I think the "life is short," phenomenon that recently occurred to everybody due to COVID is also playing a part. People are thinking, something along the lines of, "I could have died and my gift of life has mostly consisted of working for this shithole company for the last 5 years."
Employers might want to consider hiring more people in smaller shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4 day shifts rather than 5-6. It'll be interesting if this phenomenon holds.
Of course the US workforce has been constantly squeezed for the last 40 years, so maybe the COVID was the breaking point. No more cheap labor because people are unwilling to live with their parents / not have health insurance. People really mastered how to live cheap over the last year as well.
Make no mistake, COVID was a seismic event in the US economy that will have lasting changes.
> Employers might want to consider hiring more people in smaller shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4 day shifts rather than 5-6.
I thought that doing this to avoid providing healthcare was the problem. Many jobs that can't be filled are for part time hours at terrible pay with no benefits.
The laws in the US only require companies to provide health insurance and other benefits to full-time workers, usually defined as something over 30/hours a week. If a company hires a bunch of people to work 20-25 hours, they don't have to pay benefits.
The solution, obviously, is to change the law so that any employee, regardless of hours, must get benefits. The other solution, in the US, is to get rid of the antiquated employer-provided private health insurance market and just give everyone health care, the way every other wealthy (and not-so-wealthy) country does.
Most people need full time work to survive to pay for everything. They need 40 hours of paid work per week as well as health care, a benefit that is usually only provided to full time employees.
Businesses usually don't need 40 hours per person per week, especially for things like restaurants. They also do not want to pay for health coverage. So they offer part time jobs with 20 random hours per week.
To survive, you would need to cobble together two of those jobs and hope that you don't get sick. Or you can hold out/leave immediately as soon as full time work is available.
I agree. Beyond the economic changes that have occurred, I think the social change is going to be even more dramatic. Everyone I know in my social circle has started new things, gone back to school, picked up old hobbies they neglected, or changed jobs. I don't think we are appreciating how radical a change it was for so many people to have months of free time where they had relative financial stability. You start to have time to really think about what you want.
Going forward I think people are just not going to put up with bullshit the way they did before.
I've been working professionally for 25 years now. I could take a year off financially, but I'm still shackled by health insurance being so expensive on the private market.
Think about this, when you are on your deathbed, whenever that is. Could be tomorrow, could be in 60 years. What regrets will you have?
The issue is I’m not sure if it’s something I can just dip my toe in to try. The more research I do that more apparent that the things I want to do will require an all or nothing investment.
Employers might want to consider hiring more people in smaller shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4 day shifts rather than 5-6. It'll be interesting if this phenomenon holds.
Of course the US workforce has been constantly squeezed for the last 40 years, so maybe the COVID was the breaking point. No more cheap labor because people are unwilling to live with their parents / not have health insurance. People really mastered how to live cheap over the last year as well.
Make no mistake, COVID was a seismic event in the US economy that will have lasting changes.