mtswFeb 9, 2023

Pushing workers back into jobs that are so low productivity that it is not economically viable to staff them at market clearing wages in a tight labor market is going to hurt economic growth and the economy

Mass Layoffs or Hiring Boom? What’s Actually Happening in the Jobs Market https://www.wsj.com/articles/jobs-hiring-boom-layoffs-employment-11675947399

Mass Layoffs or Hiring Boom? What’s Actually Happening in the Jobs Market

Restaurants, hotels and hospitals are finally staffing up, more than making up for losses in tech and other sectors

The Wall Street Journal
Show threadmtsw
Beyond having workers capable of more productive tasks pushed back into waiting tables being a waste of work and human potential it is also a totally unnecessary engine of human misery.
Feb 9, 2023 at 8:25pmWeb
Show threadmtswFeb 9, 2023
A hundred years ago, it was possible for upper middle class families to have live-in servants. The extinction of this type of work because it became more expensive to hire them was not a form of "inflation" but a symptom of rising living standards and productivity no longer leaving workers desperate enough to accept those jobs at wages affordable to middle class hirers.
Show threadmtswFeb 9, 2023

Levelling up the labor market to a higher productivity equilibrium causes problems in the sense that a lot of low status and unpleasant or demanding jobs are indispensable - healthcare workers, childcare providers, truck drivers - and require huge pay bumps to remain staffed, raising costs.

There's another category of job, like fast food cashiers, where they are instead just replaced by labor saving devices like touchscreen ordering, rather than absorbing big wage increases.

Show threadmtswFeb 9, 2023
No American should be doing a job that only exists because paying them $7/hr is slightly cheaper than a machine is. This has nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with the Fed pursuing a slack labor market for its own conservative ideological and political reasons.
Show threadGerbrand van DieyenFeb 9, 2023
@mtsw and anywhere on the world for thaf matter. Higher wages stimulate innovation.
Show threadnick woodsFeb 9, 2023
@mtsw
Letting all economy participants do something worthwhile with their time should be one of the primary aims of an economy! Like, that's the content of the entire social contract, why we let people make so much money being CEOs and let the feds tinker around with interest rates