Steve Rattner: Labor Force Depressed As Job Openings Soar

The May jobs report is highlighting the conundrum of a need for workers and the seeming reluctance of Americans to re-enter the work force, according to Steve Rattner. Rattner along with tax professor Dorothy Brown discuss.

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50 comments

  1. Yay let’s all get back to the rat race and living pay check to pay check for a thankless job that treats us as disposable.

    1. @Heritage Karma You are right people should be paid what they are worth, and everyone should be worth at least 15 bucks an hour. Everyone. I cannot imagine how anyone could live on so little money. Companies do not thrive if they do not take care of their employees.

    2. @Heritage Karma oh, you were talking about how just I alone can succeed while my countrymen fail and suffer. I already know that. I thought you were talking about a solution so everyone can succeed and my fellow citizens don’t have to suffer needlessly. I guess I just have more ambitions, and you’re hopeless/ giving up.. that’s sad tbh, I genuinely hope things improve for you.

    3. @whyso curious I’m on my yacht living the dream baby. ALL people can succeed to THEIR fullest potential with effort. NOT EVERYONE is equal in the adult world and forcing it on society always diminishes the whole. You wanna watch Lebron James or PeeWee Herman play basketball? Nobody would pay PEEWEE to play professional ball

  2. Workers are starting to wake up and understand that they are just as vital a part of making these businesses/economy successful as the owners and customers, and should be treated/paid as such.

    1. Go start your own business then. Or when you start giving me what I order like a HAMBURGER instead of a cheeseburger or sweet and sour sauce – you’ll get more money. Until then go screw!

      The correct thing to do is do the best job you can REGARDLESS of pay!!!

    2. @Donald Ducko Enjoy paying taxes to subsidize these companies because the government has to give these employees food stamps while the company makes billions and pays no taxes. Why don’t these CEOs ever take a pay cut? Most of them are just playing golf while the money rolls in. Service jobs are incredibly difficult because of customers that do things like ordering a hamburger at the register and then screaming at these employees when they didn’t get a cheese burger. Um sir the number 1 is a hamburger, if you wanted a number 2 you should’ve ordered a number 2. Believe me this happens more than the underpaid overworked employee making the mistake.

  3. I wouldnt work for slave/starvation wages either. Pay good money for good work and you get your workforce.
    And yes, dont kid yourself: 15 or 16 bucks an hours isnt great. Its what the effing minimum wage by law should be!

    1. Canada has had a $15 minimum wage country wide fir years and it hasn’t hurt their economy! So stop telling lies!

    2. @Locust John, Please answer my question how do you know that $31,200 isn’t slave wages. I can tell you it is for an adult, maybe not for a teenager. In your lowest housing/ middle class or poor communities the rent starts at $1000- $1800 per month. What does that leave someone with after taxes, medical, approximately $900-$1000 or less depending on taxes. Personally I make $69000 per year and I am struggling to keep up and trying to keep my family out of trailer parks and the hood.

    3. @kenny Tee Those figures aren’t valid outside of major cities. Average rent for a one bedroom in Peoria, Illinois is $622. Great Falls, Montana is $660. Fort Wayne, Indiana is $852 and Augusta, GA is $952 for all apartments (one bedroom and bigger). Do you need me to list more?

      Again, $31,200 is not slave/starvation wages OUTSIDE OF MAJOR CITIES. There are plenty of places in the US where $31 K a year is a very livable wage.

      Maybe it’s time to start looking at your expenses and trim the fat.

  4. Ask not what I can do for your company, but what your company can do for me.

    Want the workers back? Stop paying them a realistic wage and not the bare minimum.

  5. Could it be that the job openings available don’t provide living wages that will pay the expenses of home, food, childcare, insurance, ect?

    1. Don’t tell Joe and his crew, they have no idea what the average American is going through in this pandemic.

  6. Here in Korea servers are paid a decent wage, so they don’t have to live on tips. In fact, nobody in Korea tips because its considers an insult to the server; that they had to be bribed to do their job properly.

    1. Tipping in the US is a hold over from slavery. After slavery ended white people didn’t want to pay former slaves. So they invited tipping so employers didn’t have to pay and servers had to get tips from patrons.

    2. I lived in Japan and tipping there is also considered an insult. If you leave a tip, the server will actually follow you out to give you your money back.

    3. Tipping should be considered an insult to the owner too, they aren’t paying their employee well enough 😛

    1. Why. Joe’s using our children and grandchildren to pay folks more to just stay home and complain about Republicans.

  7. I am chef and I used to make 22$ an hour. NOW, the restaurant owners want us to come back at MINIMUM WAGE!!! NO WAY! I’m going back to school and going the I.T. route. If the service sector wants staff, they have to give them LIVING WAGES.. I will NOT slave at work so my boss can buy a Porsche and a summer home while I starve.

    1. I hope it goes well for you. Be careful don’t over borrow on student loans.
      I have several chefs in my family, & $22 hourly wage on West Coast is barely living wage.

  8. If only wages had kept up with the cost of living. Engineers and doctors aren’t the ones unwilling to go back to work, it’s the lower class workers who ironically make more staying home than their underpaid job.

  9. Maybe offer a living wage? Hmm?? I discovered I can make quite a bit of money working from home during this pandemic, I won’t be returning to the labor force for any less than $15/hr.

    1. Right! Cracks me up when I see stories about some employer who was struggling to find workers raised their entry level wage and it led to a huge upsurge of quality applicants. Well, duh. And even before the pandemic we were seeing employers complaining that they had done ‘everything’ to attract new talent. In most cases they hadn’t raised the wages!

  10. Employers having to compete for employees is good for wages. With all the job openings, people have more options and they are weighing them accordingly.

  11. Oh you must be talking about my company who have trivialized our skills and desires, cut resources made us work weekends, scheduled Sunday night meeting with off shore teams and alienate us when we object.

    Record breaking profits but not record breaking bonus

  12. People have had time to take a breath and realize living from paycheck to paycheck on near starvation wages isn’t really living, combined with the lack of support our society provides to workers this makes it very difficult to go back to that way of life.

  13. This expectation that everyone is emotionally and personally ready to get back to normal as if the last year was not super traumatic. Also, pay this pandemic made it clear that companies are more than able to pay employees a living wage without a problem

  14. Republicans stopped the extra $300 because Biden authorized it. Last year when Trump approved $600 a week, you didn’t hear a peep from the GOP.

  15. This wretched meatgrinder of trying to force people into grotesquely low-paying jobs is hardly difficult to explain. Nor is it hard to explain why people don’t want to be forced into the hopeless despair of subsistence enslavement (and that is what it is). This is why minimum wage, or something akin to it, must be imposed on business interests. Does anyone honestly imagine that the “American Dream” belongs only to, or should only belong to, the business interests?

  16. Anyone shocked that “essential workers” are now going back to being called “entry level” again?

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