A lot of people are going to face the reality that they aren't needed, essential  or special.  Unfortunately for just about every person on the planet, there are tens or hundreds of millions of other people capable of doing exactly the same job given some time and training.  I imagine many will take less money too.  Everybody thinks they're irreplaceable.  The cold, hard truth is that a tiny percent of people are truly irreplaceable.   For most jobs, someone else will be "good enough."

It will be interesting to see businesses work around it.  There will be an initial rush to recruit and keep talent.  After that, it will probably stagnate as businesses come up with creative ways to eliminate the positions they have trouble filling at a price they are happy with

We're fucked.

If what you're saying is true, you have yourself a golden ticket.  Look up whistleblower lawsuit and qui tam lawsuits...

My review is coming up and I'm going to hit them up for a couple more dollars an hr.

Capitalism is its own worst enemy. This is how you lose right to work laws and have unions take power and all the crap that comes along with it. As the Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil. When employers love the bottom line and profit margins to the point of screwing over their employees it opens up the door for communist ideology to set in.

Same. One of our estimators bid a job several months ago and used a price list from 2020. He’s now 20k over metal costs now that the job is close to starting. He was in panic mode trying to figure out how to cut costs. Every time I order prices go up.

We’re having some new buildings put up, and not only did the contractor bid using last year’s prices, but he didn’t bother ordering last year, figuring he had plenty of time.

He’s proper fooked right now and will lose money on what should’ve been a sweet government gig.

My work place is business as usual.  But we never had shutdowns.  Everyone has gotten the raises they would have.

My wife works for a very large company and at the level where she is has been doing some retention stuff on desirable people.  They have no trouble getting good applicants for their open positions, so keep the good and let the lower performers drift away.  So far it working.  She has lost 2 co-workers who were lazy and no good ones have left.  She has no idea how it is going at the lower levels, so I can't share that.

Teacher here.
I make 60k a year, which is almost literally the average salary for DFW.

That being said it was a comfortable pay rate that allowed me to purchase a house in 2008 for 150k, buy a used f150, and own a boat.

Now, it is pathetically inadequate.
My house's market value is 280k!!
To replace my truck it would be 45k vs the 32k I paid.
You can't even find a boat for sale, they're sold out.

My ISD just issued a 2k annual pay raise. Which is great, but doesn't match current inflation.

I use a budget and my grocery bill alone went up by 200 a month. Meaning that groceries will easily eat up that raise.

I've saved up 70k to buy another house, and keep the old as a rental, but everything is going for 10 to 20k over asking.

I know GD hates teachers, but it used to be a solid middle class job. Seems the middle class is dying.

The other problem for folks like yourself is the rising home values means rising property taxes in Texas.    What you're talking about is a common discussion I had with my team and my management at my old job.  I told them,  "Yes DFW used to be affordable it's not so much anymore and your good salary for DFW is now mediocre."  They didn't listen so I bailed.

My advice to a teacher is start picking up tutoring gigs.  Tutors around here are charging $60-75 an hour and asking for cash.  

I did. Problem is I changed careers to become a teacher ( wife is a nurse ) in order to combat rising childcare expenses.

The extra money from tutoring is eaten up by the added cost of having to find child care. When you have to drive to Southlake, or Plano, or other rich neighborhoods for 2 hours of tutoring with an additional hour or more of drive time, minus gas, minus daycare...
Well I'd rather be in the boat.

So after doing tutoring for a year I gave up. Now I'm looking to see if I can find a remote gig so I can do it from home.

DFW is going to be the next boom region with skyrocketing home prices, a slide to liberal politics, and all that entails.

First to get raises will be the union jobs after they use the higher COL to bargain in new contracts. Then the private sector will be forced to raise wages to remain competitive.

Not really.  If businesses are actually cutting valuable positions/valuable employees that actually pay for themselves or provide a unique value to the company/industry/clientele, then that sounds like an opportunity for a person to step in and fill that gap as an independent businessman/new business owner/contractor.  

If they are simply cutting a dead weight employee that doesn't quite pay for what they are costing the company, or adding to the client's value?  Well, then yes, you're fucked.

But that's not capitalism, that's collusion.  And it's already illegal.

We need a small refresher on inflation.

It's the price increase on a basket of common commodities. People roll their eyes at this and are quick to point out that coffee is now $5 a cup when it was only 50 cents back in 1985. Well yes, but you get a heck of a lot more for that. You get the chocolate sprinkles, pump of whatever, stylish cup with insulator and unicorn sprinkles. And it's gourmet. The coffee for 50 cents from 1985 was crap. it wasn't even folders crystals. And that's why they use a basket of commodities since it's thought that the quality of sugar doesn't get better from trends and technological advancements like cars do. Yes the Dodge Caravan was $6,995 but you would never want to drive a 1985 Caravan without all the unicorn sprinkles that the 2021 has which starts at 4x the 85 model.

So rising prices do not always mean inflation. It might mean jobs are getting more unicorn sprinkles.

