I honestly don't know what's fair for the jobs the company is hiring for. Maybe they're woefully underpaying! But at first blush it does not appear terrible.
A totally not in-depth look at machinist hourly rates (in Seattle) looks fairly similar to what they're offering.
Something I left out in the interests of brevity is that there was no mention of taking people off the street and paying for their training. That is the indicator of staff shortages.
In other words, if you only get this job for a year or two and then lose it, it's not worth the risk. You'd have to be paid enough to retire on, like football players or anyone else whose career is expected to be a few years long.
So?
Why is it that capitalists can't seem to understand supply/demand curves when it comes to wages?
> Why is it that capitalists can't seem to understand supply/demand curves when it comes to wages?
If they were 'capitalists' they would use the same supply/demand curve logic to labor costs as everything else.
We use the market rate instead (not that that makes it a "fair" rate, it's just what we use for pragmatic reasons). If they're unable to hire, they're not paying/offering market rate pretty much by definition.
The result of this on-shoring craze (modulo automation) is that we're likely to see very significant inflation, basically taking us back to the cost structures we saw in the 1980s. No more cheap Chinese or Vietnamese goods at Amazon or Walmart; if we have to Buy American, expect to pay the differential between Vietnamese and American wages, roughly a 30-40x increase.
I theorise that it might also lead to a reversal of planned obsolescence and products with a short lifespan. Companies might compete by designing goods based around longevity to justify the higher cost. Household appliances, for example, might be a once in a decade (or longer) purchase as opposed to the throwaway approach.
Sounds like paradise to me.
What screws people without money is the expensive once off things that just always crop up. I have a decent job and I feel the burn, especially now with inflation, a once off surprise expensive can be deadly lately.
The accidental parking fines, the expensive medical bill, the new car tyre, the more expensive electricity etc. This IMO is more likely to create cyclical poverty than the ability to buy cheap things from Walmart(TM).
You can't get something the quality of a smartphone or mirrorless camera assembled in the US for the quality you can in Thailand for any amount of money. Shenzhen is just better at electronics than we are.
Of course, America does produce some of the components going into them, just like Japan and Korea and the UK do.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2015/09/03/its-expen...
Should descale the Nespresso though…
Yes.
That boiler comes up as over $100 minimum when I google it. I think you missed the part about cost. You can get a 40-cup coffee maker for less than that and still save more time than your Aeropress.
Do you remember when Apple stopped making the Mac Pro in Austin because we couldn't manufacture enough screws? [0]
Everyone gave up post '08. The attrition of blue collar work overseas has been painful, so the recommendation writ large has been to avoid going into blue collar work. Even now if a worker takes on a $20 an hour job, they have no guarantee their manufacturing job won't be shipped overseas again. So why choose that career path for even $25 or $30 an hour? It's risky. The energy sector has this problem more severely than any other in part because everyone keeps talking about phasing out fossil fuels. How much would I have to pay you to take a job that a quarter of the country wants removed?
No one wants a blue collar job anymore either. That was the whole point of going to college: you become educated for the right to sit on your ass for eight hours and act like you're doing something worthwhile.
And now you can do that from home.
Compare that to working a skilled manufacturing job where your every movement is measured in a country.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-...
Indeed. This is all just temporary work until China recovers from COVID.
The CCP might not make it to the end of the 2020s. If they somehow get all the above sorted out, the demographic charts show that will be the time they run out of young people. But it is worse than that. The charts may have overcounted the younger generations by up to 100 million people.
The de-globalization that is going on, and the fact they can't feed their population, means they will have to make drastic changes. They may even have to de-urbanize large sections of their population to keep hundreds of millions from starving.
China is on the way out.
All China and the US want is to be better than the other. That makes them rivals. Very different from enemies. The irony is both rivals practically live in a symbiosis. We are rivals but survival for both China and the US involves mutual cooperation.
/s
I am not automatically saying you are wrong, but with exception of real estate, there is little I can find where somewhat verifiable data seem to support it.
I never understood why people want another country to "collapse". It'd be such a humanitarian tragedy it would go from a quick moment of blind happiness to horror, think of the millions of elderly depending on pensions, already living on the edge. The kids depending on school lunches.
Our real enemies are at home, it's the corporations.
From Vietnam to Iraq to Ukraine to Taiwan.
It's all a spectator sport for them. The USA has never been invaded by a foreign power since 1812.
It happens on both sides, the Chinese feel the same way about the US of A too.
China's population numbers: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/researcher-questions-chi...
that's just a long way of saying the people aren't paid enough to go into the career.
Imagine if these manufacturer workers get paid as much as a doctor would. People would be rushing to join. Of course, the reason they can't be paid as high, is because their output isn't that valuable - the customers of their output expect a low price.
https://news.usni.org/2021/01/19/navy-calls-freedom-lcs-prop...
https://www.defensenews.com/news/your-navy/2020/08/21/watchd...
Not very well anymore, we can't even keep the old stuff operational, let alone make new stuff that works.
Second point was a known flaw with a long history that was overlooked, because, frankly, the LCS is a jobs program. But here's some of the history of the problem: when the LCS program was started, the demonstrators had appropriately sized combining gears - although it was likely the company underbid a bit to get on the contract. Mid-construction of future vessels the company that provided these combining gears was bought by another company. They updated their leadtime to three years per unit (each ship needs two) and were thusly booted from the contract. The next best size combining gear (from another supplier) wasn't good enough. And now you know the history. On top of all this, the companies building these ships are now flushing the oil and remachining the combining gears to be more durable - so they're fixing this problem.
