31 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

Party like it's 2009.

I thought it only happened in 2009 because the president was black. 😱

2 hours ago, VanHammersly said:

Markets don't seem to mind either.  Kz must be mad that he can't find a government job.

Markets are higher because bad news is good news in this scenario. Lower job numbers make it less likely the Fed tapers QE or raises rates.

3 hours ago, rambo said:

Is Cozy Popcorn's brother or something?  He has some real PTSD from that event.

Corn Pop, brah - he was a bad dude

corn pop's obit:

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/delawareonline/obituary.aspx?n=william-l-morris-cornpop&pid=183025951&fhid=18075

 

25 minutes ago, mikemack8 said:

Corn Pop, brah - he was a bad dude

I have dementia too.  I can relate to Biden. 

Though mine occurs after too much booze and weed.

1 minute ago, rambo said:

I have dementia too.  I can relate to Biden. 

Though mine occurs after too much booze and weed.

speaking of, ill be working on my dementia with some pennsyltuckians tonight. 

My understanding is incomplete, but I've read that the labor shortages are typically not in low-wage sectors like hospitality and food service (which kinda sinks the argument surrounding unemployment benefits). They have been making massive gains during the reopenings.

I though this was an interesting read from Forbes:

 

Quote

May 7, 2021,09:25am EDT|118 views

The Fairy Tale Of Labor Shortages Just Got Proven Wrong

 

The labor market is barely and apparently very slowly starting to recover and employers are already claiming that they cannot find enough workers. The Washington Post reports of anecdotal evidence that employers in the restaurant industry, among others, supposedly cannot find enough people to work for them. Most of the labor market data, especially a marked slowdown in new jobs in April, tell a different story. Millions of workers still struggle to find a job and face massive financial hardship. There are no signs of worker shortages, but rather of a dearth of good jobs.

The latest jobs numbers show a gradually improving labor market that is still far from a full recovery. The total number of jobs grew by an unexpectedly small number of 266,000 in April 2021. This was far below the increase of 770,000 new jobs in March and 536,000 jobs in February. At the same time, the unemployment rate increased slightly from 6.0% in March to 6.1% in April 2021. Yet the total number of jobs was still 8.2 million short of the number of jobs in February 2020 and even further behind where the labor market would have been if it had continued to expand for all of the past fourteen months.  And the employment to population ratio – the share of people who are working – among those 25 to 54 years old – stood at 76.9%, still down from the high of 80.5% in January 2020.

Just because things are slightly better than they were a few months ago, does not mean that the labor market has turned from famine to feast. The clearest sign yet that there are no widespread labor shortages comes from data on wage growth. If companies cannot hire people because there is a worker shortages, it would only be a shortage at current wages. There are obviously a lot of people out of the labor market or unemployed, many of whom would be willing to work at higher wages. Higher wages will entice workers, who are currently out of the labor force, to return to work since they can more easily pay for childcare, for example. Wage growth then should accelerate if employers are really facing worker shortages. But wage growth in general has slowed, in part because more low-wage workers are being rehired and in part because employers are not raising wages. Wages for production, non-supervisory workers, the vast majority of workers, were only 1.2% higher in April 2021 than a year earlier. Unless employers are boosting wages, they are not trying everything possible to fill jobs.

The data instead suggest that jobs are still hard to come by for many workers. Unemployment is still widespread, especially among some economically vulnerable groups. The overall unemployment rate of 6.1% in April is still well above its most recent low of 3.5% in February 2020. Moreover, many workers in groups that have suffered especially hard from the pandemic such as African-Americans and Latinos still have much higher unemployment rates. For instance, the unemployment rate for Black workers was 9.7%, that for Latino workers 7.9%, while that for White workers stood at only 5.3%. Too many workers, especially those hardest hit by the pandemic, still struggle finding a new job in this recovery.  

Unemployment trends by race and ethnicity into spring 2021 further underscore this point. Over the course of the pandemic the differences in unemployment rates between Black and White workers, for instance, has widened. While the two rates were relatively close to each other at the start of the pandemic with 16.7% for Black workers and 14.1% for White workers in April 2020, Black workers had almost twice the unemployment rate of White works in April 2021 – 9.7% compared to 5.3%. In April, the unemployment rate for Black workers worsened slightly from 9.6% in March to 9.7%, while it slightly improved for White workers from 5.4% in March. Those workers harder hit by the pandemic and recession are also facing greater obstacles to getting new jobs.

