Posted on 10/19/2021 8:09:54 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
* Businesses across the US say they are struggling to find employees, especially for hourly work.
* Joey Holz decided to test their claims, submitting two applications a day in September.
* Holz got one interview, and his summary of the experiment went viral on multiple platforms.
Joey Holz recalled first hearing complaints about a labor shortage last year when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida.
"The guy went on this rant about how he can't find help and he can't keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the stimulus checks," Holz told Insider. "And I'm like, 'Your medical professionals quit over $1,200 checks? That's weird.'"
Over the next several months, he watched as a growing chorus of businesses said they couldn't find anyone to hire because of government stimulus money. It was so ubiquitous that he joined a "No one wants to work" Facebook group, where users made memes deriding frustrated employers.
He said he found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. The expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states ended them early in June and July.
"If this extra money that everyone's supposedly living off of stopped in June and it's now September, obviously, that's not what's stopping them," he said. Workers have said companies struggling to hire aren't offering competitive pay and benefits.
So Holz, a former food-service worker and charter-boat crewman, decided to run an experiment.
On September 1, he sent job applications to a pair of restaurants that had been particularly public about their staffing challenges.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Entry level is already $15+
How much is enough for you?
And what should the starting wage be for the high school kid cleaning the dishes at your local Mom and Pa dinner be?
I love the way the pompous blow hards around here think their political dogma on wages can just be imposed despite the fact none of them have ever ran a business or met a payroll.
Then when their wage dogma is followed with a mandatory minimum wage hike the same blowhards rage that their favorite soda at the local grocery now costs 2xs what it use to and how are they suppose to make ends meet on their fixed income doled out to them from Uncle Sam.
Oh got it. You want to apply your experience in IT to the kid working his 1st job at the local diner.
“I’m retired and could find a job tomorrow if I tried”
Don’t be so sure. I was in the process of wanting to sell my business several years ago but wanted to go out and do something different full time. I was 57, great health and just a few lbs overweight and have a college degree in finance.
I applied at numerous job fairs etc. Zip zero nada, yeah I could get a job at Mcdees but I would not take that kind of job
No one wants to hire old people unless you have a real rare skill that is still in demand
I work in employee benefits and employers have told me for years they never hire anyone older than 45. I found out that was the case.
Long story short I kept my business and now work pt.
Good luck to you!
A friend of mine in Sioux Falls, SD took a picture of a job posting for a pizza delivery driver for $17-$22/hr. They were having trouble finding help. Then another friend from there told me UPS was starting at $21/hr and has been having trouble finding people.
What a crock. My kid here in Alaska is working jobs as a laborer for $19-23/hr and he feels blessed and happy to be earning that much. The cost of living in Fairbanks is 35-40% higher than down there.
People are sponging off the government and are turning into welfare kings and queens. Get your buttocks to work, people!
I am 67 years old my mom passed recently I was her primary care giver, when she passed I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself, I put in an application with Walmart to work a couple of days a week!! They called me the very next morning hired me on the phone sight unseen AND I was working in 2 days!! I am in Ca. In Florida it would be entirely different people have been working all through this pandemic!!
I love a success story!
Yep. Drug usage? Poor appearance? Felon? Too many prior jobs?
The local Chik-Fil-A is offering really good wages and scholarships, Many fast food restaurants have their dining rooms closed because they can’t get enough help.
Congrats and best wishes.
Good for you! I hope it works out well for you.
I’m not following your logic. Please elaborate.
My company has several IT openings.
This very well could be skewed by the types of jobs he was applying for. Entry level? nothing nothing over twelve bucks an hour? In good times those are probably not the best places to work and probably churn through employees of questionable quality already. In a severe labor shortage, they’re probably even worse places to work because the bosses aren’t trying to appeal to their potential employees.
I also think there’s a big change afoot with the nature of work. The past two years have taught a lot of people that 40 hours + a week isn’t for them, and they’d rather have a part time income than a full time work obligation... but a lot of employers don’t want to adjust for that type of manpower situation, and in some places the full time workers they hire on often get pushed to do overtime and on-call work, and then there’s no job security that comes with it. They’ll be the first furloughed when the market tightens up.
I for one think more people should embrace this idea that work doesn’t have to be 40 hours in an office or 45 hours on an assembly line, two weeks of vacation and a gift card for a Thanksgiving turkey each year. A motivated employee working three days a week is far better than a slug working five. It changes a lot of metrics and manpower calculations, but it would make a lot of people happier.
Let’s pretend I am a small business man. I have a job that I can afford to pay $10.00 an hour. I tired of doing all the clean up around my business and need someone to come in 10-15 hours a week an do simple maintenance work. I get your application and on it you indicate your starting wage is $15.00. Your previous work history indicates you have job experience that are way above the job I am currently offering.
If you take the job you are going to be an unhappy employee because your expectation of what the job should offer are much higher then I can afford.
In a small business there is almost nothing worse then a disgruntled employee. Their bad attitude is the most highly infectious disease in the world.
Not only are they going to grow rapidly more and more unhappy with the work and pay, they are going to infect my workforce with their attitude. Their unhappiness with the job is going to rapidly lead them to simply decide to go elsewhere.
Smart employers do not hire just anyone with a pulse. If they do they constantly have to spend time and money correcting errors and customer complains as well as going through the lengthy process to justifiably terminate the bad employee without getting sued or paying months of unemployment claims to your hiring mistakes
That’s the case here in North Idaho, too.
I hire A&P mechanics for a large freight carrier. If you have three years experience in big jets, you’ll make $100k plus in six years. If you’re a fresh A&P, it’ll take ten. You’ll work in the weather, but that’s the job. You won’t get rich but you won’t starve.
What benefit do you think owners get by NOT hiring people?
I was a manager for ten years in the tech industry after the dot com bust. During most of that time there was no hiring. Every year we were being asked to do more on a lower budget.
If our business level could have justified hiring we would have done it. It didn't. Our own jobs depended upon not growing expenses to the point that additional layoffs had to happen.
I just had a treadmill repaired under warranty that broke last June. This was due to lack of parts. Imagine how hard things have been for the company contracted to do the repairs.
My teen daughter just got her 2nd job a few weeks ago...fast food. She had no problem at all. She started at $14 and they have already upped it to $15. Her boyfriend is about to start at the same place.
The interviewer asked him:
Why do you think we should hire you?
His reply:
Because you are understaffed.
She laughed.
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