Writes Jennifer Rubin, in "We should not have to guess why Americans are quitting en masse" (WaPo).
She says that right after asserting: "We know what is not a cause: unemployment benefits."Have more women than men quit? Have retail employees and others who deal with the public (e.g., airline attendants) had enough of the epidemic of rotten manners and even physical abuse they receive?... If the issue is child care, then the president’s Build Back Better agenda is essential... If the issue is fear of covid-19, the administration needs to start suing states that are attempting to ban lifesaving mask and vaccine mandates....
I certainly want accurate understanding of the causes of problems and well-designed solutions, but I don't trust Rubin — or the academics, private pollsters, and government researchers she calls on — to do anything that's not skewed by the quest for political power.
Elsewhere in The Washington Post, I'm seeing "Why is everyone quitting, and how do I know whether it’s time to leave my job?/Waves of Americans are leaving their jobs as part of the ‘Great Resignation.’ Here’s why." This is a big topic because we just learned that 2.9% of the American workforce quit in August!
An exodus of workers from retail, warehouse, restaurant and bar, health-care and social- assistance jobs have pushed quits to record levels, according to data released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The pandemic’s burdens have persisted as government support has dried up, and the fallout is breaking down along gender and socioeconomic fault lines: 309,000 women older than 20 dropped out of the workforce in September, meaning they quit or stopped looking for jobs. In contrast, 182,000 men were added, Labor Department data showed. Women have borne the brunt of the job losses since the pandemic began, research from the Brookings Institution shows.
Overrepresented in low-wage service jobs, they have been hit hard by increased child-care demands brought on by the delta variant’s disruption of school reopenings and the lack of vaccines for children. They also are more likely to be in positions that require in-person work, heightening their risk for coronavirus infection.
These are the same assumptions seen in Rubin's column.
And while workers 25 and older with college degrees fully recovered from pandemic job losses back in May, Americans in a similar age group without degrees remain 4.6 million jobs below pre-pandemic levels.... America’s unemployed are sending a message: They’ll go back to work when they feel safe – and well-compensated....
Quits also are soaring among manufacturing and warehouse workers, who are straining under the pressures of surging demand and crunched supply chains....
The mass departures are being driven by a combination of factors, including the feeling of many Americans that there’s more opportunity and better pay elsewhere....
Posts
64 comments:
"Women have borne the brunt of the job losses . . . America’s unemployed are sending a message"
It's a two-fer: women are victims and women are agents. Hardest hit, regardless.
People are motivated by incentives to do what you want, or in some cases, to do what you didn't want. With regard to our labor market, if you continue to send free money to people for staying home, doing nothing, they will be incentivized to do just that: nothing.
The force of our government shut down businesses, and also mandated that they pay lower level positions at a higher pay. At the same time, goods are tighter than ever, costs for goods (and labor) have skyrocketed, but businesses, particularly in the retail sector, have seen fewer in person customers for over a year now. They are dying ( while online retailers are booming). With all this happening to both the large and small business operator, things are very stressful at work. Nobody likes a stressful workplace, made even more stressful by the business having to operate with a cut staff (because they cannot find or pay for additional people).
So, the employees are sitting this one out. Extended unemployment. Child care credits. Other government hand-outs.
You get more of what you subsidize. Less of what you tax.
I almost got through this entire thing without mentioning that Jennifer Rubin has the reputation of being the stupidest person in journalism. And that, my friends, is as low a bar as you can manage.
I certainly want accurate understanding of the causes of problems and well-designed solutions, but I don't trust Rubin — or the academics, private pollsters, and government researchers she calls on — to do anything that's not skewed by the quest for political power.
Who is this and what have you done with Ann Althouse?
No more 'Normal' anymore?
"The mass departures are being driven by a combination of factors, including the feeling of many Americans that there’s more opportunity and better pay elsewhere...."
That is certainly what all those illegals pouring across the southern border think. I guess there is nothing wrong with all those new arrivals if we can herd them into those warehouse and manufacturing jobs that Americans don't want.
But wait, aren't the un-degreed the ones not re-employed? And all those un-degreed folks who have not returned to work--they need to feel safe and well compensated before they'll come back? More so than the degreed? Well, slap me silly and call me Doris! That all seems rather untethered from anything we see in the real world. But I have friends in big law firms who say they can't get younger lawyers back in the office because the kids don't want to leave their dogs alone at home.