Changes in the labor force participation rate are yet another sign of nonexistent worker shortages. The labor force grew by 430,000 in April 2021. As a result, the labor force participation rate stood at 61.7%, up from a low of 60.2% in April 2020. While the current rate is still well below the last peak of 63.4% in January 2020, the gradual improvements in recent months are a sign that workers are returning to the labor market as more job opportunities arise.   

The labor market is still down millions of jobs and wage growth is meager affected by the pandemic. Moreover, the labor market recovery slowed markedly and unexpectedly in April. The truth of the labor market recovery is more somber than some imaginary story of worker shortages. The real policy challenge right now will be to return the labor market to its previous momentum.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianweller/2021/05/07/the-fairy-tale-of-labor-shortages-just-got-proven-wrong/?sh=3ac014566f26

 

The Outcome is already predetermined before hand. Cheaters, sore losers and conspiracy nuts.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/arizona-review-2020-vote-riddled-120356054.html

Arizona Review of 2020 Vote Is Riddled With Flaws, Says Secretary of State

Untrained citizens are trying to find traces of bamboo on last year’s ballots, seemingly trying to prove a conspiracy theory that the election was tainted by fake votes from Asia. Thousands of ballots are left unattended and unsecured. People with open partisan bias, including a man who was photographed on the Capitol steps during the Jan. 6 riot, are doing the recounting.

All of these issues with the Republican-backed re-examination of the November election results from Arizona’s most populous county were laid out this week by Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, in a scathing six-page letter.

The service sector (restaurants in particular) at least in my area definitely have a shortage of labor. 

This line is too simplistic: 

Quote

There are obviously a lot of people out of the labor market or unemployed, many of whom would be willing to work at higher wages.

I support UE, but we're currently in a place where ~$15/hr that a line cook makes isn't sufficiently attractive relative to UE benefits they're currently receiving.

Restaurants are dying for workers. And they shouldn't have to compete with free benefits from the gov't for workers. 

22 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

I support UE, but we're currently in a place where ~$15/hr that a line cook makes isn't sufficiently attractive relative to UE benefits they're currently receiving.

Restaurants are dying for workers. And they shouldn't have to compete with free benefits from the gov't for workers. 

 

Those additional benefits are going to expire in a few months, so I really feel like the argument kind of moot anyway. I'll admit, though, I'm biased. Having worked in restaurants for awhile when I was a student, I think it is moatly a terrible industry built on terrible practices and run by a lot of terrible people in management and ownership. I honestly have a hard time judging anyone for not wanting those jobs or feeling bad for anyone not being able to find workers in that industry. They need to pay better, and we're starting to see places upping pay in response. Good.

 

I do still know some servers, and they are generally enthusiastic about getting back on the job, so they're out there working. They want the tips.

I think servers and bartenders are eager. Line cooks, not so much; from what my friend who helps manage a fairly popular restaurant tells me that's where they're hurting at least. 

2 hours ago, Alpha_TATEr said:

speaking of, ill be working on my dementia with some pennsyltuckians tonight. 

Is dementia code for male buttsex, Greg Hugeanus? 

 

Quote

 

Joe Biden’s assessment of China, May 1, 2019:

China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west. They can’t figure out how they are going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know,they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”

 

 

 

Quote

 

Joe Biden’s assessment of China, May 6, 2021:

The Chinese are eating our lunch.  They’re eating our lunch, economically.  They’re investing hundreds of billions of dollars in research and development.

That’s why, right now, if it keeps their way, they’re going to own the electric car market in the world.  They’re going to own a whole range — we got to compete.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, MidMoFo said:

😂

"Private job growth accelerated in April but fell a bit short of Wall Street expectations, according to a report Wednesday from payroll processing firm ADP.

Companies added 742,000 workers for the month, a jump from March's upwardly revised 565,000 but a bit shy of the 800,000 forecast from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.”

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/05/05/adp-private-payrolls-april-2021.html

 

 

Not Vox and Slate, too! OMG!

   

I wouldn't normally use HuffPost, but I'll carve out some of the points made and quotes that I think are worthy of consideration:

Quote

Chef Andrew Gruel, owner of the Slapfish restaurant franchise, took to Twitter last week to declare "there are no employees available in California.” Gruel said his eateries were offering $21 per hour but couldn’t find any takers. The top reason? "They are making enough on unemployment and would rather not work.”

William Spriggs isn’t buying that. The chief economist at the AFL-CIO labor federation, Spriggs said it is "self-evident” that millions of people are trying to find work. Just because an employer hasn’t found them yet ― at the wages the employer is willing to pay ― doesn’t mean the workers aren’t out there.

