Easy Way to Double the Number of Jobs in the Country Overnight

[Friend of Mara]

Super easy peasy way to double all of the jobs in this country! Make overtime pay required after the 20th hour of work rather than the 40th!

See now the employers will be incentivized to only work people 20 hours a week instead of 40. But they still need that labor covered somehow so they will have to hire a second person! Now there will be plenty of jobs for everyone!

 

[Shadow Wolf]

A lot of companies already do that so they can avoid benefits and actually paying a decent wage overall (despite offering around 15/hour).
Some companies go the other way and work two shifts as hard as three. But they aren't worried. They know they have a revolving door of people who will do it for awhile and some that will stay.

 

[epronovost]

Super easy peasy way to double all of the jobs in this country! Make overtime pay required after the 20th hour of work rather than the 40th!

See now the employers will be incentivized to only work people 20 hours a week instead of 40. But they still need that labor covered somehow so they will have to hire a second person! Now there will be plenty of jobs for everyone!

That's actually an infamous logical fallacy known as the "lump of labour fallacy". There is no such thing as a "set amount of labor" to be done in an economy. It basically ignores the fact that there is a cost for recruitment, training and management to have employees and that the productivity of employees isn't some sort of mathematical equilibrium where making someone work 20 hours is twice less productive than making them work 40 hours.

This fallacy and misconception is associated with other types of zero-sum fallacies and reification fallacy.

 

[Friend of Mara]

That's actually an infamous logical fallacy known as the "lump of labour fallacy". There is no such thing as a "set amount of labor" to be done in an economy. It basically ignores the fact that there is a cost for recruitment, training and management to have employees and that the productivity of employees isn't some sort of mathematical equilibrium where making someone work 20 hours is twice less productive than making them work 40 hours.

This fallacy and misconception is associated with other types of zero-sum fallacies and reification fallacy.

But my point still stands. If we incentivized 20 hour work weeks and a company will still have to fill the hours would they not need to increase the number of people employed? If a McDonalds has X number of hours they have to fill to run the store they will fill that with Y number of people spread out through X hours.

This is obviously a facetious line of questioning but it leads somewhere I promise.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

But my point still stands. If we incentivized 20 hour work weeks and a company will still have to fill the hours would they not need to increase the number of people employed? If a McDonalds has X number of hours they have to fill to run the store they will fill that with Y number of people spread out through X hours.

This is obviously a facetious line of questioning but it leads somewhere I promise.

As a manager of a team of about 20, my head explodes at the thought of this. BOOM. No more head.

 

[Friend of Mara]

As a manager of a team of about 20, my head explodes at the thought of this. BOOM. No more head.

As a totally side note I've worked several places where I have done the schedule. Many managers struggle really hard with it for some reason.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

As a totally side note I've worked several places where I have done the schedule. Many managers struggle really hard with it for some reason.

Heh...I think it would be worth noting I manage senior business consultants who do large-scale software implementations.

Schedules would be by far the least of my worries. Constant knowledge transfer is more the drama, plus double the amount of check in calls, hr reviews, etc.

 

[Friend of Mara]

Heh...I think it would be worth noting I manage senior business consultants who do large-scale software implementations.

Schedules would be by far the least of my worries. Constant knowledge transfer is more the drama, plus double the amount of check in calls, hr reviews, etc.

Indeed. Not to mention people might not take kindly to having their hours cut in half and ergo their paycheck cut in half.

And since this thread has dragged a little I am gonna use your post to finish my point even though it may be unprompted.

The minimum wage argument being weighed against the fact we might have fewer jobs is a malign and meaningless argument if the jobs are not worth having. We could double the number of jobs and simply have everyone work half the hours but that wouldn't fix the problem of those jobs aren't enough. Quantity of jobs are not the be all end all.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Indeed. Not to mention people might not take kindly to having their hours cut in half and ergo their paycheck cut in half.

And since this thread has dragged a little I am gonna use your post to finish my point even though it may be unprompted.

The minimum wage argument being weighed against the fact we might have fewer jobs is a malign and meaningless argument if the jobs are not worth having. We could double the number of jobs and simply have everyone work half the hours but that wouldn't fix the problem of those jobs aren't enough. Quantity of jobs are not the be all end all.

I agree with the thrust of your point.

 

[Revoltingest]

But my point still stands. If we incentivized 20 hour work weeks and a company will still have to fill the hours would they not need to increase the number of people employed? If a McDonalds has X number of hours they have to fill to run the store they will fill that with Y number of people spread out through X hours.

This is obviously a facetious line of questioning but it leads somewhere I promise.

There will be other market responses to this policy....
- Highly skilled workers cannot be replaced by new workers.
So companies would have to eat the higher cost of overtime.
- Hiring workers is spendy...finding, vetting, & training them.
- More overhead...managing more employees.
- This policy would be additional incentive to automate,
thereby cutting the number of workers.
- The increase costs to business would cause price increases,
accelerating inflation.

Note: I'm seeing inflationary effects (currency devaluation)
already. Bins I once paid $7 for at Menards are now $14.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

But my point still stands. If we incentivized 20 hour work weeks and a company will still have to fill the hours would they not need to increase the number of people employed? If a McDonalds has X number of hours they have to fill to run the store they will fill that with Y number of people spread out through X hours.

This is obviously a facetious line of questioning but it leads somewhere I promise.

No, you'd get people still working 40 hours, just as two part-time jobs instead of one full-time job.

When I worked in retail, a bunch of my coworkers were doing that. It sucked.