We may have a dearth of dog-sitters. The dog problem may be bringing America to a halt.
One quick check Rubin can do is look at which states have the lowest unemployment rates then compare to their Covid restrictions. I'll just note that the top 10 lowest unemployment states are mostly red (though notably more rural) while the bottom 10 is solid blue. Make of that what you will.
Impartial Columnist Suggests PublicSolutions That Just Happen To Align With Democrat Policies
News at 11!
Currently, people are receiving $300 a month per child under 5. If you're getting that money, while working in a lower paying service job, why wouldn't you quit and be with your kids? As it looks right now, someone who quit would be able to find another job in January. The payments started in July so quitting in August makes perfect sense: you did the math in July and realized your job was unnecessary.
Compare:
"Women have borne the brunt of the job losses since the pandemic began..."
with
"And while workers 25 and older with college degrees fully recovered from pandemic job losses back in May, Americans in a similar age group without degrees remain 4.6 million jobs below pre-pandemic levels...."
In 2020, 36.7% of U.S. males had 4 years+ of college, while 38.3% of U.S. females had 4+ years of college. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/
Cherry picking is like nose picking. Everyone does it but you shouldn't do it in public.
"and the fallout is breaking down along gender and socioeconomic fault lines: 309,000 women older than 20 dropped out of the workforce in September, meaning they quit or stopped looking for jobs. In contrast, 182,000 men were added, Labor Department data showed. Women have borne the brunt of the job losses since the pandemic began, research from the Brookings Institution shows."
"Quitting" is not a "job loss". "Job loss" implies it is not voluntary. "Quitting" implies a voluntary action.
If it is true that unemployment benefits are not the source of the phenomenon (and I'd need more than Rubin's word on that), then one has to ask how the quitters are supporting themselves. Perhaps the quitters are women in a family who don't need a second income.
Lets ask Occam's Razor: They'll go back to work when the checks for not working dry up. I'm just going to assume any other explanation is lies. I've been lied to enough over the last two years.
"Instead of guessing — or worse, allowing politicians to favor explanations that fit their political agenda — it behooves us to find out the cause or causes of this phenomenon."
Has Ms. Rubin no self-awareness?
....and only a god-damn playground supervisor would use a word like behooves.
Doesn't she know!! It's offensive to POC.
"Don't you be behooving me!! /sarc
I'm completely confused by the metrics cited here. If 2.9% of the workforce quit, that's millions of people. But later we're talking about ~100k net total who dropped out of the workforce in August. And then there's this blurb,
"America’s unemployed are sending a message: They’ll go back to work when they feel safe – and well-compensated"
Did these people quit with no new job lined up? or is this turnover?
There's a narrative here that people are QUITTING without new jobs lined up, but the metrics shown seem to indicate to me people are changing jobs rapidly with only a small fraction quitting without taking on a new job. Those are very different outcomes - so which is it.
They’re working. They’re just following the example of illegal immigrants and no longer filing taxes, Jennifer.
It’s the vaccine mandate, stupid.
It’s the vaccine mandate, stupid.
I don’t mean you, Ann.
Ann says:
..... I don't trust Rubin — or the academics, private pollsters, and government researchers she calls on — to do anything that's not skewed by the quest for political power."
oh ho!
shorter Jen Rubin(D) -
'Please stop quitting! You must support dear leader Biden and his Solyndra Build-Back Better scheme. You must. Stop making him look bad. You must support Potemkin Joe, or else you are a traitor and a terrorist. '
It’s a good thing if they are quitting and moving to a better job.
"309,000 women older than 20 dropped out of the workforce in September, meaning they quit or stopped looking for jobs."
I would associate this phenomenon with the Great Southwest Airlines Flight Cancel in which I was a recent involuntary participant and so was forced to spend the four days it took to travel from from New Hampshire to Milwaukee thinking for hours about what was happening. There is no agreement on why the Flight Cancellation happened but I have adopted the rumor that appeared in the airport lines I stood in within 25 minutes. This was that the pilots and others were doing "something" in response to the v-mandate of the airline, some sort of no-show, and that the ripple effect was causing more and more cancellations. This I saw and I also saw airline workers working without stopping with distraught or angry passengers - both in lines for hours.
