Th3 Core

“When you’re 50 years old, to start something new is troublesome,” she said.

That's the sour spot. Old enough that it's hard to replace the job you've had. Too young to sprint to retirement.

But at some point, AI + offshoring is coming for "knowledge" workers too. If I were 17 looking for a long-term career, I would think in terms of hospitality, massage therapy, law enforcement, etc. "Messy" jobs where the human aspect is the important part and it is not location-independent.

Anything that relies on repetitive tasks (to wit, toll booth attendant) or pattern recognition (lots of jobs in finance, radiology) are trouble from AI.

Anything that is location-independent is fine if you are willing to live in any location (i.e. the cheap places on the globe, where your competition is).

Balaji has made it his next big project to bring the "dark talent" of the world into the light. He uses the phrase "dark talent" by analogy to "dark matter," and it refers to the vast, vast reservoirs of as yet unseeable talent that exist outside the rich world that could become programmers, graphic artists and so on with just a cell phone in some cases, slowly ratcheting up the value chain. His vision is also an alternative to the "step-function" model of university education.

One thing I can never escape in these reports about shortage of restaurant workers is that

 - 7 of the 10 worst-paid jobs in America are restaurant jobs
 - restaurant work was one of the fastest-growing areas of the economy
 - Americans now spend more eating at restaurants than on groceries

To me all that adds up to a simple conclusion: there should be fewer restaurants with higher-paid staff and higher-priced meals and people should eat out less. When I was a kid, eating out was this rare treat that we did a few times a year. Now I know a lot of urban people who eat out or get takeout almost every day, commonly in excess of 10 meals per week.

At -say- $100/hour- these employers would have a queue around the block.

This came up during one of the big snowstorms in Tahoe a couple years ago. Snow shovelers were demanding $100/hour and all the second homeowners from San Fran and Sacramento, most of whom make well north of $100/hr (they own million dollar second homes after all) were crying and weeping, saying it was extortionate.  There is something fundamental about the free market that they don't understand.

I am fully sympathetic with local construction contractors who say they can't find good workers. That's a legit problem. Wages here for those jobs are good, but the demand exceeds the local skilled population. Even $100/hour won't fix it overnight. You have to convince people to move here.

Montana plans to cancel unemployment benefits to address ‘severe workforce shortage’

https://money.yahoo.com/montana-plans-to-cancel-unemployment-benefits-161755830.html

‘No one wants to work anymore’: the truth behind this unemployment benefits myth | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/07/truth-behind-unemployment-benefits-myth

Great reads.

>"Virus fears, childcare pressures, and unemployment benefits all likely drove the weak payrolls"

Childcare keeping females home has more of impact that I thought. Half of kids are currently still doing some type of remote learning.

>freeze on evictions

Oooh, good one.

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There is also growing evidence — both anecdotal and in surveys — that a lot of people want to do something different with their lives than they did before the pandemic. The coronavirus outbreak has had a dramatic psychological effect on workers, and people are reassessing what they want to do and how they want to work, whether in an office, at home or some hybrid combination.

A Pew Research Center survey this year found that 66 percent of the unemployed had “seriously considered” changing their field of work, a far greater percentage than during the Great Recession. People who used to work in restaurants or travel are finding higher-paying jobs in warehouses or real estate, for example.

It’s not a ‘labor shortage.’ It’s a great reassessment of work in America.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/07/jobs-report-labor-shortage-analysis/

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>$100 / hr

U.S. labor shortage? Unlikely. Here’s why | Economic Policy Institute
https://www.epi.org/blog/u-s-labor-shortage-unlikely-heres-why/