Ouch!

Looking at the US only- we see unemployment down quite a bit... but those figures fail to account for people who hold multiple jobs to make a living wage as well as the fact that a large portion of those jobs available are- minimum wage jobs. The quality of the worker doesn’t define the jobs available as much as the market does and reality. It takes a small team- even effectively one person to come up with the configuration of a new hamburger at McDonald’s.

A small team to do high level marketing and research. The sales and low level tasks require thousands- hundreds of thousands or more people. So when we look at most consumer industries- a relatively small number of jobs exist in higher paying tiers of employment, but the scale of operations requires a huge work force for low level clerical tasks, administration, execution, logistics.

Even low level employers need to offer competitive wages or benefits, lest the guys trying to sell the new burger will lose it's lowest level to a Burger King that offers more hours and/or wages starting at 10 or 15

Amazon needs fleets of drivers and warehouse workers, stock pickers etc. the seller making a $5 water bottle requires hundreds or thousands of people working to gather raw materials and process them to make the water bottles. The bottle sells for $5. The seller makes a large percent, Amazon makes a large percent, the material supplier and shipper make a large percent. Out of $5 that percent isn’t a huge amount- but even if it costs $0.10 to make the bottle and the profit split is $1.00 leaving $4 to pay employees... $4 divided by hundred of people isn’t much per bottle. Velocity or mass consumerism needs lots of cheap labor to function.

@famousone- to a degree. But not so much. If that were the case why does a Safeway Cashier make up to $25 an hour, A Target Cashier make closer to $10 and a Walmart Cashier is generally lucky to get minimum wage? Why doesn’t Amazon seem too worried about the pay and condition in its warehouses when UPS and USPS have better pay, benefits, and conditions? Why has the pay for long haul truckers continued to decline despite a shortage of drivers? You don’t have to pay competitive wages when the job isn’t competitive. There are only so many openings for any job at any company. They aren’t infinite.

There are only so many “skilled” labor jobs and in America- and the world- most jobs are what is considered “unskilled labor.” Jobs that don’t require a special skill set or education of certification of any note to do passably. More people sell products than make products. More people make products than design products. The nature of our economy requires it. To have lots of cheap stuff, delivered to your door in hours or less 24/7/365- requires HUGE amounts of work being done, and by virtue- you can’t pay those workers very well as you could if you had less workers to pay.

So the labor market doesn’t have to be competitive outside of fields where skilled labor is needed. Demand for labor isn’t enough to drive wage competition because there is always someone who will do a job for less. A military aviator, an operator- both can find legal work outside the service that can pay half a years wages in one month. But outside of technical specialists or other skilled jobs that have civilian analogs- (and in many cases even then...) what about the rest? After 2 tours in the infantry what wonderful career awaits the otherwise unconnected and uneducated enlisted man? Is that a something you hear a lot? Everyone talking about how easy it is to get a good paying job when they get out? If it is things have certainly changed in recent years. But-

Are these guys all washouts? Are the majority of people getting off a contract just lazy, undisciplined, useless and untrainable loafs who’s value to society is living with relatives and making maybe a whopping $18 an hour of they’re reasonably lucky? Or perhaps.... the caliber of these people and their potential irrelevant because the skills they posses don’t translate to a direct financial incentive in most workplaces? Are their employers worried they’ll reenlist if they can’t offer up a pay and benefits package that competes with the service? No Holmes. They are not.