Similarly, restaurants and bars began to require the v in August and this may have caused some to quit or be fired and then, in a ripple effect, it may have thrown a huge burden on others who were expected to work double shifts or who were inexperienced and making mistakes and getting shouted at without older workers to show the way. Similarly, health care-workers did double and triple shifts all through covid year. They saved lives by keeping healthcare going, but now anyone of them who doesn't want the v is a horrible person, according to the Our Betters. And anyone of them who does have the v has to work even more double shifts to make up for lost coworkers (who shared covid year with them and now are gone.)
Meanwhile there is a worker shortage and anyone who doesn't like their situation can go elsewhere and get a huge bonus for doing it. Maybe a promotion.
And families may still be departing cities and hastening to do it in August/September so as not to affect schooling. And, in relation to schooling, women may be deciding to stay home and homeschool their children. So the "impact" may fall on women but the "impact" may be a more interesting job. They quit quit bar-tending to be teacher.
We're in a social change.
And I won't make a statement about who understands it best but I will say I think our hostess is right that unfeeling criticism and reflexive political posturing miss the mark. They don't, they can't describe the change we're in.
but I don't trust Rubin
Politico calls her "the Biden administration’s favorite columnist."
I wonder how many people have quit "waitstaff" jobs because they have to wear masks all day and are pressed to get vaccinated?
Maybe a lot of them are going to truck driver school. There is a huge shortage of truck drivers and it pays a lot better than waitress jobs.
California has made it much worse with idiotic AB5 that bans owner operators, probably the majority of drivers at the port of AL/Long Beach. And it is planning to ban gas powered trucks. Of course, electric trucks don't exist.
Women choose to leave their jobs, women and children hit hardest.
Maybe after being home for the pandemic, the women decided they want to stay at home with their children. My wife's biggest regret was that she did not quit her job sooner to stay at home with our son.
Tucker Carlson says (on his show) that Rubin is the dumbest person in the country to have her own column in a major media outlet.
I think he's correct.
"I'm like the mosquito at a nudist colony, where to begin..."
1. A comparison of states with generous and/or extended benefits for the non-working with ones that don't have it will give an indication of whether benefits affect unemployment. I have read that there is a correlation suggesting benefits suppress workforce participation.
2. A comparison of states with strong mandates to ones with weak mandates will give an indication of whether mandates make workers feel safe enough to return. I have heard there is a negative correlation with mandates and workforce participation.
It is likely that the Venn diagrams of 1 and 2 overlap almost perfectly, so who knows which is the relevant factor?
3. People don't quit a job with the "feeling" that there is something better out there. They find the something better and then quit. Unless of course, they are well enough compensated for not working. See #1.
Wapoo might need to hire someone who took macro economics and understood it. (As opposed to someone like AOC who supposedly took it but shows no understanding of it.)
Forced vaccinations, paid more to stay home, free healthcare, free foodstamps...Progressives attacking workers in Restaurants....not having to pay rent.....false promises from progressives...why work???
It's progressive policies that are bringing this country down. PERIOD.
I know a lot of women who are quitting to keep their kids at home as well.
The public schools are turning against parents and parents are being forced to pull their kids out.
This is going to be the issue that turns the country against the globalist marxists.
"Instead of guessing — or worse, allowing politicians to favor explanations that fit their political agenda — it behooves us to find out the cause or causes of this phenomenon."
She says that right after asserting: "We know what is not a cause: unemployment benefits."
And if you pressed Rubin, she would also write that mask mandates and vaccine mandates have nothing to do with people quitting their jobs. Or did she already write that — I’m not going to go to the extra keystrokes needed to slip past the Post paywall to read a Jenn Rubin column.
Spent a few hours with a relation recently and her need for the government to make people do stupid stuff has amped up considerably with the advent of wuflu.
You need to get vaccinated but once you're vaccinated, you need to act as if you are not vaccinated. Natural immunity does not actually exist.....
Some kid at age seven got the crud at school and his grandma, age 96 died. Some sadistic, smug, self-righteous sadistic son of a bitch told the kid how it happened and the kid is now in counseling. Problem for my relation is not that most people at ninety six are likely to die before they're ninety-seven. It's that somebody opened school, or didn't mask, or something and some unspeakable devil in the form of a human told the kid, which, my relation thinks was the right thing to do.
She's not alone. Not sure what she'll do if the disease disappears.
The Jen Rubins of this world are often [always] wrong, but never in doubt.
