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What if Everyone Actually Had to Work to Get Paid?

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24 comments on What if Everyone Actually Had to Work to Get Paid?

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Wolf Richter answered my pointed question in his take on Thursday The Extra $300/Week Unemployment Benefits Encouraged Many to Not Work: Details about the “Labor Shortage” Pile Up

  • In the 27 states that have ended the extra $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits, paid on top of the regular state unemployment insurance, people are returning to work at a much faster rate than in states where the extra $300 a week are still being paid: this was further confirmed today by the unemployment insurance (UI) data from the Labor Department.
  • Continued claims by the states that kept the extra $300 a week (the Keepers) dropped by only 11%. In other words, continued UI over just those weeks since the end of June dropped over twice as fast in states that had ended the extra benefits.
  • The four-week moving average irons out some of the week-to-week ups-and-downs that tend to occur in every state, which, when it happens in one of the big states, can skew the national weekly data. Being a four-week moving average, it lags the weekly data, but it shows the trends:

Continued Claims 4-Week Moving Average

Hiring managers and business owners who need to fill open positions have known this in their gut for months: Paying people as much or more to not work than they made while working encourages them to not work, even though the pay is now higher than it was before.

Wage Pressure Inflation

The Fed and the Biden administration are both pleased with wage pressure inflation. 

The Fed hides behind “It’s transitory” but who knows what they really think. 

The Biden administration wants wages to go up despite the fact those on fixed income are getting clobbered and that rents and home prices are rising far faster than wages.

How About a Bit of Sanity Please?

Hey, I found some.

Unfortunately, it’s insane to expect any sanity when it comes to spending. 

Republicans pretend to be fiscally conservative but never are in practice. 

The D.C. “compromise” is inevitably more wasted money for wars and more “free money” handouts and social projects like “affordable housing” that fail every time. 

Work, Who Needs It?

That’s the latest advance in Progressive insanity. 

