Microsoft President Sees 'New Era' of Stagnating Labor Pool (reuters.com) 95
U.S. companies are facing a "new era" in which fewer people are entering the workforce and pressure to pay higher salaries may become permanent, Microsoft's President Brad Smith told Reuters in an interview. From a report: At the software maker's Redmond, Washington, headquarters, Smith highlighted one source of what he called today's "greater economic turbulence." In his office, he walked over to a wall-sized touchscreen device and pulled up a series of charts, showing how population growth has tumbled in the United States, Europe, China and Japan. The trend of around 5 million people expanding the U.S. working age population every five years since 1950 has shifted, starting in the period between 2016 and 2020 when growth slowed to 2 million, and is now slowing further, said Smith late last week, citing United Nations data. Major markets overseas have seen outright labor force declines. "That helps explain part of why you can have low growth and a labor shortage at the height at the same time. There just aren't as many people entering the workforce," said Smith, who oversees the nearly $2 trillion company selling cloud-computing services to major businesses.
This should be interesting to watch... (Score:5, Interesting)
For the first time in generations, people who've been shown and told that they're worthless cogs in a machine will suddenly be in a dominant position. They won't know what hit 'em though, because nobody's bothered to tell them that this is the opportunity of a generation to push for more equitable treatment.
Stay tuned for the psy-op that will be the media as they let us know that we should be nice to the very same people who have opposed unionizing, health care benefits, minimum wages, workplace safety, and so many other things for decades now....because Big Corp would never hurt you, Big Corp loves you. You know, right up until you hand that proverbial gun back to them and they laugh like a movie villain and point it where it's been for the last damn near century: At the workers' heads.
Get back to work, cog. This ain't no union shop.
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This is definitely going to happen. For sure.
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That's what killing one out of every six children conceived for 50 years will get you.
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This is true for all -isms
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Re: This should be interesting to watch... (Score:2)
Or you as a consumer vote with your wallet and support businesses that treat workers well rather than chasing the cheapest price. Canâ(TM)t find a business that treats workers well? Then do without. How do you treat workers in stores anyway? How do you feel about the way certain massive e-commerce firms treat their workers? Has it changed your shopping habits?
Re: This should be interesting to watch... (Score:3)
For huge swaths of the economy the consumers can't afford to pay the extra small amount well treated workers cost.
It's similar to the prisoners dilemma, you need everyone acting in unison to get the best outcome.
Unions are one way to get people to act in unison, a very well organized boycott is another, much much harder, option.
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All unions aren't the same, and the middle class generally has not had them anyways because they have more mobility and choices.
"you get the same raise as everyone else", the union could push for an hourly pay minimum. Adequate bennies, no firings without cause, a decent morning and afternoon break and a lunch. No working without being paid.
Yes it can go too far and you get a dual hierarchy, but those days are mostly over.
Re:This should be interesting to watch... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Haven't been a in store lately have you. Because there's a HUGE lack of stuff but no lack in Profits.
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I've seen some empty shelves at the local grocery store, but it's not completely empty. Some items won't be there, but others will. Especially on the cereal aisle. It's like they're only stocking what they know they can sell.
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Re: This should be interesting to watch... (Score:2)
Except the kiosk only reduces the labor required for a fast food place by 10-20%.
There are still other jobs of similar skill at the place. They are of course working to reduce/remove those jobs too, but it'll take time. I first saw a store go to touch screen ordering 20 some years ago, that same change went to all touch screen 15 years ago. They also happened to be a place that (at least historically) paid their employees well, so had extra motivation (Wawa is the place, fwiw).
It's only in the last 5 or so
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That's what we're living through this summer, and what's driving inflation: everyone's back to shopping or traveling and thinks we can go back to business as usual, but the reality is that we won't be able to have quite as much stuff.
Fuck stuff. People want food and shelter. You are next in line to see what everyone else is seeing. The "safe line" is moving up in economic status and you will soon be below it and you will see that it is not about "stuff". It is about food and shelter. There are millions of individuals in America who really aren't holding on. This is going to get REALLY bad very soon.