 

Quote

Spriggs said the normal hiring networks that employers rely on were blown up by the pandemic. Some employers who received forgivable government loans were able to keep their workers on the payroll, but many firms simply let them go during lockdown. A year later many of those workers have taken other jobs, moved on or even died.

"They tend to recruit using networks ― friends and relatives of people they already hire,” Spriggs said. "And the problem when we decided we would handle this by separating people from their employer is we broke up those networks.”

Workers understand that unemployment benefits do not last forever, Spriggs noted. The federal benefits will expire in the fall.

He also said employers may be reluctant to pay the "market clearing wage” ― the pay necessary to attract workers to all the available work, especially at a time when many jobs have become more difficult and stressful due to the pandemic. "Then they get shocked when they try to expand and find out, ‘I have to raise my wage,’” Spriggs said.

 

 

Quote

Powell, for his part, acknowledged some employers may be struggling to find people who want to work for them. He said workers might be wary of virus exposure, or are running into other obstacles to returning to work. In other words, there’s still a plague going on.

"One big factor would be schools aren’t open yet, so there are people who are at home taking care of their children that would like to be back in the workforce, but can’t be yet,” he said.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, many employers lamented that they couldn’t find workers, even amid high levels of unemployment, prompting some commentators to proclaim a lack of skills among American workers. (The federal government wasn’t boosting weekly jobless pay at the time.)

 

Quote

The loudest complaints of a worker shortage now seem to come from restaurants, as more people resume their pre-pandemic dining-out habits thanks to widespread vaccination. 

The National Restaurant Association, an industry lobbying group, says a variety of factors, not just benefits, contribute to hiring difficulties. "With fewer people in the workforce, the stimulus supports still in place, worker safety concerns, the need for caregivers to remain at home, and much greater competition with other industries for workers, operators are returning to pre-pandemic recruitment techniques for hiring,” the association’s Hudson Riehle said in a statement.

Wages may have risen a bit faster than average this year in the hospitality industry, according to the government’s employment cost index, though state minimum wage laws may have played a role. In general, restaurant work doesn’t pay very much, with median wages around $11 for servers in 2020, compared to more than $20 across all occupations.

 

Quote

Some restaurant workers recently told Eater that they are willing to work ― they just want pay that reflects the hazards.

 

Quote

It’s difficult to square the notion of a shortage of food service workers with the strong job growth in that industry, said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the Labor Department now with the Economic Policy Institute. Dining and drinking establishments added 176,000 jobs in March, the biggest gain in any sector. 
 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/worker-shortage-unemployment-benefits_n_609056c3e4b09cce6c21a850?fbclid=IwAR3TJnDkqVEvv-3fjbRDll-AN7NuYrmB3PLddsRDvjBouupVZXF9Hq0ebs4

 

Interesting paper that I'd like to read when I have time. Here's the quote citing it, followed by the article's abstract:

 

Quote

It’s true that the benefits amount to more than prior wages for some workers. It’s just that the extra money doesn’t seem to have held workers back.

 

Quote

Job Search, Job Posting and Unemployment Insurance During the COVID-19 Crisis

Ioana Elena Marinescu, Daphné Skandalis, Daniel Zhao

July 2020

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses had to close and unemployment skyrocketed. To help the unemployed, the CARES Act increased US unemployment benefits by $600 a week, which increased unemployment benefit replacement rates (benefit/wage) to unprecedentedly high levels, above 100% for many workers. We investigate the state of the labor market during the COVID-19 crisis, using job applications and vacancy listings by occupation, state and industry from the online platform Glassdoor. We document two new facts. First, applications-per-vacancy were higher during the COVID-19 crisis than before. This is because job vacancies decreased by 64% during the crisis, while job applications only decreased by 21%. Job applications decreased before the CARES Act, and remained relatively stable until June 2020. Second, applications and applications-per-vacancy were slightly lower in occupation-states with a larger increase in the replacement rate after the CARES Act, but these differences are not entirely explained by the CARES Act. Overall, our evidence suggests that employers did not experience greater difficulty finding applicants for their vacancies after the CARES Act, despite the large increase in unemployment benefits.

https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=347005106102010001094113023119004000009034067081071060081071021000117076089066004073126035037037025005058021002071084126109022060073073001035001007100100117019024033069000087027093089113117095085071083080090092069023077111107072123074080083011073064&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE

 

California is having some issues unique to California. Specifically around schooling. I don't know what the cost of living is in the areas cited in the article, all I can speak to is that local restaurants are having a helluva time finding people.

There isn’t a shortage of workers. The problem is workers are working different jobs. Some employers just aren’t as attractive as they were before the pandemic.

