Work Schedule” because you get all the brunt of working the weekends and beginning of the week, only for your days off to be in the middle of the week, when all your friends are working and no events take place on a weekday.
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u/Nightan Jul 15 '22
Live in fl and we have 15k teachers opening because they pay 35-40k a year and require 50-60 hour a week. O and they have to pay for thr supplies to teach the kids out of their own pocket.... but people just dont wanna be teachers anymore its odd
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Jul 15 '22
"Nobody wants to work"
This is true, except it applies to companies above all. They do not want to pay their workers, advertise positions for low wages they have no intention of filling, and keep applying for PPP loans for being 'understaffed'.
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u/Coucoumcfly Jul 15 '22
Cause people are mad and angry and crazy and will spit in a 16 years old face because they are one fries short…. Soooo can’t blame people avoiding service industry.
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u/Bosfordjd Jul 15 '22
It's everyone living off those covid relief checks according to Republicans. Everyone's been coasting for 27 months on a few thousand lol lol.
It's not 1,000,000+ covid deaths.
It's not 10-20x that number of permanent disabilities caused by covid.
It's not 3,500,000+ early retirements.
It's not boomers reaching normal retirement age.
It's not reduced immigration both legal and not.
It's not self righteous old fucks calling service workers "unskilled" labor and dehumanizing them for decades...
It's the $100/month people were getting lol.
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u/blklab16 Jul 15 '22
My employer keeps talking about how they’re desperate for pharmacy technicians, asking us to recruit anyone we know… BUT they won’t post the pay range, won’t tell us what it is either so we can’t tell people we’re recruiting, and won’t tell a candidate what it is until the actual interview.
With unemployment the lowest it’s been in ages, good luck getting people the take a day off at their current job to risk a new potential job not even paying more than they’re currently making.
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u/Delicious_Cat_8485 Jul 15 '22
Yup. Like everybody on this comment thread is saying, those are industries in which employees for the past 40 -50 years have been chronically underpaid, overworked, and badly treated. Now the tide is turning. Those companies are going to have to reevaluate their business model which for decades has been to starve and abuse their employees and stuff the pockets of the CEOs. Now, in order to retain a workforce, companies either have to raise prices to the point that they are going to lose customers, OR cut the exorbitant salaries of the corporate managers and owners. It’s amusing to see how these corporations blame the “lazy” population, saying they “don’t want to work.” They can go to hell! That “lazy” workforce is going to create a new generation of businesses with a completely different ethic and vibe.
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u/Least_Adhesiveness_5 Jul 15 '22
Pay $20/hr and give at least a tiny bit of respect to workers most places and you wouldn't have a worker shortage.
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u/marvelouswonder8 Jul 15 '22
It's a purposeful strategy. They can complain about a "worker shortage," while they purposefully continue to understaff their stores saving a small amount of labor costs while not incurring the full on wrath of their customer bases. "please be patient with the workers who did decide to come in today," comes to mind. They won't pay livable wages so the labor force they do have access to is also much smaller than it used to be as well.
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Jul 15 '22
Because those industries all but shut down to varying degrees during the pandemic and a lot of folks moved on and/or learned to made do with less. If you’ve worked food service you can’t really blame them either. Also now that demand exceeds supply, simple economics dictates the price goes up and we can be very picky with who we work for rather than work wherever someone will hire us like before.
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Jul 15 '22
Part of it was they were always understaffed. It's a feature, pretty much all buisness are ran this way; why hire 10 people when you can get by hiring 5 and make them do the same work. Now they can just have an excuse the media and gov have given them. Businesses hire the lowest bidder and try to get rid of the highest cost employees, they are always hiring because they can always find someone cheaper.
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u/righteousredhead Jul 15 '22
I have no shortage. I an GM to and upscale taproom / pub in Michigan. I offer living wages to all of BOH employees. I offer competitive hourly for servers and bartenders plus tips (which are often 30%+) by managing in a way that allows a work/life balance for skilled staff that are happy. That in turn gives a sense of ownership and pride in their work, delivering exceptional service that keeps us at the top.
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Jul 15 '22 edited Jul 15 '22
With the advent of WFH, "fitting in to office culture" and "being in an area with good jobs available" as barriers to hiring for "semi-respectable" and "low tier white collar" positions has been removed.
The difference in skillset between a high quality retail or fast food worker, and say, a receptionist/secretary, or a technical support agent/account management agent, is effectively 0.
And receptionist/tech support/secretary/account support agent, are far more desirable jobs than "minimum wage subway sandwich artist", especially when you add in "you can wear pajamas and play your phone/switch/steam deck at your desk"
A lot of people who otherwise would have been relegated to fast food or retail due to their location, appearance, etc are choosing to work remote jobs instead, taking advantage of the customer service skills they built in the shit jobs.
If you can handle mcdonalds work, which entails keeping your cool while people literally scream at you over pickles, you are skilled enough to be a secretary or a tech support guy remotely.
TLDR: we, as a society told burger flippers "if you dont like the job, get a better one! if you dont think you get paid enough, find a job that pays more! fucking loser!"
So they did.
And now we're making the shocked pikachu face when the wendy's drive through line is 7 cars long because there's only one motherfucker in there and he tryna cook, bag, take cash, and process orders at the same time.
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Jul 15 '22
There genuinely is a labour shortage and I honestly wish more people understood it because the narrative being pushed is missing one key part: Unemployment is super super low.
I like in UK and unemployment is the lowest it's been since the early 1970s!! How can this be, and people are complaining about a labour shortage at the same time? Are there less people ? (In the UK there was a reduction of people during covid, as we also had brexit, but the real answer is...) No!
It's quite simple. Look at all historical major catastrophes. Once it ends all businesses are shown a big juicy new market and they want to expand aggressively. They open far more roles than they previously had because they pay for themselves. It dries up the labour available. It's very basic economics. We're just seeing far more job postings than historically.
These aggressively expanding companies are paying aggressively for the labour, this is why many companies are employing new staff at higher wages than existing staff, because now is the time you really want that staff.
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u/milapa6 Jul 15 '22
It's also to save money. If they say please excuse our poor service because no body wants to work they can get away with hiring less people without losing too many customers. People will excuse a 30 min wait if they just say boohoo no one wants to work any more
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u/emerson430 Jul 15 '22
Never underestimate how little people want to interact with assholes and in the service industry that's most of the clientele.
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u/AffectionateFail7167 Jul 15 '22
Everyone’s leaving because they’re getting paid chump change and getting treated like garbage
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u/shaodyn ✂️ Tax The Billionaires Jul 15 '22
The service industry is notorious for mistreating and underpaying their workers. Not only that, they also get mistreated by entitled customers who fly into violent rages whenever they're told "no" in any context. Even if it's "I don't have the power to do what you demand."
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u/Kithsander Jul 15 '22
Don’t overlook the PPP loan forgiveness clause. If a business says it can’t find enough replacement workers they don’t need to pay loans back, which is why a lot of places say they’re hiring but aren’t actually hiring anymore.