#LaborShortages #LowpayingJobs #jobs #employment #EssentialWorkers
There is a shortage of school bus drivers.
Massachusetts had to get the National Guard to help.
Many nurses are ditching their full-time gigs to become traveling nurses, which pays them twice or three times as much.
There’s also a shortage in other front-line and hospitality professions. Finding substitute teachers is such a problem that some districts have lowered standards to qualify.
Giulia Heyward covered this subject in an article for The New York Times. It was also published Sept. 18, 2021, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
What to do? And, what does it mean?
Jobs that pay relatively poorly, but have a lot of stress and responsibility, didn’t attract many candidates, even before the pandemic.
Employers say they can’t afford to pay more. Well, the labor market is telling employers that if they don’t pay more, they won’t get the people they need.
We haven’t seen a labor market like this in quite a while.
People in some job categories are asking for what they have deserved for a long time. If they don’t get it, they walk to greener pastures.
COVID-19 has spurred this new labor market. Jobs like driving a school bus, or nursing, have even more stress now than they did before because of the real dangers of getting sick.
It’s tough enough to drive a school bus, or take care of sick patients, without the COVID-19 threat.
But the pandemic has added yet another layer of stress.
Plus, if a person gets sick, he or she is no good to anyone – family, employer etc.
That adds to the decision whether to take, or quit, a job. It makes the question , “is it worth it,” even more stark.
For workers, there are answers, other than just staying home. There are programs that enable a person to work from home, even part time, and earn an income that potentially could easily beat that of one of those stressful, highly responsible, but relatively low-paying jobs.
To learn about one of the best such programs, message me.
Meanwhile, it’s OK to analyze your work situation. It’s OK to ask yourself, why am I doing this? Am I getting enough back from all this stress?
The answer to that last question can take the form of money or intangibles. If you love driving a school bus – or you love the kids you transport – or, if you really love taking care of sick patients despite the stress, you may not want to give up those jobs.
But if your financial situation is not what you think it should be, you may want to enhance it with a little part-time effort that anyone, regardless of education, experience or background, can do.
Such an effort could take the financial sting out of that stressful job you may love – yes, you can do both things if you’d like to.
The fact remains that the labor market is changing. You can look for opportunities in those changes – remember the traveling nurses? – or, if your situation is too much to bear, or risk, look for something a little less risky and stressful, and perhaps even more lucrative.
Peter
Monthly Archives: September 2021
PERMANENT COMFORT ZONES?
#ComfortZones #comfort #contentment #success
“Comfort zones aren’t meant to be permanent.”
So beings a TV ad for Regions Bank.
The message appears to be that the bank will be there for you through life’s ups and downs.
But let’s dig deeper into that sentence. We all look for, sometimes find and try to stay in our comfort zones.
Comfort zone equals contentment.
But if contentment is all one seeks, he or she is missing something.
Truly successful people not only leave comfort zones, they high-tail it out of them.
One doesn’t aim for success just to be content.
One aims for success to change the world, or, at least, his or her own world.
Real success is achieved when one goes beyond what’s comfortable to him or her, stretches his or her abilities and takes risks.
When one seeks only comfort, he or she probably is not dreaming, is not seeing himself or herself beyond, perhaps, what his or her parents and other elders suggested they seek in life.
Some people grew up being taught that dreaming is dangerous, and only for the, well, less stable folk.
Stability begot success in previous decades.
That stability, today, has all but vanished. When one is stable, he or she has a job that pays decently and, perhaps, provides benefits. His or her role is to behave well in the workplace, do his or her job well enough to please his or her boss and work until it was time to retire.
Such an existence is non-existent today. Very few people stay in the same job, with the same company, for decades. Some people stay with a company long-term, but their jobs change – often frequently.
What you are doing today probably won’t be what you’ll be doing tomorrow. Often, you won’t have any control over decisions made for you.
Wise leaders say one must prepare for success. It may start with preparing for the unexpected wherever you work. Most companies today have to change with the times and technology. If you do a certain job, and the job changes, will you change with it? If not, you could be gone.
Fortunately, there are programs available that allow people to prepare for the unexpected at work. They involve spending a few, part-time, off-work hours a week at endeavors that could put enough money in their pockets to allow them to roll with whatever rolls downhill at them.
These programs require no specific education, experience or background. They do require an open mind, a willingness to do something you perhaps never thought you would do. And, yes, they require you to get out of your comfort zone.
To learn about one of the best such programs, message me.
You may be comfortable sitting on your favorite couch or chair. But, as comfortable as that is, you don’t sit there forever. Success requires movement. Comfort, generally, requires sitting still. So the question becomes, are you satisfied just being comfortable, or do you dream of something much better? Whatever route you choose, it can be there for the taking.
Peter
REMOTE WORK BECOMING A TREND?
#RemoteWork #WorkRemotely #WorkingRemotely #jobs #coronavirus #COVID19 #FlattenTheCurve
What if you could live wherever you wanted, regardless of where your job is?
Matt Kempner, business reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, tells the story of a couple who work for Atlanta companies, but live outside of Nashville, Tenn., some 240 miles away.
His article was published May 2, 2021.
The story of Emily Weddington and her husband goes like this: she works in marketing for one company, he in finance for another.
They had a house with a small yard in Brookhaven, Ga., just outside Atlanta. Now, they own and live in a bigger house on five acres outside Nashville. Each has his and her own office. They have the same jobs they had living in Atlanta.
But, in Tennessee, they are closer to his parents and their dogs have more room to run.