Sort of like the old Soviet central economic planners. The world will be shaped to meet their preconceptions.
A friend is currently collecting both Social Security and unemployment. Unemployment keeps extending his benefits. He doesn't know why and doesn't care.
No, you worthless waste of pixels, it does not "behoove us" to find out why I quit my job in August. I did quit, because I'm of retirement age and the downsides of continuing to work at my otherwise very enjoyable and rewarding job began to outweigh the advantages. My reason in my own, and I have shared it with a few dozen people wo are close enough to care. Every one who quits has his or her own reason. Government action played a role for me, and probably for many others. Government should butt out of our lives, as should meddling leftists- they have made the effects of the Wuhan virus worse. Maybe just MYOB for once.
Rubin is too stupid to understand her own words. You could convince me that her columns are written by a primitive AI algorithm.
After seeing her live on a news show, I think it was Tucker Carlson, and seeing her fall completely apart on a mild challenge (shuffling through her 'notes' and so forth), I've come to the conclusion that Jennifer Rubin is as dumb as a sack full of hammers. She probably wrote that little gem "We know what is not a cause: unemployment benefits." after being instructed by her editor: "For goodness' sake, don't let them get the idea it's because of the extended unemployment benefits"
I think one reason is that people don't want to wear face masks for many hours every work day.
If I had to wear a mask at work, I too might quit.
"They’ll go back to work when they feel safe – and well-compensated.... "
What are they doing for money in the interim? The ability to quit and still survive must be linked to something. What could it be?
I live in an area of the country that has been mostly normal since May of 2020, but every single business still open here in Oak Ridge is struggling to find workers to fill shifts, and they are offering eye-popping wages and still can't fill the positions.
At this point, there really are only a couple of good explanations that make any sense- (1) either the panic porn of COVID has driven too many workers into full-blown agoraphobia, and/or (2) people have decided that working a job in a mask all day long and/or being forced to vaccinate isn't worth the income. There is probably something to the breakdown of the public schools, but that isn't much of an issue here in Oak Ridge, and we still see the same worker shortages here.
I am waiting to see what has happened to disability rolls for Social Security in the last 19 months. I suspect that the rolls have exploded with "long COVID" and various mental disabilities.
BEHOOVES = when sheeple look down on their hooves sheepishly
The mass departures are being driven by a combination of factors, including the feeling of many Americans that there’s more opportunity and better pay elsewhere....
My son works for a major retailer. They were short of people doing his particular job. The solution? Hire college graduates off the street- by paying them MORE money than existing workers. Half the existing workers quit. Now- they're even more short. And dealing with the remaining workers, like my son, who has told his supervisors it's not his job to train people making more money than he is. The majority of the new hires, vast majority, are leaving within 2 months. You'd almost think they didn't think they were welcome.
In some areas, the worker shortage is a direct result of personnel and compensation policies. In some specific areas, like truck drivers in CA, it's a direct result of government policies. About 10% or so of truck drivers are independent- not employees. And the rules CA has set up prohibits them from picking up loads at Long Beach and Los Angeles ports. A major contributing cause to the containership and container pileup there.
And then, for mothers in particular, they've discovered they don't need that second income to live. And they really would rather stay at home with their own children then have strangers look after them. Ye Olde Sex difference thing that liberals insist is totally due to socialization and training and nothing to do with innate desires.
can you quit and qualify for benefits?
I may not have to retire after all >>>> is there [un]/employ lawyer in the house?
She says that right after asserting: "We know what is not a cause: unemployment benefits."
People respond to incentives. If you make it easier not to work by offering benefits for not working, then more people won't work than if you hadn't offered any benefits. Anybody who doesn't understand this is too stupid to pay attention to.
West TX Intermediate Crude said... Maybe just MYOB for once.
Politics in a nutshell:
Conservative: Leave me alone.
Progressive: No.
I wonder what effect the increase in home schooling has had? Exactly how many people have quit their job in order to home school their kids?
Dem: Unfair compensation.
Rep: Lazy asses.
Ind: Pandemics suck.
I don’t argue that unemployment benefits caused the quitting, but it is likely that the expectations of government assistance in some form accompanies the action. These folks likely believe that instead of working for a living they can vote for Democrats for a living.
"We know what is not a cause: unemployment benefits."
If the question is specifically "why are people quitting," then I expect that she's correct - people who quit a job typically can't claim unemployment benefits.