The pandemic has upended the restaurant industry. Servers being paid by tips are encouraged to work as many tables as possible when restaurants are full. That’s where the money is. When restaurants are forced to limit patrons, it drastically lowers the potential wage of a waiter. Add the danger of getting sick, where calling out for two weeks can cost you the job... It’s not worth it. 

The solution is to pay a competitive wage, more than min. wage plus tips. So these workers aren’t lost to other jobs. This means getting rid of the American custom of tipping waiters, and replacing it with a service fee on the bill. 

1 hour ago, toolg said:

There isn’t a shortage of workers. The problem is workers are working different jobs. Some employers just aren’t as attractive as they were before the pandemic.

The pandemic has upended the restaurant industry. Servers being paid by tips are encouraged to work as many tables as possible when restaurants are full. That’s where the money is. When restaurants are forced to limit patrons, it drastically lowers the potential wage of a waiter. Add the danger of getting sick, where calling out for two weeks can cost you the job... It’s not worth it. 

The solution is to pay a competitive wage, more than min. wage plus tips. So these workers aren’t lost to other jobs. This means getting rid of the American custom of tipping waiters, and replacing it with a service fee on the bill. 

 

Well said! It is truly one of the most exploitative industries out there today. With lots of job openings in a wide variety of industries, the food-service industry is finally being made to re-think its business model. I never understood how people could see serving as a long-term professional opportunity, getting paid basically zero hourly and reying on handouts from mostly ungrateful and entitled morons to make ends meet. It's demeaning, degrading, and highly stressful. Even in good times, managers and ownership would typically pinch every penny and keep waitstaff to a bare minimum so that they could squeeze everything out of that $2.83/hr., even if it left the few servers on the floor absolutely swamped and harmed the level of service.

It's not servers, it's kitchen staff. 

It's not all UE, but it's a big factor. It's also a bad job to have during a pandemic. 

But servers are coming back. Line cooks not so much.

Just now, JohnSnowsHair said:

It's not servers, it's kitchen staff. 

It's not all UE, but it's a big factor. It's also a bad job to have during a pandemic. 

But servers are coming back. Line cooks not so much.

 

I hear you, just needed to vent a bit, lol.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9553749/Greenhouse-gases-China-emitted-2019-worlds-developed-nations-together.html
 

 

Quote

China emitted more greenhouse gases in 2019 than all of the world's other developed nations put together

By Ian Randall For Mailonline10:04 EDT 07 May 2021 , updated 12:02 EDT 07 May 2021

 

They’re laughing at us while the Democrats destroy our economy for bogus environmental boondoggles.

 

6 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

It's not servers, it's kitchen staff. 

It's not all UE, but it's a big factor. It's also a bad job to have during a pandemic. 

But servers are coming back. Line cooks not so much.

Line cooks need a better wage too. The hours suck. And if they can find a better job in another line of work, they’re gone. 

What can you say at this point, Joe is just killing it.  Imagine the approval rating if we could help people get out of the cult.

 

1 hour ago, downundermike said:

What can you say at this point, Joe is just killing it.  Imagine the approval rating if we could help people get out of the cult.

 

Doesn't golf. Doesn't tweet. Didn't put Hunter in charge of peace in the middle east. Guy just gets the job done. 

 As I've been saying...


 

Quote

Low pay and 'toxic' workplaces are driving workers away from restaurants

San Francisco (CNN Business)On a typical week in pre-pandemic times, about 15 people would walk into one of Patrick Whalen's casual elegant restaurants seeking a job in the kitchen.

From Jan. 1 to April 15 of this year, a total of 15 people sought back-of-the-house positions at Tempest, Whalen's highly acclaimed Charleston, South Carolina, seafood restaurant that landed "Best New Restaurant" accolades in USA Today.

"It wasn't a shortage, it was a drought," said Whalen, owner and chief executive officer of North Carolina-based 5th Street Group, which operates a handful of restaurants in the Southeast.

Tales of worker scarcity in the food and hospitality business have grown in volume in recent weeks as restrictions are loosening and an increasing number of restless, vaccinated patrons are opting to dine out instead of DoorDashing-in.

On paper, such a supply-demand imbalance seems like a head-scratcher. The pandemic leveled the hospitality industry, causing the restaurant sector to lose 2.5 million workers, according to the National Restaurant Association. And as of March, food-service unemployment rates remain nearly double that of the national average, federal labor data show.

While some have placed the blame on higher and extended unemployment benefits, restaurant workers, their advocates and restaurateurs like Whalen say the pandemic has exposed deeper, systemic problems within the industry -- notably low wages and poor working conditions.

