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I've been out of work a lot recently. In fact, I'm out of work right now until my Captains License shows up but I have never spent 8 hours a day looking for a job. I can exhaust pretty much every job forum on the net in an hour.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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To survive on minimum wage the majority of people over 18 years of age take two or three or more jobs. If they were able to live on the minimum wage they get from one job A) They would not require 2 or 3 and those jobs would be open to others, and B)Instead of working 60-80 hours a week at 3-4 different jobs at 20 hours a week, they can have a bit of free time to spend acquiring better jobs, or acquiring the skills needed to get those better jobs.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: If you were looking for a new job full-time so say 8-hours a day. And say it took you a month to find a new job.
So you start a job, and now you have one hour per day to search for a new job. If it takes the same number of hours to succeed, it will take you 240 days before you find one. That's a long time.
I think this is faulty logic. I would say most of the reason it took you a month to find a job is because it took a month for that position to open up. Had you started your job search on that day you would have found it with maybe an hour's work.
Posts: 362 | Registered: Nov 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: it tends to create more demand for goods and services which tends to also drive demand for labor?
I suspect this is true to a point. Evidence seems to imply that minimum wage increases haven't affected unemployment. But the studies look at the small increases in minimum wage that are mostly there to correct for inflation. I suspect that doubling minimum wage to $15 would be much more troubling for low-skilled workers.
Posts: 362 | Registered: Nov 2008
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: In an environment where there are many more people than jobs how does this do anything but shuffle around which people have those jobs?
I'm not sure how increasing minimum wage would do anything but exacerbate that problem.
I was only addressing the duress question. If there are fewer jobs than people then some portion of those people are going to be forced to take a job they otherwise wouldn't take because their personal circumstances are so dire. That sets "dire circumstances" as the baseline that everyone must compete with regardless of their own circumstances.
Maybe I've got three months of savings, but I still better take the first job I can get because who knows if there will be another with all these desperate people out there.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: If you were looking for a new job full-time so say 8-hours a day. And say it took you a month to find a new job.
So you start a job, and now you have one hour per day to search for a new job. If it takes the same number of hours to succeed, it will take you 240 days before you find one. That's a long time.
Where are these numbers coming from?
First of all, how does getting a job cut your available non work hours to 1 per day? Assuming its a full time job with, what, an hour commute? Even a terrible two hour commute each way and 7-8 hours of sleep, seems you have minimum 4 hours a day leftover.
But also, your numbers assume that job hunting for 8 hours a day is 8x as effective as job hunting 1 hour a day. It's not. Not even close.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Assuming, of course, that your search doesn't become known and end your employment or reduce its quality.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Hahaha what? Wait are we talking about low-skill, low-wage workers here or... something else?
What low-skill low-wage job punishes you for seeking another job? Didn't McDonald's recently get flak because their budgeting guide advises you to get a second job?
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:What low-skill low-wage job punishes you for seeking another job?
Um... many? My daughter works as a clerk with a grocery store and she's looking elsewhere but keeping it to herself so that she doesn't get passed over for potential promotions or other favorable treatment because she's considered to be on her way out. When I worked at a movie theater, your status was determined largely by how flexible your schedule was. Having a school schedule or another job limited your advancement options (such as they were). If I was looking for work I certainly would have kept it to myself.
Also the "budget journal" on the McD's web site was produced by an outside firm. I doubt local franchise owners had any input.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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Wait, is being passed over for promotion what Rakeesh meant by "end your employment or reduce its quality" then? Because straightforwardly the two aren't at all the same. Even ignoring the "end" part, not getting an improvement (e.g. Promotion) is completely different than receiving reduced job quality.
Not sinking the transaction costs of a promotion into someone who doesn't want to stay seems reasonable. Why wouldn't it be? But do low-skill jobs typically fire or demote people who want a second job? That's way different. I've certainly never seen this. What's the rationale?
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I mean getting canned outright, or not getting a good shift or overtime, or being denied enough hours for benefits (ha, as though that hasn't been standard practice for years where possible anyway). Basically I mean the many ways an employer can make their displeasure known with or without outright firing you.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Dan, if you were an employer, and you had a rational interest in retaining the most flexible workers who gave you the fewest scheduling headaches, what effect do you think that might have on the way you managed the least-flexible employees? If you were in an at-will employment state, especially.
Would you not look for opportunities to let the least-flexible workers go, so you could find a more flexible worker? Low-wage, low-skill employment means training a new hire is cheap.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: But do low-skill jobs typically fire or demote people who want a second job? That's way different. I've certainly never seen this. What's the rationale?
Some do, yes.
Most of these low skilled jobs aren't 9-5, M-F kind of things. You are required to work a revolving door of hours and days. Try telling your boss at Wal-Mart or McDonalds that you need weekends off from now on. Doesn't matter that you need it for a second job instead of partying, you're still screwed.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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quote:Wait, is being passed over for promotion what Rakeesh meant by "end your employment or reduce its quality" then?
Man, you are being so nit-picky any hyper-literal today. I did say "or other favorable treatment" so that would include stuff like not being denied time-off requests, getting preferential scheduling, being allowed to trade shifts, and sure firing would be a possibility though unlikely at this particular job. It was a risk at my theater job.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: If you were looking for a new job full-time so say 8-hours a day. And say it took you a month to find a new job.