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Mike Shedlock

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karljen
karljen
2 years ago
Progressive insanity? That’s redundant. Just “progressive” will do.
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Salmo Trutta
Salmo Trutta
2 years ago
Workers should have a stake in the profits of companies.
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TooDone
TooDone
2 years ago
Reply to  Salmo Trutta
And when the company makes no money? Will workers also share in the risk the business owner assumes?
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Jackula
Jackula
2 years ago
I did not think there were many abusing the pandemic benefits. I have since changed my mind. Although a small sample of 8 of us neighbors, 1  is working and has not paid her rent since the pandemic began. Another is not working because he is making more money off unemployment. Overdoing it on the benefits here is Cali is contributing to an already bad situation. This does not take away from the fact the FED doled out far more largess to the already very wealthy. For the folks that lost a life’s work building a small resturaunt chain that failed, its heartbreaking and I could see why their attitudes could switch to why bother
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Eddie_T
Eddie_T
2 years ago
It looks to me like we’re raising a new generation that will become yet another dumbed-down subclass…..and that  will be a huge drain on our resources. They say that Gen Z people have an average attention span of 8 seconds, and know far more about TV shows and the lives of celebrities than they do about what’s really going on in the world.
We have this problem around work. Work should be rewarded….but maybe more importantly work should have meaning, in order to inspire people to want to perform it.  
The Federal Reserve can goose the economy all they want to, but if “job creation” amounts to no more than making more slots for barristas and waiters, we are f**ked. 
Not everyone can write code, and besides AI is going to make those jobs less numerous, taking away the current best middle class job that I know of.  We need to find a way to make people’s lives more meaningful, more so even than figuring out how to get them merely employed.
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Jackula
Jackula
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T
Art, music and decor. Plus we have rotting infrastructure. I see signs of concrete spalling everywhere here in Socal.
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RonJ
RonJ
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T
“Not everyone can write code…”
Not everyone wants to write code, either. Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, worked in computer science, then switched to medical science.
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LM2022
LM2022
2 years ago
Ah, yes, those parasites refusing to work because they receive an extra $300 a week in covid assistance.  If only they had gone into more legalized forms of thievery, like becoming bankers or financiers.  Reminds me of this passage from God Bless You, Mr Rosewater.  
“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”
Well, the bubble is about to go bang in the noonday sun, this time for real.  Enjoy the ride down, kids.
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RonJ
RonJ
2 years ago
Reply to  LM2022
In Zimbabwe, everyone became a billionaire in Zim dollars, and yet they didn’t have a living wage.
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Casual_Observer2020
Casual_Observer2020
2 years ago
Prior to covid, a good chunk of people that worked were still on public assistance programs. If companies were forced to take a small chunk of profits or any tax cuts and allocate them to wage increases for their lowest 20% of workforce, the overall economy would be healthier. Or give all employees (including hourly workers) some stock grants in their corporation so that they do well when the company does well. 
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amalagoli
amalagoli
2 years ago
$300 per week being enough to discourage people from working, says a lot about the quality of the ‘recovery’ and the strength of the economy.
And since we are at it, what about the cheap money and tax breaks that has encouraged CEOs to buyback shares in spades instead of working hard to grow their companies? How is that do a disincentive to work?
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StukiMoi
StukiMoi
2 years ago
While $300 for nothing is obviously less ideal than nothing for nothing from a functional society pov, it’s such a drop in the bucket that focusing even a second on it, serves no other purpose than aiding in covering up the real unsustainable wealth transfers which destroyed The West.
Many, many, many more people get paid much, much, much more for not working on account of central bank redistribution via “asset appreciation”, than what will ever be the case with “covid” payments. People living off of rent; and what the indoctrinati have been told is called “investments”: That’s what killed The West. That’s how the junta is doling out pay in exchange for no meaningful work, to their chosen useful idiots. Not some dudes getting a few breadcrumbs in some silly covid scheme. While the latter isn’t “good”, it’s also as completely overshadowed by Fed redistribution as a beer burp is to the world’s “carbon footprint.”
Some people arbitrarily getting paid, by forced transfers from others in exchange for nothing, is always bad. But wasting bandwidth worrying about something which at most account for a fractional percent of the total redistribution, is pointless to the point of almost making matters worse, by virtue of diverting attention from the processes by which the real, meaningful redistribution, hence crass theft, is being perpetrated.
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Captain Ahab
Captain Ahab
2 years ago
There is a big difference between being unable to work because of a physical/mental disability and not wanting to work. You don’t want to work, fine that is your decision, by why am I required to pay for it? With regard to universal basic income, I am perfectly happy to pay taxes for that but with one proviso. All recipients must be permanently sterilized.  If not, the result is nicely presented in the movie classic, Idiocracy.
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SAKMAN1
SAKMAN1
2 years ago
Reply to  Captain Ahab
This is amusing. However, you need to ensure the genes never get passed on. So, either no kids prior to UBI, or you have a loophole!
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Rbm
Rbm
2 years ago

Everyone is blaming the lazy on unemployment.  It would be interesting to see how many people retired early.  Maybe people have moved in to fill the better jobs leaving jobs with crappy pay/ hours etc struggling.  