There are also a lot of laid-off people choosing not to go looking for work, and they may be influenced by unemployment benefits, but that's a different question.
1. "Quits" are "employees who left their job voluntarily, excluding retirements or transfers to other locations."
2. The raw number and percentage of quits has been rising steadily since 2008.
3. The (possibly) Covid-related August increase in quits is only slightly above the trend line from 2008 and is only one percentage point higher than April, 2021.
4. The 2.9% August data point is coincides with the first half of the Delta variant spike and the re-imposition of Covid precautions which were loosened in many locations mid-Summer.
5. This is a tempest in a teapot with the dual purpose of promoting a political point of view and selling advertising with hyperbole, misdirection, and outright lies.
The pandemic’s burdens have persisted as government support has dried up, and the fallout is breaking down along gender and socioeconomic fault lines: 309,000 women older than 20 dropped out of the workforce in September, meaning they quit or stopped looking for jobs.
Interesting that "stopped looking for jobs" is the same as "quitting a job" (the primary focus of the headline/opinion).
Perhaps someone who understands this better can explain the process. I thought that in order to receive unemployment, one had to certify every once in awhile that they were "trying to find a job". I know several folks who ran the unemployment extensions/supplements as long as they could. And, once they ended? They "stopped looking for work". They don't intend to go back - they never did.
I am retired but if I were working I would be tempted to quit just to piss off people like Jennifer Rubin. There is such a repellent whiff off her flatulent prose; from its magic mixture of complacent ignorance and aggressive condescension.
“Behooves.” AYFKM?
“I certainly want accurate understanding of the causes of problems and well-designed solutions, but I don't trust Rubin — or the academics, private pollsters, and government researchers she calls on — to do anything that's not skewed by the quest for political power.“
This paragraph sums up the impasse many of us have come up against. We love science but fear it has been skewed by those who seek power.
Blogger I'm Not Sure said...
She says that right after asserting: "We know what is not a cause: unemployment benefits."
People respond to incentives…
I love you Blogger I’m Not Sure!!! I also read some auto journalism where the author correctly called trickle-down a myth.
It’s been a very good day…
"but I don't trust Rubin"
Truer (and more frequently useful) words have never been uttered.
cr @ 2:16: “… We love science but fear it has been skewed by those who seek power.”
I almost agree. I don’t just fear that science has been skewed; I am convinced it has been completely perverted.
I'm Not Sure: "West TX Intermediate Crude said... Maybe just MYOB for once.
Politics in a nutshell:
Conservative: Leave me alone.
Progressive: No."
Politics in a nutshell:
Conservative: Leave me alone.
Progressive/democratical/marxist/LLR: No.
I happened to click on this suggested video and watch it to the end because it rang true with my experience.
Right to repair champion Louis Rossmann: "The REAL reason employees aren't returning to work in America." - (Link to video)
1,132,662 views, Premiered Sep 19, 2021
behooves: Link to Goodfellas video
Guessing Jen is not finding answers in the Washington Post?
Je ne veux pas travailler
Je ne veux pas déjeuner
Je veux seulement oublier
Et puis je fume - Pink Martini
Universal Basic Income should solve this problem.
Right?...Right?...
Pseudo-Empiricism. We have to find out the reason for this ... but we know one thing that isn't the reason ... so don't bother looking there ...
And Jen probably doesn't want us looking at mask mandates either.
Plenty of people quitting their jobs, and plenty of new jobs opening up, but also plenty of positions going unfilled. What's up with that?
“ 3. People don't quit a job with the "feeling" that there is something better out there. They find the something better and then quit. Unless of course, they are well enough compensated for not working. See #1.”
At least in NW MT, where we just left, there are people leaving jobs before they have new ones, knowing that reemployment is easy right now. The job market is just that good. Job vacancies are affecting a number of businesses. A cafe in town is now shutting down for dinner several days a week. And worse than unskilled are the skilled trades. My contractor is not taking in new customers, and is scheduling a year out now. Plumber was officially scheduling 6 weeks out, but never got to our leak for over six months. Electrical and concrete are also booked out for more than a month each.
The WashPost would be better off hiring any random member of this board to replace the laughable Rubin.
Young adults quit their jobs in August in preparation for the start of the new school year. That didn't happen last year because both schools and businesses were closed for covid.
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