Millions of jobs and a shortage of applicants.

[Maddog]

The troubles aren't unique to P.D. Hook, its industry or the United Kingdom. Around the world, airlines, restaurants and hotels can't fill open jobs, stymieing efforts to capitalize on resurgent consumer demand. Many workers that went home when the pandemic hit haven't returned to shipyards, factories or construction sites, hitting production and stalling projects. Even Michelin-starred eateries and Wall Street banks say they can't hire enough people to meet their needs.

In the United States, Republican lawmakers have blamed enhanced unemployment benefits for fueling the problem, while left-leaning economists propose a simple solution: pay higher wages. In the United Kingdom, lobby groups are urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government to revise post-Brexit immigration rules so Europeans can fill vacancies, while Singapore and Australia's leaders are under pressure to relax travel restrictions so migrant workers can return.

What's increasingly clear is that after the coronavirus pandemic delivered an unprecedented shock to the global economy, putting tens of millions of people out of work and displacing many others, the job market will never be the same. Trained workers are stuck in the wrong places. Others have retired early, are skeptical about going back to work in the face of lingering health concerns, or are having difficulty securing reliable child care.

The economy emerging from the crisis also looks different from the one that preceded it. Demand is higher in some sectors and lower in others. Workers have left front-line jobs in some industries for roles that are less exposed to the coronavirus, won't be affected by fresh lockdowns, or offer better work-life balance. In the United States, a record 4 million people quit their jobs in April, including 649,000 retail workers. A recent EY survey of more than 16,200 employees globally found that more than half would consider ditching their job after the pandemic if they weren't offered enough flexibility on where and when they work.


https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/29/economy/ ... index.html

We.live in interesting times. Between the pandemic amd the subsequent subsidies we have turned the global economy on its head. Inflation is running rampant here in the states. I went to a gas station yesterday amd they were out of gas. Not enough truckers to drive the tanker trucks.

[Lady Murasaki]

Capitalism has taken a hit because people have realised that nothing is more important than health and loved ones. Owning stuff means nothing afterall.

[Raggamuffin]

What are they all living on though? Did they get other jobs or what?

[Cactus Jack]

More simply there are jobs people don't want to do in the places where people don't want to live where employers don't want to pay enough

Market forces at work.

[Maddog]

Capitalism has taken a hit because people have realised that nothing is more important than health and loved ones. Owning stuff means nothing afterall.

Is that what you got from that?

Capitalism doesn't create rules about who can work where, and for how much. Governments amd politicans don't operate capitalism, they impede it.

[Maddog]

More simply there are jobs people don't want to do in the places where people don't want to live where employers don't want to pay enough

Market forces at work.

It's not market forces when there are government subsidies.

[Maddog]

What are they all living on though? Did they get other jobs or what?

Here in Texas you can bring down about 600 or so a week, even at the lower end of the economic ladder. It's about to change, but up until now, you really didn't need to attempt to get a job because covid gave you a pass.

[Maddog]

What we are also seeing is demographic trends that are going to plague the West from here on out. We haven't produced enough young workers to fill the need for our expanding group of non working older folks who are being so selfish as to not die soon enough. The pandemic just sped up the process.

So in some cases, you have bodies staying home, but in other cases you don't have the bodies. Throw in strict border controls that prevent people from moving to areas where there is demand, and the problem is exasperated.

[Cactus Jack]

More simply there are jobs people don't want to do in the places where people don't want to live where employers don't want to pay enough

Market forces at work.

It's not market forces when there are government subsidies.

https://generation180.org/the-absurd-tr ... subsidies/

[Cactus Jack]

What we are also seeing is demographic trends that are going to plague the West from here on out. We haven't produced enough young workers to fill the need for our expanding group of non working older folks who are being so selfish as to not die soon enough. The pandemic just sped up the process.

So in some cases, you have bodies staying home, but in other cases you don't have the bodies. Throw in strict border controls that prevent people from moving to areas where there is demand, and the problem is exasperated.

