Well back to the couch in your mother's basement.... someday she will get tired of feeding you and tell you to get a damned job.
She's long gone, but if she were still alive I suspect she'd be happy to have me around. A surprising number of today's parents actually like having their kids at home. I don't get it, myself (I went in the military at 18 and my dad was glad of it!), but that's what I keep hearing from my acquaintances with kids at home, when I ask them how they like it. 50 years ago a guy with just a high school education and an ordinary job in sales or manufacturing could support a family of four . Those days are long gone, today it's shit work for shit wages for those of non-spectacular family and education. No wonder so many are looking for any means possible to stay out.
Please note that I did not mean you personally in my quip.... I was just commenting on the general "perceived scenarios" of those unwilling to work. You make some good points. But I will point out there are a good number of parents today who do not enforce work ethics and personal responsibility on their children. Even before the pandemic we had many examples of 20/30 year old kids living in their parents basements refusing to work (most of the time) -- to the point where this was a meme. We are seeing increasing wages at the low end of the career scale - in services, restaurants, etc. This will drive inflation in terms of the price of food, dining, consumer goods, etc. --- inflation some have said is long overdue in an era of low interest rates. There is also evidence now that ending pandemic unemployment only pushed 1 out of 7 or so back to work. At some point it becomes a question of what the others are surviving on financially and now long they can hold out. At some point wages will rise to the point where they will take jobs, or their fear of a pandemic will ease as Covid eases. Only time will tell. In our local area of North Carolina nearly every store, restaurant, etc. has a Help Wanted sign in the window.
Yeah, I understood that and didn't take it personally. The rest of what you say I largely agree with. In my view, though there are booms and busts in the wages/employment cycle, the overall trend is clearly downward for labor, upward for capital. I think how-to-live-precariously is becoming better and more widely understood and practiced by today's youth, many of them have apparently given up on the traditional job, certainly on any kind of job security. So the rise of gig and contract work, sharp reductions in consumption (experiences, not things!), service exchange, etc. Sustainable livelihood, like that which was growing so well in the 70s and died in the 80s, is making a comeback. We'll see a lot more of it as the cost of energy continues its inexorable rise.
Learned a long time ago, you’ll never be paid what you’re worth working for someone else. Simply, if a business does not make a profit off it’s employees it won’t stay in business very long. The vast majority of people do not have the initiative to take on the risks and responsibilities associated with entrepreneurship. They would rather cling to the perceived security of a regular paycheck working 9-5. Heck, today most feel they’re doing their employer a favor by merely showing up to work.
Three weeks out of High School I got off the bus at MCRD. 4 years later any skilled trade I wanted was available for an apprenticeship program. As you say, not so today, but there are decent jobs available for the skilled trades. Problem is there are few apprentice programs which are company sponsored. They pawned all that off to community college. Yes, if you already have a job the company will reimburse some tuition, but straight out of school the kids got to pay up. Add in these kids have been told blue collar equals loser and there just aren't many entering the trades. When I was working we couldn't find anyone to fill training programs we had. This was like 2015. Twenty an hour to start, no experience required, union shop, full benefits, fully reimbursed training at community college. Between inability to pass drug test and the seemingly inability to get to work on time, or at all, we never could fill those positions for any length of time. These were for machinists and mechanic positions. Full pay after 4 year program was 35 an hour and that was 6 years ago. I still do some project management work a couple days a week. Every machine shop in the area, (south Chicago and NWI) need help. Can't find people.
Republicans: Give people jobs with a living wage and there will be skyrocketing inflation. Also Republicans: Why don't more people have jobs with a living wage? Republicans rip Biden over bad jobs report, warn of ‘economic crisis’ https://nypost.com/2021/10/08/gop-rips-biden-over-bad-jobs-report-warn-of-economic-crisis/
Ending federal unemployment benefits did not have an immediate impact in increasing employment... we will see what upcoming months reveal. Unemployment benefits ended, but hiring did not surge in September https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/10/politics/unemployment-benefits-jobs-september/index.html Out-of-work Americans did not rush back into the job market after beefed-up unemployment benefits ended nationwide in September. The labor force shrank last month for the first time since May, signaling that more people were opting to sit on the sidelines and not actively look for work, according to the federal jobs report released Friday. "If unemployment benefits were the driving force behind labor market dynamics, then you would not have seen that effect," said Gordon Gray, director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum, a right-leaning think tank. The jobs report, which disappointed on several fronts, came at a time when the nation was contending with both elevated levels of coronavirus cases and a return to school for millions of children. Despite a record number of openings, employers added an anemic 194,000 jobs -- far fewer than expected for the second month in a row. While experts caution against drawing conclusions from one or two months of data, the September jobs report provides yet more evidence that pandemic unemployment benefits did not greatly contribute to the country's labor shortage. Other factors -- including child care issues, virus fears and workers' reevaluation of their life goals -- are playing a major role in prompting people to remain at home, economists said. The latest report undercuts the argument made by many Republicans and business owners that the nation's economic recovery was being slowed by a federal safety net they deemed too generous. Governors in 26 states -- all but one Republican -- opted to terminate at least one of the three pandemic unemployment programs in June or July, saying it would help solve staffing shortfalls. (Courts in two states later required officials to continue the benefits through early September.) However, after they did so, employment did not grow substantially faster in those states, previous studies and government data have found. Historic increase in benefits ends Congress' unprecedented expansion of the nation's unemployment system ended in early September, nearly 18 months after lawmakers came to the rescue of millions of Americans who lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic. A key component of the relief effort was a federal weekly supplement for those out of work. Initially, the jobless received a weekly$600 boost from April through July of 2020. Congress then revived the enhancement in late December but reduced it to $300 a week. Lawmakers also created two other measures to aid the jobless when the coronavirus struck. The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program provided payments for freelancers, the self-employed, independent contractors and certain people affected by the outbreak, while the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program extended payments for those who exhausted their regular state benefits. The expiration of the programs last month left more than 8 million people with no unemployment compensation at all, while another 2.7 million lost the $300 federal weekly boost but continued receiving state payments, according to estimates by The Century Foundation. They joined the roughly 2.7 million Americans who were cut off from some or all of their benefits in the states that opted to terminate at least one of the programs early. Many business owners have struggled for months to hire more workers, pointing to the generous compensation as a main cause. "A lot of people wanted those benefits cut because they believed it would make it easier to hire at lower wages. But the top line data is not telling us that's what happened," Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist with the University of Minnesota, said of the September jobs report. Other companies are providing signing bonuses, benefits, iPhones and other incentives, as well as offering higher pay. But the mismatch between job openings and available workers continues. Hiring expected to increase The benefits' expiration may indeed lead more people to accept jobs, but it will take time, experts said. Although there were a record 10.9 million job openings in July, the economic recovery had softened a bit in recent months as the latest surge in Covid-19 cases prompted consumers to pull back. Case counts, hospitalizations and deaths are finally receding again. Also, some parents continue to struggle with child care issues and some workers fear taking positions where they have to deal with the public. Nearly 5 million people said they were not working because they were caring for children not in school or day care, and 3.2 million said they are concerned about getting or spreading the virus, according to the Census Household Pulse Survey taken in the second half of September. Others just need time to find the right job. "Of course, people want to go to work and they have been going back to work," said Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation. "But it's not something that happens quickly." While Congress is not expected to revive the pandemic programs, lawmakers could funnel more funds targeted at helping laid-off workers return to the labor market through training, internships, employment support and other measures, he said.