The primacy of labor has never been more on display than right now--people make the machine run.
And this article from the Atlantic does a nice job of summarizing "supply chain issues" worldwide.
If you look hard enough at the problems plaguing any other part of the supply chain, you eventually find the point at which the people who do the actual work of making and moving things just can’t keep up. Container ships wait offshore, sometimes for months, because ports don’t have the capacity—the longshoremen, the warehouse staff, the customs inspectors, the maintenance crews—to unload ships any faster.
Truck drivers to distribute those goods were in high demand even before the pandemic, and now there are simply not enough of them to do all the work available. The problem is so bad that some U.S. staffing agencies have started recruiting truckers from abroad, and some experts worry that the Biden administration’s recently announced vaccine mandates for large employers could constrain that labor pool even more, at least for a time.
Many industry groups and freight companies believe the number of vaccinated truckers to be low, according to FreightWaves, a website that covers the shipping industry. Small trucking companies anticipate that a significant number of drivers will want to jump ship from larger carriers, which will likely be subject to the mandates once they go into effect. Even in a best-case scenario, such upheaval would scramble freight availability for months.
Read further, and you'll see the horrors afflicting our meat-packing industry. Remember the death toll before you gripe about beef prices.
Anecdotally, this labor shortage spills down to the retail level, with local chain restaurants having limited hours, one nearby previously-booming sports bar closing permanently because of a labor shortage it couldn't resolve and all sorts of other employers, small and large, ringing the bell with job offers. A friend of mine in Indiana reported that her big box home improvement store had two cashiers available for an entire Sunday recently. And salary managers worked sixteen hours to help fill in.
My eldest son was virtually insta-hired at Home Depot. He has a 401k and, with the scaling up of hours, health insurance benefits in the offing. But my next-door neighbor, a department manager at another Home Depot, reports that they are still hurting for help.
I don't have the beginnings of a persuasive answer, but it's clear that this problem--and the attendant consequences--will be with us for a long time.
My son is putting boxes in trucks for $18/hr while waiting to ship out with USMC. There’s good work if you want it.
ReplyDeleteMy eldest son was virtually insta-hired at Home Depot. He has a 401k and, with the scaling up of hours, health insurance benefits in the offing. But my next-door neighbor, a department manager at another Home Depot, reports that they are still hurting for help.
ReplyDeleteGreat!
Most definitely. He understands the concept of paying his dues--and is learning this week, with no start later than 6am in the morning. My wife and I joke that we're back to taking shifts with the baby to let the other sleep.
DeleteShowing that you're willing to work hard in an economy crying out for labor should pay dividends in the long term--especially when he wants to schedule around his community college classes.