When the pandemic hit, employers became more open to allowing people to work from home and avoid close contact in offices.
In fact, a headline on Nedra Rhone’s “RealLife” column in the Sept. 2, 2021, edition of the Atlanta paper, says: “Why no one wants to go back to the office.”
Rhone’s column talks about Zeena Regis, who, though she loves the personal contact of working outside the home, loves the flexibility of having multiple ways of doing her job.
Some stats from Rhone’s column: An April survey from FlexJobs says 60 percent of women and 52 percent of men said they would quit their jobs if they couldn’t continue to work from home at least part of the time. Some employers aren’t on the same page. In a digital.com survey, only 10 percent of employers surveyed said they would make remote work mandatory, while only 17 percent said they would follow a hybrid schedule.
Experts expect these relaxed standards to persist well after the threat of spreading disease has subsided, Kempner writes.
This opens up many possibilities for many working adults. First and foremost, the cost of going to work – the commute, beverages and lunch at work (unless you brown-bag), work clothes etc. – will be lessened.
Secondly, you don’t have to live in a high-tax, high-expense area where your company may be located. You can lower your cost of living without giving up your job.
Thirdly, you can live in, say, your favorite vacation spot without having to be on vacation.
In short, this trend has endless possibilities and choices for those able to take advantage of them.
Certainly, there are disadvantages. As Regis points out in Rhone’s column, personal interaction with colleagues is greatly reduced. Secondly, staying in your house all day, or all night, depending on the hours you work, can be limiting. That’s why you are seeing more folks trick out their houses because they are spending so much time there.
There can also be some tax consequences working in one state and living in another. Those could potentially wash out with the savings in the other areas.
The other disadvantage – some may see it only as a tradeoff – is that you could be available to your employer 24/7. Chances are, though, if you have a job that allows you to work remotely, you have always been available to your employer 24/7.
What can you do if you don’t have a job that gives you such flexibility? There are many programs out there that, by spending a few, part-time off-work hours a week to start, could provide you an income that could allow you eventually to say goodbye to that burdensome employment.
Yes, these programs can be done from anywhere, under any circumstances. And, you don’t need specific education, experience or background to pursue them. You just need a mind open enough to check them out.
To learn about one of the best such programs, message me.
The pandemic is changing many work environments. Not everyone is benefiting from these changes. If you are not, you have options. If you are, take full advantage.
Sometimes, progress results from catastrophe. It’s up to each person to make lemonade from lemons and adapt to the changes that have come, or will come.
Peter
IT’S LABOR DAY: HOW’S YOUR JOB GOING?
#LaborDay #jobs #employers #employees #coronavirus #COVID19 #FlattenTheCurve
On this “unusual” Labor Day, “workers are in demand, but relatively scarce. (They are) enticed by incentives but scared of infection, constrained by child-care needs, while attracted by a more elastic workplace.”
So writes Michael E. Kanell, business and economics reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in his Labor Day, 2021, article.
In that same edition of the Atlanta paper, Matt O’Brien and Paul Wiseman write about artificial intelligence (robots) handling a lot of service tasks once performed by humans. In their Associated Press article, they cite the example of a robot voice assistant at a Los Angeles Arby’s restaurant taking orders and relaying them to the line cooks.
The coronavirus pandemic is forcing changes in the labor market, giving employees more leverage, as we discussed previously, while replacing some with machines, not just in manufacturing, but the service industries.
Kanell writes that wage disparities between upper- and lower-echelon employees are still wide, with many lower-echelon workers still unable to afford the median rent in Atlanta of $1,488 per month.
But with all the talk of raising the minimum wage, it’s being done in the marketplace rather than in government.
Big companies like Target, Walgreens Walmart at CVS, as well as smaller employers like the Frazer Center in Atlanta, have declared $15 per hour as their base, or minimum, wage, Kanell writes.
Why? The pandemic is making people hesitant to go back to work, unless they have higher wages, more flexibility and more protection from getting sick.
TheHub recently opened a distribution center outside of Atlanta, with 22 employees. It starts workers at $16.65 an hour, plus a $1,000 sign-on bonus for new employees. It also includes medical benefits and matching contributions to workers’ 401(k) accounts, Kanell writes.
Meanwhile, other employers, per the Associated Press article, are figuring out ways to handle lower-wage tasks without people. A machine doesn’t take sick time, vacations or other interruptions humans require, the article says.
It boils down to this: the changing workplace the pandemic has induced is resulting in higher pay, more benefits, more flexibility and, often, better jobs for many workers.
These changes could last forever, since diseases have no time limits or expiration dates. When one disease is mitigated, another could follow. The overall economy could see a huge benefit as people get paid more.
If you are not seeing the kind of progress in your job (career) that you want to see, there are programs out there that can allow you to earn an income, even from home, without requiring any specific education, experience or background. Potentially, these programs can eventually allow you to say goodbye to your awful job, if that’s what you have. Or, if you’ve been out of work for a time, they could robustly get you back on your feet – even, perhaps, make you dance for joy.
To learn about one of the best such programs, message me.
Meanwhile, we will keep reading (and writing) about workplace changes caused by the pandemic.
These changes could revamp lives in ways never imagined even two years ago. Many lives will change for the better. Some may not, so those folks will need alternatives.
Here’s a big chance for you to initiate the change(s) in your life that you want. You’ve always had the power to do it, but it may be more urgent, and obvious, now.
Take advantage of it. Use your new leverage to your advantage.
Peter