So you start a job, and now you have one hour per day to search for a new job. If it takes the same number of hours to succeed, it will take you 240 days before you find one. That's a long time.
Where are these numbers coming from?
I made them up. My point wasn't to demonstrate actual numbers, but the principle that securing another job while employed is much hard than when you are unemployed. Scheduling interviews, being available to travel for said interview, time available to look, are all affected if you are underemployed.
And many people who are employed full-time are doing that to reduce how much in the hole they are paycheck to paycheck, they aren't actually climbing out.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Of course now we are just arguing for argument's sake. Are there any proposed solutions in this thread?
Basically in recap, CEO's are evil and get paid too much. McDonald's/Walmart workers don't get paid enough and Walmart is especially evil because Walmart.
Posts: 362 | Registered: Nov 2008
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Dude, that's not where I come at it at all. I'm in business school now, even if you hate Walmart you sing its praises.
And I'm in business school because I wanted to become more valuable to businesses hiring people.
I guess what I'd like is that a person can do a job, and make enough to pay their standard bills. The facilities are in place to make sure they and their kids can get a solid education (top 5 in the world), and to come out of school without a mountain of debt. When you can no longer work, you are at least looked after by the state until you check out. If you are not financially solvent, it should be a result of bad choices, not bad circumstances.
That's where I'd like things.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Wait, is being passed over for promotion what Rakeesh meant by "end your employment or reduce its quality" then?
Man, you are being so nit-picky any hyper-literal today. I did say "or other favorable treatment" so that would include stuff like not being denied time-off requests, getting preferential scheduling, being allowed to trade shifts, and sure firing would be a possibility though unlikely at this particular job. It was a risk at my theater job.
Some would say I'm hyper literal and nitpicky every day. I'm not trying to be, though. Trying for clarity.
I still think you guys are conflating some different things, though. There are important differences between being on the market for a new job and already having lots of scheduling restrictions, for example. And between not getting a promotion and getting fired, or between getting fired and not getting as many hours as you'd like. Some of these are reasonable consequences for some of the example employee difficulties. But if you mix and match them at will, they no longer are.
Scifi: why fire someone if the hours they are available are hours you need covered, and they already know how to do the job? Yeah, if they have lots of annoying schedule restrictions and they're going to bitch about not getting enough hours during the windows they are available, that's one thing. A common thing, even. So is calling in sick a lot and then bitching about not getting enough hours. Many people in low-skill jobs are crappy employees. If a crappy employee is a headache, why keep him? But that's not true of all of them.
And that all seems a far cry from what we were talking about before.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: it tends to create more demand for goods and services which tends to also drive demand for labor?
I suspect this is true to a point. Evidence seems to imply that minimum wage increases haven't affected unemployment. But the studies look at the small increases in minimum wage that are mostly there to correct for inflation. I suspect that doubling minimum wage to $15 would be much more troubling for low-skilled workers.
There's kind of a neat summary here on a possible cut-off:
quote:So what have we learned from all this? * When minimum wages are 'low' - say, less than 40% of the average hourly wage - then moderate increases won't have a significant short-run effect on employment. * When minimum wages are around 45% of the average, they significantly reduce employment. * No-one has been able to find any evidence to suggest that increasing the minimum wage has a measurable effect on reducing poverty.
Should be easy to guess which threshold the US falls into, but there's a helpful picture in the article for confirmation.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Wait, is being passed over for promotion what Rakeesh meant by "end your employment or reduce its quality" then?
Man, you are being so nit-picky any hyper-literal today. I did say "or other favorable treatment" so that would include stuff like not being denied time-off requests, getting preferential scheduling, being allowed to trade shifts, and sure firing would be a possibility though unlikely at this particular job. It was a risk at my theater job.
Some would say I'm hyper literal and nitpicky every day. I'm not trying to be, though. Trying for clarity.
I still think you guys are conflating some different things, though. There are important differences between being on the market for a new job and already having lots of scheduling restrictions, for example. And between not getting a promotion and getting fired, or between getting fired and not getting as many hours as you'd like. Some of these are reasonable consequences for some of the example employee difficulties. But if you mix and match them at will, they no longer are.
Scifi: why fire someone if the hours they are available are hours you need covered, and they already know how to do the job? Yeah, if they have lots of annoying schedule restrictions and they're going to bitch about not getting enough hours during the windows they are available, that's one thing. A common thing, even. So is calling in sick a lot and then bitching about not getting enough hours. Many people in low-skill jobs are crappy employees. If a crappy employee is a headache, why keep him? But that's not true of all of them.
And that all seems a far cry from what we were talking about before.
It's interesting how in Canada, I was able to turn down having to work for a restaurant due to an injured foot, because both my rent and University school fees were covered by the government; was able to wait until it healed and got a job doing Q&A Testing for a major Montreal company. Where I don't have to stand for 8 hours washing dishes running around?
But I guess Canadians hate liberty and freedom and are a communist totalitarian state where you aren't allowed guns? Huh.
Fair price to pay to not have to pay for a universal human right.
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