 

[Friend of Mara]

There will be other market responses to this policy....
- Highly skilled workers cannot be replaced by new workers.
So companies would have to eat the higher cost of overtime.
- Hiring workers is spendy...finding, vetting, & training them.
- More overhead...managing more employees.
- This policy would be additional incentive to automate,
thereby cutting the number of workers.
- The increase costs to business would cause price increases,
accelerating inflation.

Note: I'm seeing inflationary effects (currency devaluation)
already. Bins I once paid $7 for at Menards are now $14.

So what you are saying is that maximizing the number of jobs isn't necessarily the most important thing when making decisions based around our economy? That there are other factors to be thought of? That perhaps the focus on making sure we have "enough jobs" is a distraction technique or fulfills some other role in those arguments?

Interesting.

No, you'd get people still working 40 hours, just as two part-time jobs instead of one full-time job.

When I worked in retail, a bunch of my coworkers were doing that. It sucked.

But....more jobs.

If those jobs would no longer be worth working even though we would have plenty....why do we care so much when we talk about loosing jobs when we raise the minimum wage?

The point of the thread was gonna be a bait and switch. Put a dumb idea up. Hopefully someone bites. Then make the comparison to the anti-minimum wage argument of job loss.

 

[ecco]

Super easy peasy way to double all of the jobs in this country! Make overtime pay required after the 20th hour of work rather than the 40th!

If the idea is full employment, then I have a better idea.

No one under the age of 21 is allowed to work.
No one over the age of 50 is allowed to work.

 

[Friend of Mara]

No, you'd get people still working 40 hours, just as two part-time jobs instead of one full-time job.

When I worked in retail, a bunch of my coworkers were doing that. It sucked.

*sigh*
There would still be 2x jobs. Not 2x more workers. But 2x more jobs. This whole thread has been about minimum wage and how people work multiple jobs to live while working minimum wage. The number of jobs is meaningless if the jobs available are not jobs worth working.

If the idea is full employment, then I have a better idea.

No one under the age of 21 is allowed to work.
No one over the age of 50 is allowed to work.

Seems like a bad idea. Unless we are going to implement a full retirement plan for everyone at the age of 50 and extend university to public education and require it like high school free of charge. Then I would get behind that.

 

[Friend of Mara]

Note: I'm seeing inflationary effects (currency devaluation)
already. Bins I once paid $7 for at Menards are now $14.

Yeah. Inflation is currently a problem though very little has to do with the wages right now and way more to the shortage of raw materials because of pandemic shutdowns. Once we get back up in running it is possible some prices will go back down. Especially lumber and metal prices.

 

[ecco]

*sigh*
There would still be 2x jobs. Not 2x more workers. But 2x more jobs. This whole thread has been about minimum wage and how people work multiple jobs to live while working minimum wage. The number of jobs is meaningless if the jobs available are not jobs worth working.

Seems like a bad idea. Unless we are going to implement a full retirement plan for everyone at the age of 50 and extend university to public education and require it like high school free of charge. Then I would get behind that.

Okey doke.

 

[Kooky]

Another argument would be that individual productivity per hour tends to drop off sharply after the 30 hour mark, with anything past that adding significantly less productivity.

Of course, productivity is a para argument here - few business owners are going to care about, or even be familiar with, productivity figures and what they imply about the proper management of a workforce. What this revolves around is - as @epronovost has correctly identified - the cost of labor which, for a capitalist, will always be viewed as a sunk cost that needs to be minimized.

For this reason, capitalists tend to only ever reduce hours worked when the consequences of not reducing work hours look more dire to them. In past ages, this was the threat of strikes and other organized labor actions; but since unemployment has massively expanded and most labor can be outsourced - or threatened to be outsourced, whether it would be actually practical to do so is often not even the point any more - no Western capitalist needs to fear labor action, and bereft of this fear, they often tend to behave accordingly.

 

[Kooky]

So what you are saying is that maximizing the number of jobs isn't necessarily the most important thing when making decisions based around our economy? That there are other factors to be thought of? That perhaps the focus on making sure we have "enough jobs" is a distraction technique or fulfills some other role in those arguments?

It's important to keep in mind that for a capitalist "enough jobs" would be a different number than a worker suffering from unemployment - the presence of a larger number of job applicants is usually a positive for a business owner, so any number of jobs that creates a sufficiently large pool of potentially viable candidates competing for capitalist favor tends to be "enough" from their point of view.

 

[Revoltingest]

So what you are saying is that maximizing the number of jobs isn't necessarily the most important thing when making decisions based around our economy? That there are other factors to be thought of? That perhaps the focus on making sure we have "enough jobs" is a distraction technique or fulfills some other role in those arguments?

Aye, all plans have outcome goals, but reality is more
complex than our plans. We should beware unintended
consequences, & consider them carefully.

How's that for being needlessly general, eh.

 

[Revoltingest]

Yeah. Inflation is currently a problem though very little has to do with the wages right now and way more to the shortage of raw materials because of pandemic shutdowns. Once we get back up in running it is possible some prices will go back down. Especially lumber and metal prices.

There will be an effect on wages though. With rising
prices, there'll be pressure for higher wages.
Moreover, let's assume many people will be working
only 20 hour weeks....
1) They won't want 1/2 income, & will want a raise.
2) The costs & inefficiencies of this plan (detailed earlier)
will cause price rises added to inflation (currency devaluation).
This strikes me as creating instability by a positive
feedback loop.

Of course, I think companies would just pay the overtime,
which is more cost effective than hiring more workers to
compensate for cutting back hours on existing workers.
Long term...they'd move more towards automation so as
to cut the greatly increased labor cost.