I think your spell-check went a bit haywire - I assume you meant exacerbated.

Exasperated describes how you feel when your spellchecker fucks up like that

[Maddog]

What we are also seeing is demographic trends that are going to plague the West from here on out. We haven't produced enough young workers to fill the need for our expanding group of non working older folks who are being so selfish as to not die soon enough. The pandemic just sped up the process.

So in some cases, you have bodies staying home, but in other cases you don't have the bodies. Throw in strict border controls that prevent people from moving to areas where there is demand, and the problem is exasperated.

I think your spell-check went a bit haywire - I assume you meant exacerbated.

Exasperated describes how you feel when your spellchecker fucks up like that

Spell checked worked. The grammar checker didn't.

[Cannydc]

What we are also seeing is demographic trends that are going to plague the West from here on out. We haven't produced enough young workers to fill the need for our expanding group of non working older folks who are being so selfish as to not die soon enough. The pandemic just sped up the process.

So in some cases, you have bodies staying home, but in other cases you don't have the bodies. Throw in strict border controls that prevent people from moving to areas where there is demand, and the problem is exasperated.

We kicked many thousands of our young workers out.

And now prices are rising rapidly as wages go up and supplies dwindle due to a combination of Covid and Brexit (thousands of truckers went home and we can't train any)

[Cactus Jack]

We kicked many thousands of our young workers out.

And now prices are rising rapidly as wages go up and supplies dwindle due to a combination of Covid and Brexit (thousands of truckers went home and we can't train any)[/quote]
I believe it's a longer term problem Canny.

For more than a generation semi-skilled and unskilled work has been presented as being beneath British workers.

It's OK while you're a student, or possibly to fund some time travelling but to be an itinerant worker as a career is just not seen as a viable option. Having a job isn't enough, you've got to have a career.

And it's not just the workers. If you're a British applicant and your answer to the question where do you see yourself in five years time is 'still driving this lorry' you're often not the right applicant. Even though for 95% of applicants the place where they will be in five years time is still driving the lorry being content to be a waged worker whose focus in life is outside of the workplace is now somehow a shortcoming.

And because culturally we've lost our respect for people content be good at their job so we've lost the people who are content to be good at their job. So the applicants who want to be a good lorry driver just aren't there, because they have to want to be logistics managers or cabotage speciallist too.

[Maddog]

What we are also seeing is demographic trends that are going to plague the West from here on out. We haven't produced enough young workers to fill the need for our expanding group of non working older folks who are being so selfish as to not die soon enough. The pandemic just sped up the process.

So in some cases, you have bodies staying home, but in other cases you don't have the bodies. Throw in strict border controls that prevent people from moving to areas where there is demand, and the problem is exasperated.

We kicked many thousands of our young workers out.

And now prices are rising rapidly as wages go up and supplies dwindle due to a combination of Covid and Brexit (thousands of truckers went home and we can't train any)

Sorta. In any event, they are gone for the time being.


But in some places, the worker shortfalls could prove more intractable. In late 2019, there were at least 2.3 million EU nationals working in the United Kingdom, according estimates from the Office for National Statistics. But when the pandemic hit, many went home — and since then, the UK government has introduced new visa rules that make it harder for these workers to enter the country. (Plus, fresh data indicates the actual number of EU citizens working in Britain may have been much higher.)

"Since Brexit, a lot of people have gone on [back] to their home countries and we're not getting the new people back across," said Hook, who runs the hatchery business. He said that P.D. Hook has had to cut production by 10% to help meat processors cope.

[Guest]

Capitalism has taken a hit because people have realised that nothing is more important than health and loved ones. Owning stuff means nothing afterall.

Is that what you got from that?

Capitalism doesn't create rules about who can work where, and for how much. Governments amd politicans don't operate capitalism, they impede it.

Regulate it.

Unrestrained capitalism is every bit as self destructive as socialism and sometimes more so. Regulated capitalism is the best option, then of course you have to deal with the question of how regulated it should be.