And the job market being a little crazy now is not likely inflation. It's more likely that now that the pandemic is over, people are looking for new jobs and marking themselves to market. Most workers valued stability over money so having a job during uncertain times was more valuable than your 4% annual raise.

And who keeps posting that the minimum wage increase will raise all wages? That's about as intuitive as the light in the fridge staying on. Makes perfect sense if you give it no thought.

Agree.

I don't think that most people understand that wages aren't tied to cost of living or inflation.   Companies are only going to pay what it takes to keep someone capable of performing a particular job.   If a capable person is willing to do the job for less, then wages will move down.  

Right now the lower end jobs are seeing wage increases due to government interference in the labor market via the unemployment giveaways.

My bussiness has upped wages 20% in the last year.  My day job has seen the entry level guys getting offers else where and getting raises to stay, 20-30% for some.  My pay has been stuck for years, say I make too much.. my bills say different.

Wage compression is real, especially if you stay with one employer for many years.  Look around for other opportunities.  You may be pleasantly surprised.

Self-employed. We did $100k last week...a new record. We're paying contractors more and charging clients more.

Don't forget geography too. There's a lot of wage stagnation in Denver and Salt Lake City. Denver attracts millennial pothead techies, SLC the Mormons trying to return to their Mecca.

People will take an honest to god 10-20% pay cut to move to either city.

True.  And that is why I think that work from home jobs will come with lower wages in general when everything shakes out.  They are attractive, and therefore people are willing to take less for them, thus driving wages down.

It makes no difference that it is cheaper for your employer if you work from home, or that you are more efficient working from home.  What matters is that someone capable of doing your job will now do it for less because they want to work from home.

Yep, it’s all people having cabin fever. The hockey stick chart on the money supply has no impact on inflation.

Attached File

I'm wondering if we end up seeing a big boom in entrepreneurs and self employment.

Sure most will fail, but it will be a good thing for people to actually understand how much bullshit is involved in running a business and operating with employees.

It seems like a lot of people I graduated with are or are becoming self employed, with varying degrees of success.

Capitalism does have a few flaws, it's still the best system we've tried, but once a handful of people in an industry get piles of money, they can basically lock it down and gatekeep any competition out. Collusion or not, they are still able to do that if they are big enough.

I think Jordan Peterson made a comment about it, saying capitalism is fantastic once you have a little money, it makes it so you can really start making it work for you. The big problem is the people at the bottom getting enough to jump in, it's extremely hard to do. The question is, how do you fix it without taking anything away from others or interfering with their business?

Won't that contribute to inflation over time though? The wage floor will also move the entire wage scale up eventually, it needs to find a balance point.

The labor is still all worth the same at every tier, it's just going to pay a bigger number, which in turn will cause the cost of the product/service to rise in relation to what the lowest paid workers make.

Yes, it will increase inflation, but that inflation in itself won't necessarily push up wages at the other tiers.  If there were no other factors involved, I agree that the bottom would push up salaries across the wage scale resulting in the balance you describe.  In this case however, I think the higher tiers are going to be held back by other factors while the bottom is going to be pushed up by the government manipulation.  The guy making 150k/yr isn't going to stay home because the government is paying 50k a year in unemployment, but he might see his 150k/yr not go near as far at the grocery store, hardware store, restaurant, etc.   It's really BS.  We are in a world of hurt.

You're lucky if it's only that much in your area. Someone posted in a recent thread that he offered $80k over asking for a house and was still outbid. A member in the Team forum said he recently got over $200k over asking for his house.

Didn't read 4 pages, has this thread merged with one of the celebratory WFH threads yet?

Incredible the number of people that can't see where this is going.

After hearing the bitching from employees about their wages I went thru and added up the costs/benefits cost that I paid them that were not direct wages.
It came out to about $1500/month. I was paying 100% health Ins, matching 6% in 401K equiv add in vacation time, workman's comp etc etc it adds up.
Every year these costs go up and the employees never saw the increases I adsorbed.
This amount didn't cover the time I and my assistant spent dealing with these benefits instead of dealing with the work that actually made money for the business..


This was about 20 years ago!!!

I've always thought that the big one, Health Ins should be bought and paid for completely by the individual. Not only would they have greater concern/appreciation of the cost but they'd get the fun of looking for new provider every year to keep costs in line.

I know of a company that once paid a bonus monthly to each dept when they exceeded expected production rates. They gave the employees significant input on equipment/processes.
This resulted in some dept. killing the expected rates. Production shot up. The employees were making significant coin on bonus money. Guys were buying new boats and the wives had no idea where they were getting the money.
The employees even ended up going to management telling them to can certain individuals who were dragging the depts down with poor work habits or skills. Even had employees working some hours each day off the clock when they figured that certain processes in a dept were a bottle neck to the entire depts production. The employees would chip together out of their pockets and pay the bottleneck employee for the work off the clock .
Everyone was happy, management and employees.

This all came to a end when company was bought out, company ended up off shoring. Most of management got axed along with production employees. A few at the parent company did well.

Selling out America is good for a few at the top.