No One Saw This Coming! (Score:3)
It's a good thing no one could possibly have seen this coming. This just happened in like, really, only the last year. Right?
It's why companies have been ringing the "We want more immigration" bell for the last 20 years.. But of course, that's a taboo subject in the US for whatever reason.
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I don't think immigration is a taboo subject. What motivates you to day that?
There are issues with illegal immigration causing economic, social, and political problems. But even then, talking about it is exactly what we must do.
The world's population is continuing to rise despite gross overcrowding in some countries. The decline in the wealthiest of nations is being more than compensated-for by the continued runaway population growth in other nations. This sure seems like an easy problem to solve!
If we
Re: No One Saw This Coming! (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is the people already living in your country don't like hordes of immigrants competing for housing slots and lowering wages. They are all newcomers, their ancestors didn't build that particular first world country. There is another issue that immigrants from failed countries obviously bring cultural elements that didn't work or the country wouldn't have failed.
You could in theory have social policies that let your own citizens breed.
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You could in theory have social policies that let your own citizens breed.
This has been tried many times and it doesn't seem to have worked yet. [wikipedia.org]
The issue is the people already living in your country don't like hordes of immigrants competing for housing slots and lowering wages.
So far the actual economic data has not borne these outcomes out. Even Borjas, one of the most immigration-skeptical researchers found wages only decreased for non-HS graduates, and even that was less than 5%, everyone else saw a wage increase.
Not to say that group of people don't exist, who just don't like immigration but it's usually for the cultural aspects, even if there isn't much solid data of bad outcomes.
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"There is another issue that immigrants from failed countries obviously bring cultural elements that didn't work or the country wouldn't have failed."
Ya, the U.S 's drug problem has nothing to do with criminal gangs in Central America. And that fine collection of guns the U.S. has always stays right in the U.S. and they are never exported to those nice criminal gangs.
Re: No One Saw This Coming! (Score:2, Interesting)
Arguably red state rural areas are a failed 3rd world country being kept afloat through subsidies from the feds. Who get the money from more successful big cities and blue states.
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There is another issue that immigrants from failed countries obviously bring cultural elements that didn't work or the country wouldn't have failed.
Not necessarily. Until recently, most first generation Asian Americans were from failed countries, e.g. China before Deng's [wikipedia.org] market reforms.
Those countries didn't fail on their own (Score:2)
One of the funny things is we pretty obviously tried to overthrow Venezuela's gov't recently and got our rears handed to us. They've figured out our tricks (they weren't really that sophisticated). That means those countries are gradually modernizing and stabilizing. That in turn means their birth rates are going down too. And that means we're not gonna have all that cheap labor for much lon
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All you really have is a shortage of CHEAP skilled labor.
Re:No One Saw This Coming! (Score:4, Insightful)
The US treats many legal immigrants like shit.
There are Indians on H1B visas who will never get a green card in time for their foreign-born children to stay in the USA -- they will age-out of their H4 visas and, unless they can qualify based on their own status, will have to return to a country they never knew.
People on a fiance visa are effectively unable to leave the country while their green card is being processed. This process should take a month or two at the most, but many are finding that it is taking a year or more.
USCIS routinely loses documents and leaves the petitioner having to pay for new documents and wait longer.
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Try minimum 2 years if you're extremely lucky, up to 5 years. And god forbid the US gets involved in a war or a terrorism attack in that time, since then you can just add another 3 years on top of that.
"Legal Immigration" even for married people is an absolute nightmare.
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The US has always treated every newcomer like shit. It's the way this country works and always has. You show up and get taken advantage of for a generation or two. Then you wise up and some other group starts getting off the boats or crossing the borders and you join in. When you're new you have to outperform the people already here to just stay even with them and it does in fact pay off... Eventually.
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I don't think immigration is a taboo subject. What motivates you to day that? There are issues with illegal immigration causing economic, social, and political problems. But even then, talking about it is exactly what we must do.
It is a taboo subject because of how strongly people feel about it in very polarized directions. Like religion and politics. I agree we should be talking about these topics in order to solve them, but the fact that talking about them in mixed company caused problems is also real.