"This is not a worker shortage, this is a wage shortage," said Saru Jayaraman, director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California-Berkeley and president of One Fair Wage, an advocacy group pushing to raise the subminimum wage for tipped workers.

"The restaurant business, inherently and pre-covid, was a toxic workplace," Whalen said. "You had an enormous wage gap between the back of the house and front of the house; rampant alcohol and drug problems; harassment issues; you've got people living in or near poverty working hourly jobs with no guarantees."

When the industry collapsed, the pandemic merely amplified the pre-existing conditions, he said.

"How many times are you going to go back to something that hurts you?" he said.

After Alicia Macklin, who has an 11-year-old and a 2-year-old child, lost her job of seven years as bartender at a Spokane, Washington, night club, finding another hospitality job was not a viable option.

"For me, it was like, 'I can't make minimum wage, I have to make double," she said, noting her childcare costs can range from $900 to $1,200 a month. "The wage needs to become livable."

For many years, the club work was ideal. She'd bring in $300 to $350 on good nights and double that on special occasions such as Pride. Macklin's spouse worked during the day and could care for the kids at night.

During the pandemic, night clubs and some bars went dormant amid social gathering restrictions. Schools went virtual and, later, Macklin also joined the ranks of pandemic divorcees.

She put her focus on pursuing a legal career, completed an application for law school, and, two weeks ago, landed a job as a legal assistant in Seattle.

"For those that don't have a fallback like I do, they're stranded," she said.

When Dominique Brown was laid off from her restaurant job in March 2020, she felt disposable.

"I think it's the realization of millions of people across the industry saying 'We're not going to put up with the bare minimum anymore,'" said Brown, who left the restaurant industry after getting laid off in March 2020. "We are worthy to be paid a respectable wage."

Brown, who now works as a full-time concierge in property management at an apartment building, received a small emergency living expenses grant from One Fair Wage, and has since served as a member-speaker for the organization, sharing her experience and story.

The jobs restaurant workers did before have changed, as has the world around them, and wages should reflect that, said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

"When restaurants post jobs, they are posting jobs right now that are just inherently harder, more stressful than they were before [the Covid-19 pandemic]," Shierholz said. "They have to deal with anti-maskers, much more disinfecting and sanitation requirements, and they're actually riskier jobs than they used to be."

That being said, Shierholz isn't yet convinced that a true labor shortage has taken hold in restaurants and other sectors. Data such as hours worked and wage growth don't yet reflect that.

Businesses that say they have a hard time finding the workers they need, should really include the qualifier, "at the wages I want to pay," Sheirholz said.

Expecting to pay the same wages ignores the Covid-19 realities, she said, noting health and safety concerns as well as ongoing childcare needs.

For some businesses, especially mom-and-pop shops like Black Cat Bake Shop in Missoula, Montana, there's a ceiling to how much they can raise wages, said co-owner Christy Wich, who runs the bakery with her husband, Jack. Considering margins are as thin as pasty flakes, any increases in expenses would have to get passed along to the customers, she said.

And in Montana, a $6 cinnamon roll just wouldn't fly, she added.

Black Cat did increase its wages for its open jobs to $10.50 and $11.50 an hour, which are above Montana's minimum wage of $8.65, but has still struggled to find workers, a challenge that was first reported by the Missoulian newspaper.

"The public wants to support us, they want those items, but we don't have the workforce, the hands to make all of that," she told CNN Business.

Wich said she's hopeful that Governor Greg Gianforte's recent decision to remove the state from the federal unemployment program of extended benefits will help to push more people back into the workforce.

5th Street Group's Whalen has taken a unique approach to trying to solve worker shortages and ease low-wage concerns.

Last month, 5th Street Group announced a guaranteed minimum wage of $15 per hour and established the "Tip the Kitchen Initiative," which adds a second line on the receipt to give patrons the opportunity to also toss some cash to the back-of-the-house staff. In 19 days, the second tip line amounted to nearly $40,000 for 5th Street's kitchen workers.

"One of my big regrets in life is that we didn't think of this way, way sooner," he said.

The moves have been good for business, too, Whalen said.

Last week, 20 job-seekers came through Tempest's doors. His restaurants are fully staffed.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/10/economy/labor-shortages-pay-gaps/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_content=2021-05-10T20%3A27%3A07&utm_source=fbCNN&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR0_OX2JmDShelEElbxMCLZ5-Kss_6bLsRBZRVcpGEYIPEQpZc-MjSK_LM4