Plus some 645 k possible workers are no longer with us due to covid. Ok most were out of the workforce age wise but not all.  But i foresee this issue getting worse.  
How about all the people in the hospital for covid.  A friend to me his buddys story. 6 weeks in the hospital.  How long before hes able to work again.  
Might just be more to it than lazy people.   
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Art Izagud
Art Izagud
2 years ago
Not working has become a form of Civil Disobedience in the environment of boomer bubbles and tyrannies. Who decides what productive work is in an environment of money printing and cantillionaires? Serving luxuries to karens and building prisons for posterity is surely work, yet not dignified or moral imho. The same cranks whose wealth largely comes from inflated asset bubbles complain about handouts to homeless and poor as causing inflation on their luxury lifestyle. Its laughable and it stinks. Even libertarians have become ideological boobs, unwitting mercenaries for the welalth transfered elites, excited to enforce their property rights as a main platform.
The solution is in the other direction than boomer think. It is a UBI, a base level subsistence for everyone regardless, as a means to develop beyond exploited sheep, with some semblance of fairness, inclusion, and leisure. And no, crank, UBI is not socialism, it’s the tech capitalism and big government need to provide to prevent raging serfdom or violent bolshevism. Let them eat cake wont work this time either, and neither will many until the gross inadequacies of the economy at large are fixed. No one is totally free to catch their own fish, so stop pretending that is the case so your butthurt sentiments about work can be applied forcefully as wage slavery.
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Mish
Mish
2 years ago
Reply to  Art Izagud
The solution is no work, no pay
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bubblelife
bubblelife
2 years ago
Reply to  Art Izagud
Look: it’s another butthurt Millenial complaining about Boomers. Get a job.
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SAKMAN1
SAKMAN1
2 years ago
Reply to  Art Izagud
Your “butt hurt” anger is of the normal variant because you cant see the effect that the oppressor/opressed (O/O) system has had on you. So, the civil disobedience you refer to is only to replace the oppressor with a new one, not to change the regime.
Unfortunately, the ideas that have not yet been tried are the interesting ones, but they have NEVER been effective at breaking the O/O regime. For example, what if corporations pursued actions as intense as they do now (in the pursuit of capital), instead for the pursuit of the public good?
We’ve never tried it, because everyone is afraid of what happens to the oppressed and therefore strive to be the oppressor, you cant blame them. All the stories we tell, all the history, all the religions have a oppressor in them and an opressed. You dont want the bad end of that deal, and if you ignore those stories, someone nearby who has been taught them will soon be over to take all your stuff.
In other words, most people would do what most people have done and we appear to be stuck with that system constraint. So, Boomers and the rich have a lot to be afraid of from people like you. They have been around the block so they know. . . you (all) would have them oppressed as punishment, so expect a fight to the death.
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Carl_R
Carl_R
2 years ago
Reply to  Art Izagud
You don’t have to work for anyone. Start your own business.
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Eddie_T
Eddie_T
2 years ago
Please point out to me any historic precedent for wage increases being transitory. Ever.
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Call_Me
Call_Me
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T
May be challenging to cite an example nominally, but view your statement through the lens of purchasing power and increases are generally transitory.
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oee
oee
2 years ago
This same canard that English nobles were upset…100 years ago that the dole was keeping them from hiring help. Unemployment benefits create jobs. It creates 1.7 dollars for every 1.00 of unemployment benefits. You have been warning for years that we soon will have : driverless trucks and will take away truck drivers jobs; robots to take away manufacturing jobs; hamburger flipping robots that would staff burger joints; that kioks would eliminate cashiers and we would have checkless supermarkets. If that were true, productivitty would not have been stagnant during the last expansion or the ATA complaining about …trucker shortages or the restaurant industry complaining of…worker shortages. So which is it? do we have a worker shortage or machines will take over all our jobs? BTW machines have been taken over jobs for the last…350 years. It is called the Industrial Revolutions. 
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Dr. Manhattan23
Dr. Manhattan23
2 years ago
When has either party been fiscally responsible. Im no spring chicken and I cant remember…….
I did see a recent article on Linkedin. They looked at all “Entry Level” jobs and requirements. They said “employers asked for at least three years of relevant work experience on 35% of their postings. That rate dipped briefly to 30% in June 2020, when labor markets were in free fall. It’s higher now, though, at 38.4%. The data shows that industries such as software (60.3%) are especially likely to demand a lot of prior work experience for entry-level jobs, followed by manufacturing (50%) and design (47%). And on the other end of the spectrum, as seen in the chart below, retail requires the least prior work experience (8.2%).”
I have to say that the employers might be adding to the labor issues. Not saying that what was said in the article is not true, just saying I think there are more issues that employers bring unto themselves. Paying people not to work certainly doesnt help. Some employers simply may not want to increase compensation as the business model might not support it. Our portfolio companies pay well, so we havent experienced any of the labor issues
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