Third point, this is a point on maintenance of some super large ships - which is both difficult and can only be carried out at ONE shipyard in the whole USA for the two newest carrier classes (Newport News). A slipping of the maintenance schedule would be natural with a full work schedule - and they have their hands full building the new Ford class supercarriers.
You've selected three problems on complex systems in a country that makes hundreds of different defense products. I think my point still stands.
If you can't maintain your aircraft in peacetime, what do you think will happen when you go to war? Aircraft become more difficult to repair because the op tempo increases and lower echelon maintenance must be performed in theater. There is a thing called 'readiness' and you're attempting to normalize the lack of it.
> Second point was a known flaw with a long history that was overlooked,
Yeah it doesn't look good for the defense industry when they knowingly build stuff that is overpriced and doesn't work as a 'jobs program.'
> Third point, this is a point on maintenance of some super large ships - which is both difficult and can only be carried out at ONE shipyard in the whole USA for the two newest carrier classes (Newport News).
Sounds like my point still stands, we can't build new technology that works and we can't keep the old stuff going because of a lack of defense industry capability.
> You've selected three problems on complex systems in a country that makes hundreds of different defense products. I think my point still stands.
This might work to persuade some bureaucrats but when you go to war, the enemy doesn't care about why you can't keep your war machine functional, they just like it that you can't (because they get to win). These are just high profile instances of a general malaise. There are dozens of examples we could discuss.
The article isn't clear on exactly where the shortages are eg technicians, QA, forklift drivers, operators. The un-/low-skilled positions are again largely filled with immigrants as it is. These jobs, like agriculture (where I worked in a past life), are not for the faint of heart.
As for job security, we Millenials giggle dejectedly to even imagine that to be a thing.
Your point on the college-educated bias against blue-collar work is apt; even if it's better money many simply don't want to accept that we paid through the nose for something that doesn't pan out economically.
Not clear on the meaning of your last sentence ie 'movement is measured in a country'. Do you mean PRC being totalitarian?
Controls/Automation engineer? I apprenticed for 4 years and still learn something every day.
It’s been almost two years since the dependency on import from very few country for critical things was widely exposed due to pandemic. This would be enough time to train someone junior or have them be half way through their apprenticeship.
Now we want to move to alternative energy source, which most likely means that solar and lithium batteries alone aren’t gonna suffice. At the same time, EU is learning the hard way why it’s not ideal for the energy sector to rely to heavily on a foreign irrational actor.
I think there is enough momentum to push the needle and see results in 5-10 years.
There are merits to immigration but the politics around this has become toxic.
I do not know how the US gets back on this horse without having bipartisan legislation.
Such legislation looks pretty hard to be supported by a majority of the republic party’s primary voters. So, the question is what gives.
Any one sided policy moves on this by the Democratic Party would likely face risk to be reversed.
The blame isn’t just with the “build the wall” crowd, the majority of the other 75% of Americans do not place fixing immigration as a top priority, and immigrants are not voters in the short to medium term so they‘re not benefiting anyone in the next election.
The Democrats talk about it like it's charity and the humane thing to do, and the Republicans come back with 'first we have to take care of our own'. HN seems to understand this, but it isn't what makes the news.
> most of them are immigrants
This proves my point: America has lost is manufacturing capacity. These people are not "Made in America". Of course you can import more of these people, but I'm not sure the half the population is into that given who we had as our last president.
> "working a skilled manufacturing job where your every movement is measured in a country."
Typo. I meant to say "company." If you work in a factory where you make motors or fencing, your output can be directly seen and measured. With desk jobs, the outputs are at times a little more unmeasurable.
Their issue is with illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the border. The dream would be to let American jobs stabilize after addressing undocumented labor. Get everyone protected under the law and paying into the system. Then import people as needed.
The other half of the country seems to support a system of exploitative labor because not doing so sounds racist.
At the end of the day, we pursue economic affluence for the promise of social stability it's supposed to bring. Selling out existing Americans, rather than investing in them, in order to save money and hit the ground running short-term, is likely a long-term demographic nightmare. I say this as a progressive, not because I'm anti-immigration, but because the solution suggested seems less about keeping the country open and more about maintaining the wealth of a few at the expense of their marginalized neighbors across the train tracks.
Remember how the auto industry brought a bunch of Japanese trainers over years ago and then threw their recommendations for developing the local workforce in the trash? Let's do the right thing this time.
By the way, these postings most always include the hourly pay, which everyone earns, including the Ukrainian refugees and guest workers we have at our plant atm.
Nonetheless the shortage may be addressed by increasing the price. Witness the proliferation of software boot camps.
I find myself confused this fundamental mechanism of free markets seems stuck for this market in this nation. Which hidden incentive(s) do I not comprehend?
Is it simply that decades of business acumen and planning assume cheap labor, anchoring executives’ expectations well below what is now required?
I could see them having two separate problems - not finding enough unexperienced workers at $20 an hour, and separately not finding enough experienced engineering candidates at any salary.
Here is the root cause:
> Panic led to lockdowns. Lockdowns led to fiscal stimulus. Stimulus led to inflation. Inflation led to monetary tightening. Tightening leads to recession.
> The panic wasn’t free - and the bill is coming due.
https://twitter.com/naval/status/1574638443237294080
Stimulate the hell of out the nation's economy to the point where we have the "Great Resignation". Then go on to blame business owners who are trying to bring manufacturing back to US. Just completely preposterous, illogical and misplaced.
Business owner expects to pay experienced staff $20 per hour.
There is no staff shortage, there is a failure to face reality among business owners.