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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.
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Microsoft President Sees 'New Era' of Stagnating Labor Pool

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  • by Archangel_Azazel ( 707030 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @11:51AM (#62712752) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • This is definitely going to happen. For sure.

    • by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @12:50PM (#62712982) Homepage
      It'll take a while for the reality of the labour market to sink in, but there'll definitely be a realization. However, this isn't all roses. The labour shortage is still a shortage, so while employees will generally get much more choice in their career and working conditions, the total economic output will be constrained (that's what a shortage does) so you won't have as much "stuff". 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. Everyone's going to have to cut back a bit. You're already seeing people being a lot more cost conscious at the grocery store. Second vehicles might not be a thing for as many families. Fewer home renovations. A road trip this summer instead of flying somewhere. Maybe your new baby doesn't really need the wet wipe warming pad, etc. Overall I think it'll be good for individual quality of life - businesses will be forced to show a little appreciation for their employees, but life will also be less materialistic. I'm optimistic.
      • What I expect to happen is that jobs that *can* be automated *will* be automated. This will mean we don't have a lack of stuff. But it also means that there will be a segment of the workforce that is unemployed/underemployed even as there is a labor shortage. The kiosk for ordering works better than a cashier. Less communication errors. But the cashier might not be qualified to take a job as a medical assistant (otherwise they would probably already be in that line of work). I believe the fancy word f
        • "This will mean we don't have a lack of stuff. "

          Haven't been a in store lately have you. Because there's a HUGE lack of stuff but no lack in Profits.
          • The entire post was written in the future tense. Right now the lack of stuff (where there is such a lack) is related to not being able to unload containers from China as fast as people can buy the stuff, because the amount of stuff is at an all time record high. But if there aren't enough people to make certain stuff, those jobs will be automated.
        • 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

        • by RobinH ( 124750 )
          Yes, but there's a limit on automation, which is that it's capital intensive and we're moving into a period of time when capital and borrowing is going to be more expensive.
          • Capital and borrowing are going to be expensive but available. Labor is a finite pool. Expensive is cheaper than unavailable. However, part of this depends on whether industry decision-makers are proactive or reactive. The labor pool isn't going to disappear overnight and there are things that can be done to increase it such as convincing retirees to work longer, training workers to some extent, paying more, et cetera. The labor force isn't disappearing all-of-a-sudden. It's in a slow downward trend.
            • by RobinH ( 124750 )
              For labour you can also do a lot to increase the participation rate by subsidizing daycare, offering flexible work options, allowing more immigration, etc. Basically the left is going to get most of the things they wanted for labour conditions simply due to supply and demand. This isn't going to be a recession with a lot of people out of work. This is going to be a business recession where companies just scrape by. I also think there'll be less innovation than we're used to because there won't be as muc
              • I think your predictions are pretty good and any company that listens to your predictions will do better than those who try to stay the course!
      • 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.

  • by splutty ( 43475 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @11:52AM (#62712758)

    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.

    • 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

      • by ShooterNeo ( 555040 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @12:28PM (#62712892)

        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.

        • 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.

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          "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.

        • I don't think the types of people who risk their lives crossing a desert to come to the US are in the ruling classes. If you truly ruined a country as a shah, baby doc, general or whatever we send a plane for you, and your wife's shoe collection.
        • 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.

        • most of them had "help" from my countries CIA. Go look up pictures of Iran before we intervened. Women in skirts.

          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
      • So end the "R" party and have plenty of cheap labor.,
        All you really have is a shortage of CHEAP skilled labor.
      • by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:15PM (#62713102) Journal

        If we need more people, we should import them, train them, and employ them.

        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.

        • by splutty ( 43475 )

          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.

          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.

        •   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.

      • by ranton ( 36917 )

        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

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        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

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        There is no labor shortage. There is a shortage at the wages business want to pay. When you increase wages, no end of applications.

        But thank you for treating people like commodities. Moron.
      • 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

      • > 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. 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
    • 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?

      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        > 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

        • * "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".

          • 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.

            • 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.

              • 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.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      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.

    • 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

    • The only reason companies want immigration is to have workers that are more exploitable and willing to work for much less.

  • by ShooterNeo ( 555040 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @11:59AM (#62712778)

    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.

    • 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.

      • 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.

    • This comment is so dumb, it has to be a bot. That it was modded "insight" indicates there are bots modded up other bots. Crazy
    • even countries that treat their people well (there's a few in Europe) have plummeting birth rates. Turns out human beings don't all just wanna screw and spew kids. Most have 1, sometimes 2 and many have zero. Attempts to criminalize abortion & birth control don't work. We can debate why but the fact is they don't. Countries that do it don't see birth rates go up.

      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
    • whatsoever, while complaining about a shortage.

  • ..then you have to pay for that.
    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.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      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

      • 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

      • The US doctor shortage, and the medical system in general, is nothing if it isn't a smoking dung heap of government corruption+mismanagement. Capitalism isn't to blame here, because a free market can't exist where the pay-to-play FDA regulates
  • "Stagnating" labor (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @12:02PM (#62712792)

    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.

    • 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.

      • Amazon also has very high expectations. Every minute of work time is monitored and if you are perceived to write one line of code less than you should do in that time you are put on a disciplinary program. I would never want to deal with that.
        • 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.

      • 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.

    • 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

      • We do know how to handle a shrinking population. Europe has been dealing with it for decades more than the US.
      • 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 luxury of becoming that specialized? What specialties can we drop as a society?

        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

  • 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.

    • Looks like the link to the chart didn't take. Trying again. [econofact.org]

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      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.

  • by transporter_ii ( 986545 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @12:16PM (#62712842) Homepage

    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

  • 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.

  • I, for one, would like to be the first to welcome our MS overlords back into the market economy.
  • Just remove the right to contraceptives, and make same-sex marriage illegal again.
  • This is a nice way of saying "we're moving everyones jobs overseas". Microsoft has been very aggressive moving American jobs overseas.
  • 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!

  • and that's it. And I couldn't afford that one. Cat's out of the bag on abortion and birth control. Studies show countries that criminalize them don't see their birth rates go back up. Meanwhile we're treating people so badly that life expectancy is dropping.

    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
  • The is no labor shortage in general. But there is at the price they want to pay.
  • and use the proceeds to give people big raises?
  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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

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