re: Seeing a lot of restaurants are having trouble hiring workers

Everyone is jumping to blame unemployment and I know that is effecting some industries more than others, but you all have to understand - the paradigm started shifting 3-4 years ago.

Trump economic boom/tax cuts shorted the labor market and led to increased wages for many workers - the first real wage growth in 30 years BUT this was mostly only seen by the middle class. Low skill, low wage jobs grew in number but many companies did not push wages up - whether it be tariffs pushing materials up, fear of a recession, fear of growth lags, outright stubborn refusal to compete with Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, etc.

At the same time, you have the Fight for 15 going on from the Left, you have minimum wages skyrocketing in half the country, you have social media telling people (rightly or wrongly) "DON'T WORK FOR LESS THAN $12-$15/HR" and the message has taken hold. You don't want to hear it, you know it's wrong, you know it isn't rational, but that's what they believe. That's what like 60-70% of workers under 30 believe, that them showing up is worth $12/hr.

We've had this debate about rising wages in low skill industries leading to a massive rise in costs, but low wage employers have put off those necessary price increases for too long, they've played dumb to the shifting labor market, and now they're all paying the piper.

Went to the Ave Pub in NOLA couple weeks back and eventhough Latoya now allows bars to stay open until 1am they were still closing at 10:15pm because they didn't have the staff required to run operations.

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1. What if their skill doesn’t justify close to $20/hr

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Who makes that determination?

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2. Are you willing to pay 1.5-2 times what your restaurant meals used to cost?

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For some restaurants, I would be. We really don't eat out very much to begin with though, even before Covid.

And why do we only worry about menu costs when there is talk of increasing front line workers' wages? The CEO of McDonald's is making around $8,000 per hour, and McDonald's franchisees pay a fairly high franchise fee.

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I just don’t get it. It makes no sense that an adult who is capable of working is allowed to stay home and collect unemployment benefits. Explain it to me like I’m 10 years old.

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Some people are good at working the system, unemployment isn’t the only benefit they get

Nursing homes are a good example
Most employees work 32 hours a week at low wages
They get no benefits, no vacation time

It’s very common at tax refund time you have an employee shortage when they quit to live off of big refunds a couple months
With everything going on is worse, they can’t keep people more than a few shifts & they were offering 1k sign on bonuses

There’s also a shortage at the end of the year when they watch paychecks to make sure they don’t cross the threshold & lose benefits

They quit & know they can get another job when they want because people are so hard up right now

I’d imagine housekeeping / CNA’s / cafeteria workers in hospitals are also suffering

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The government still paying people to stay home?

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Someone mentioned this is one of the main reasons for the shortage of uber/lyft drivers lately too.

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People are getting paid more to stay home than to work, and that's a crying damn shame.

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Impacted pizza drivers, Uber, bike shops..you name it.

The question is what happens after September when (most) of the free money goes away?

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as if they actually want to destroy what’s left of this economy quite deliberately. Mass price increases, businesses closing doors, and the left plays their fiddle as if mommy will be by any minute to come bail them out.

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This is their plan. It’s also why I give the Dim’s on here so much shite about not knowing a damn thing about who and why they vote for their scum. They’re gonna wake up in about two years in an actual nightmare and wish they had grown a brain. Orange man won’t be so bad then.

we had a really busy weekend that resulted in more eating out than i really care for, but sports and running kids around just called for it unfortunately.

every single place we went had terrible service because of the waiter doubling as the bartender, waiters covering too many tables, tables not getting cleaned, etc.

One of the more annoying ones was my wife ordered a vodka tonic with lime. they brought club soda/vodka with no lime. she said, no thanks, if there was lime that's cool but just straight wasn't her thing and she'd just drank water. 10 minutes later, the waiter said ok we found tonic, we'll get that right out. 30 minutes later we were waiting for our check and he came by to bring the check and then brought the drink, but we were not interested at that point. Again, it's just annoying, and i don't want to seem like a petty person when eating out, but i'm not interested n the wrong drink, or getting the drink after our food has already arrived. we still tipped decently, because i can tell the dude is overworked, but it doesn't bode well for us going back.

i don't know if it's unemployment or the stimulus, but it's noticeably bad these days.

The thing I’m now seeing is restaurants slimming down their menus in order to speed service and make things easier on the staff. Focus is on lower margin and/or more complicated and time consuming dishes.

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1. What if their skill doesn’t justify close to $20/hr

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Their skills obviously do justify close to $20 an hour if the shortage is so severe that some restaurants are closing.

I think a big part of it as well is the autonomy. If I'm a person with a vehicle I can sit in my car all day and deliver food for doordash and make more than $12 an hour in some cases. Probably comes out a wash when factoring in depreciation and gas, but I don't have to deal with some obnoxious 24 year old assistant manager for a restaurant who is going to micromanage that shite out of my every move. That's an easy decision.

Also, and this is definitely my situation, I'm not looking for a job. I'm looking for a certain amount of money for the next 8 months until my internship starts. I'm actually not, because I do have a job, but I'm always looking for a better situation and some of the postings are so out of touch it's sad.

Let's take the owner of a stone shop that's been in business for 10 years, but he just hasn't had a great year and he's had to reduce his own salary to not lay anyone off. Yet, he still needs someone in his showroom because their customer service is lacking. He's offering $14 an hour in an area where the median home price is over $400k and rent inside the city routinely hits over $1500 a month. This is a real example from someone inside Boise, by the way. It's sad, but I'm not going to learn about stone, deal with shitty customers, and have a boss micromanage me when it can't pay my rent. If my rent isn't getting paid, I'll go do something where I don't have to deal with a shitty boss.

I'd imagine that most of these people who don't want to work these traditional jobs for depressing wages is because their mind is somewhere else. Whether that's graduation (my situation), they're a writer, they have a side business they are getting started, etc. If it's an entry level position and you need me there fully engaged and working my arse off, that criteria alone has increased the wage. If you want me to work for $12 an hour you should expect me to be disengaged, on my phone checking my school work for the day, apathetic, and to miss shifts when I don't feel like working.

And boy some of yall good ol boys who were raised to "always do your best" are gonna hate this. But this is from the horse's mouth. Just one horse, I'll give you that, but a horse nonetheless.