As for legal / illegal immigration, they aren't that much different of a conversation. We need all of them, but our immigration policies don't let in enough people for our economic needs so we force people to live outside the law. I
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The world's population is continuing to rise despite gross overcrowding in some countries.
Yes but that is because of the over hang large families in the prior generation and increase life spans. Even places like India will probably see deaths outpace births as early as the 2050s.
if we need more people, we should import them, train them, and employ them. This is better for them, better for their overcrowded countries, and better for us.
Highly debatable. We have to invest about 4 years of secondary level education into someone to prepare them to work most of the jobs we have open in our economy. Sure there are toilets to scrub, floors to sweep, berries to pick, and burgers to flip but that isn't really THAT many people, not so many we need to import
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But thank you for treating people like commodities. Moron.
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Importing people will simply mean those people we import will start consuming 50 times more, the poor countries will continue producing more people and the planet will continue its spiral into destruction.
We need less people not more, the entire world needs to produce less people and we need to consume less stuff. But the current economic system will not allow that its motto is grow, grow, grow.
So yes the short term solution that will keep our ponsi scheme of an economy going for a little while longer is im
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> better for their overcrowded countries, and better for us. Everybody wins!
Back in 2013, when Obama was President, the tech industry was pushing for increases in H1B quotas. Why? Because H1B holders had "specialized skills"! No training needed! I specifically remember Obama saying "If you're an engineer and want a job, you should be able to get one". At that time I was an active member of a netw
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It's why companies have been ringing the "We want more immigration" bell for the last 20 years.. But of course, that's a taboo subject in the US for whatever reason.
While this is just a call for more H1B's, the general push for open borders is to import a dependent class who will vote for democrats.
How about importing doctors and lawyers?
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> the general push for open borders is to import a dependent class who will vote for democrats.
Biden's border policy is not really different than either of Bush's 1 & 2 or Reagan's. Don was "more tougher", but by mistreating children*. We are obligated by treaty to give hearings to asylum seekers.
Sounds like you've been nipping at Fox's "great replacement" propaganda. Stop.
* "Caged children" did happen at times under Obama's watch, but it was generally for unusual occurrences and not part of routine
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* "Caged children" did happen at times under Obama's watch, but it was generally for unusual occurrences and not part of routine policy.
At least you acknowledge your hypocrisy.
It made me lol when somebody figured out the caged children photo was taken during the Obama administration. Then they're like, "Well, he only did it a little bit".
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At least you acknowledge your hypocrisy.
The hypocrisy is all on the Republican side here; both by defending making child separation the default policy, and also not keeping track of whose children are whose, which the Obama administration was never even accused of. Republicans willfully, intentionally, and as an act of terrorism meant to deter asylum seekers separated children from their parents with no intention of reuniting them.
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The 9th circuit court of appeals (under Obama) decided children couldn't stay with their parents in detention. It didn't matter under Obama because they were all turned loose in the U.S. with a pinky promise to show up at their hearing.
So Trump had only two choices:
1. Put them all on a bus to Toledo.
2. Keep children somewhere else until the hearings.
So it was the liberal courts that made the choice to separate families. Which was a horrible thing to do.
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He had the option to not detain the parents, either, for lawfully seeking asylum in accordance with international law, and by treaty, the laws of the United States. He chose not to employ it.
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As far as skills-based visa workers and green cards, after the dot-com crash there was a glut of developers in CA such that visa workers made the problem worse. I had young children such that moving afar was really tricky. If there were a reliable way to shut off the spigot during tech slumps then I'd be more open to the idea. But I personally lived the hell of it being done wrong.
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Well it is complex.
During the .COM boom of the late 1990's the Clinton Administration opened up a lot of labor laws, to try to cover especially tech staff shortages.
During the early 2000's the Bush Administration pushed a more business friendly agenda, where outsourcing and hiring immigrant labor. This allowed businesses to layoff many American IT workers in favor to cheaper outsource firms and immigrant labor.
