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Mar. 10th, 2022 04:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsyAnytime you hear about a business owner complaining "nobody wants to work anymore", they're almost certainly running the kind of business nobody wanted to work for in the first place; people just worked there until something better came along. It's not that a large number of young would-be workers have decided to just leave the workforce to go play bongo drums on the beach or find themselves in the mountains; it's that people move up in positions when they leave their job.
For the longest time, many people who were nearing the end of their working lives had some of the better paying jobs. They were well-off enough that they didn't have to keep working but they didn't have to retire either. Many of them were planning to keep working to max out any benefits, including that unicorn-in-the-wild benefit known as a pension.
Well, COVID came along, and forced this particular demographic to rethink their retirement strategy, and a large number (in the millions) decided it was best to jump out early rather than stay at a job that they could realistically get sick from. (The mortality rate for the 60-69 group is about 3%, and many of those people decided to not take the chance.) Again, many of those positions were well-paying and cushy. Many of those jobs needed filled, often by workers a rung or two further down the ladder. And as they moved up, their old jobs needed filled too. And it continues down the line.
Eventually at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of pay, are the part-time service workers. The cashiers, fast-food workers, shelf-stockers, wait staff, etc., many of them saw an opportunity to get that better job they kept hearing about. When someone is making minimum wage at a part-time job and they hear somewhere will hire them full-time for $20 an hour, they'll leave their current burger-flipping job, flipping something else as they walk out the door.
Another source of part-time labor that vanished is the post-retirement folk. They're the elderly workforce who decided they wanted something to do part-time so they could get out of the house and make a couple bucks. When COVID came along, they decided that they need to stay retired.
Two years later, and this exodus is continuing, with each month bringing another wave of people who retire as soon as they're eligible instead of hanging on as they normally would. It's going to be like this for another few years, until enough kids age into being able to take the service jobs as young adults. As well as enough post-retirees deciding that the coast is finally clear and they can get a part-time job.
Until it all gets back to something close enough to normal, we're gonna see weird hours. When you see a business (usually retail or fast-food) that had to really cut back their hours, you can be reasonably certain that's a shitty place to work. When you hear about Dollar General not being able to keep stores open, that often comes with horror stories about the working environment. When Walmart went from being open 24-hours to closing at 8PM, they claimed it was for the purpose of deep-cleaning and making sure shelves were properly stocked, but obviously, there was no deep-cleaning, there was no restocking, they just couldn't keep employees.
For the longest time, many people who were nearing the end of their working lives had some of the better paying jobs. They were well-off enough that they didn't have to keep working but they didn't have to retire either. Many of them were planning to keep working to max out any benefits, including that unicorn-in-the-wild benefit known as a pension.
Well, COVID came along, and forced this particular demographic to rethink their retirement strategy, and a large number (in the millions) decided it was best to jump out early rather than stay at a job that they could realistically get sick from. (The mortality rate for the 60-69 group is about 3%, and many of those people decided to not take the chance.) Again, many of those positions were well-paying and cushy. Many of those jobs needed filled, often by workers a rung or two further down the ladder. And as they moved up, their old jobs needed filled too. And it continues down the line.
Eventually at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of pay, are the part-time service workers. The cashiers, fast-food workers, shelf-stockers, wait staff, etc., many of them saw an opportunity to get that better job they kept hearing about. When someone is making minimum wage at a part-time job and they hear somewhere will hire them full-time for $20 an hour, they'll leave their current burger-flipping job, flipping something else as they walk out the door.
Another source of part-time labor that vanished is the post-retirement folk. They're the elderly workforce who decided they wanted something to do part-time so they could get out of the house and make a couple bucks. When COVID came along, they decided that they need to stay retired.
Two years later, and this exodus is continuing, with each month bringing another wave of people who retire as soon as they're eligible instead of hanging on as they normally would. It's going to be like this for another few years, until enough kids age into being able to take the service jobs as young adults. As well as enough post-retirees deciding that the coast is finally clear and they can get a part-time job.
Until it all gets back to something close enough to normal, we're gonna see weird hours. When you see a business (usually retail or fast-food) that had to really cut back their hours, you can be reasonably certain that's a shitty place to work. When you hear about Dollar General not being able to keep stores open, that often comes with horror stories about the working environment. When Walmart went from being open 24-hours to closing at 8PM, they claimed it was for the purpose of deep-cleaning and making sure shelves were properly stocked, but obviously, there was no deep-cleaning, there was no restocking, they just couldn't keep employees.
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Date: 2022-03-11 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-03-12 09:28 pm (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_company_(Japanese_term)
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Date: 2022-03-13 02:46 am (UTC)