During the 2010's the Obama administration actually tighten immigration down, as the economy was t
Re: No One Saw This Coming! (Score:2)
The only reason companies want immigration is to have workers that are more exploitable and willing to work for much less.
Self created problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It's technically a self created problem. Companies squeeze all the labor they can out of employees and pay them as little as possible. So they don't reproduce as much as they don't have the spare time and resources for more than maybe 1 child per mother. Since she has to work just to afford housing.
To be fair to companies they don't have any choice - they have to do this or they go under in favor of companies that get more productivity per worker.
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Yep capitalism's natural tendencies have finally had some time to run their course unfettered, and this is what it leads to, positive feedback loops of destruction acting on families, markets, and ecosystems. Don't like it? Take back control and make the system work for people instead of the other way around.
Re: Self created problem (Score:3)
Arguably it's self correcting over a timespan of generations. With worker shortages workers can get better conditions and unionize. Better treated workers have more kids. This increases the labor pool and companies are able to treat them like shit again.
A sine wave, probably an underdamped control system.
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It's worse than that (Score:2)
Birth Rates explode briefly when second world nations (counting the US in the 40s, 50s and 60s here, btw) get basic hygiene and medicine bu
They're also unwilling to do any job training (Score:2)
whatsoever, while complaining about a shortage.
If you want talented, experienced people.. (Score:3)
Low-balling people isn't going to fly anymore.
This is the other side of the late-stage capitalism coin: people realizing what they're worth and demanding it.
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This is the other side of the late-stage capitalism coin: people realizing what they're worth and demanding it.
And right past that is demand destruction. At some point companies will just say, "You know what? Nah, I take my ball and go home. Company is closed, you want this service back? Have fun figuring out how to build a new one." A couple of the hospitals in the Nashville area have been getting requests for more pay from their workers and the hospital just tells them, "Nah, you can turn in your two/one/zero week notice. If health goes to shit in the area, not our problem as we live somewhere else." The nu
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At some point companies will just say, "You know what? Nah, I take my ball and go home. Company is closed, you want this service back? Have fun figuring out how to build a new one."
One of two things will happen to correct that.
First, and most likely, is a smarter competitor moves in and takes that territory. They use a mix of automation and other operational efficiencies to create an environment where they can pay a professional wage and still run a business. That process won't be instant, but it's likely to happen. Frankly in this day and age a good purging corporate brushfire might do some good, "build a new one" is something that probably should happen in industries like healthc
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"Stagnating" labor (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me translate what "stagnating" labor pool actually means: a larger proportion of older, more experienced workers who know what their labor is worth and can no longer be pushed aside in favor of new recruits who will take whatever you pay them and do as they're told.
Re: "Stagnating" labor (Score:3)
It also hopefully means less age discrimination in software. When you are in your 50s, these days there isn't a pile of younger workers to hire after they lay you off. The younger workers are very expensive as well - Amazon is starting people in the 200-300k a year range now.
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Re: "Stagnating" labor (Score:2)
I have heard PIP is purely arbitrary at Amazon. You can get away with working a few hours a week with some bosses and teams and others you can put on 60 but the boss doesn't like you so boom, PIPed.
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After the stories I've heard about Amazon, I'm glad they didn't want me.
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It also hopefully means less age discrimination in software. When you are in your 50s, these days there isn't a pile of younger workers to hire after they lay you off. The younger workers are very expensive as well - Amazon is starting people in the 200-300k a year range now.
I hope you are correct, as I am turning 54 this year.
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It's not quite that.
But, yes ... it's a demographic flip. The next generations are smaller. This means that the "replacement workforce" isn't as large as the workforce it's replacing.
There's a lot of demonizing the "infinite growth" model. But we do NOT know how to handle a shrinking population.
We're used to jobs always becoming more and more specialized, with people who become more and more focused on being very good a few things. What do we do when we just don't have the people to allow for the
Re: "Stagnating" labor (Score:1)
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Start with anything connected to a legacy industry (film processing, printing, etc). Then move on to anything that can be automated. This process has been going on for a while, though the goal was cost reduction rather than d
Better late to the party than never showing up... (Score:3)
Perhaps huge news to him, but it's been a trend economists and others have noted for decades. He seems to only be noticing because the mid-20's curve is finally hitting him.
Here's a pretty chart, current through 2020. He's noticing the drop that happened in the early 1990s. It's about 25-30 years for them to grow up, go to college, get a bit of work experience, then move in to the bigger companies.
A writeup from a few years ago [bbc.com], this shift is only going to get bigger. There's a little spike that should be in the market in about 2030-2035, but it's only going downhill from there. The 2017 rate of 2.4 was half the 1950 rate of 4.7 during a baby boom. So what Microsoft saw during their first round of huge growth in the 1980s, the 20-somethings and 30-somethings joining in their early revolution, they'll have half that size going in if everything else were equal, which it isn't.
This is usually under the news headlines about why social security is going to collapse, but yeah, it includes corporate hiring and pressure to pay more as well.
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Looks like the link to the chart didn't take. Trying again. [econofact.org]
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It probably is newish for Microsoft. The supply of people who want to be programmers has increased massively since the company was founded. I doubt what they're noticing has much to do with general demographics either. They're just hitting the limits of the pool of people who think big corp code monkey is something they'd like to do with their lives.
A natural part of business (Score:5, Insightful)
Landlord: the cost of rent has gone up.
Businesses: that's a natural part of doing business.
Suppliers: the cost of materials has gone up.
Businesses: that's a natural part of doing business.
Worker: the cost of my labor has gone up.
Businesses: listen here you little shit.
thatsameme.jpg
Re: A natural part of business (Score:2)
Such a cutting reply! Are you sure it is not just projection? Or is that too big a word for you?
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Then, there is the fact that if you want to do CS, you have to compete against cheap foreign labor. That guy from India is working for a fraction of your pay, and he either does what he is told, or he is fired and deported. Of course, the company secrets go offshore, but who cares... those dudes are cheap, and they make deliverables.
Agree with you. I can't, in good conscience, ever advise anyone to go into IT or programming. I've been writing code using copilot and it is clear to me that AI coding is the clear threat to jobs. It's pretty good now and only gonna get better. If I had to choose between today's AI and an Indian developer, I would choose today's AI. The code is that much better, it understands English, and does what you tell it to do.
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As I mention in another message, another problem with visa workers is that the supply is not trimmed during tech slumps. [slashdot.org]
DINK (Score:1)
Never thought about this, but it makes sense. I know a lot of people that are leading the DINK life, either through seeing their parents struggle, or struggling themselves.
Pressure to pay higher salaries (Score:2)
Supreme Court will fix it (Score:1)
nice way of saying offshoring (Score:2)
Surprised? (Score:2)
Go to school forever, get married later maybe never, get divorced at a 60% rate, maybe don't have kids, all so you can work for glorious 60 hour a week software companies! Come one, come all! Get your material items now so you can work till you are 70, even though after 45 nobody in tech will hire you!
I've got 1 kid (Score:2)
The idea employee is either old enough to pay like crap (because they have Social Security or a similar gov't pension or at least family to mooch off of) or young enough to pay like crap (because they're young enough to mooch off parents a little). W
There is no labor shortage (Score:1)
Why don't you sell all your empty offices... (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with Americans. (Score:2)
This has to do with Microsoft being one of the largest employers of H1B Visa holders. Of course the President of Microsoft is going to say that the US domestic labor force is not sufficient. It is in his interest so he can keep lobbying for more H1B labor.
Therefore, this article has nothing to do with Americans. This article has everything to do with hiring non Americans.
Not that I have a problem with that per se, but I am seeing a lot of responses to this article where slashdotters are taking this guy at f
Plutocracy (Score:2)
The 1% is not going to take this lying down and just start paying more and giving up power. I'm not sure how this is going to go down, but it is likely to be messy.
Fuck these fucking fucks (Score:2)
Labor shortage? Stagnation? No. Fuck you you fucking fucks.
You fucking took EVERYTHING and then did a few more passes to suck up any last drops of blood. There is none left and we will be taking yours you mother fuckers.
FUCK YOU