So the jobs being “stolen” were only here because immigrants were willing to work them. Without the cheap labor in social services, healthcare and elder care, people have to leave the workforce to care for their parents and grandparents. Cue lowering jobs and unemployment figures.
400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers are losing their temporary status in October so buckle up.
Employers are going to have to start paying more to get these jobs filled. Two or 3 times the minimum wage. There is no option. The days is going to come where cheap labor is unsustainable.
I work in a cross section of the social services/healthcare industry and I'm going mention that while pay is an issue that isn't the biggest issue prohibiting hiring US citizens. A lot of these positions pay better than other jobs that just require a high school diploma.
A large part is that working in healthcare/eldercare/childcare/mental healthcare is a lot of work and it's working with difficult populations. A lot of Americans don't want to deal with someone's crotchety grandpa or change diapers.
But the other issue we keep having in our industry is that US citizens, when we go to hire them they can't pass background checks or drug tests. And these industries legally or financially require employees to be drug free and without a criminal history.
Signed someone who had to deny 3 new hires in a month and a half because they all failed drug tests. Position came with great healthcare, PTO, and first year raise for job certification.
*Edit to clarify: wages are surprised all around and a lot of these jobs pay above or well above the median. A lot of these require specific certifications or degrees, like nursing.
As for the weed thing, I personally don't care if someone smokes weed. As I noted the prohibition stems from a lot of legal and insurance rules. You are considered a liability. It doesn't matter if it is prescription a lot of the time you can be considered a liability. One of the first things lawyers and the state ask for when there is an incident is drug testing records. Distraught family members will look for any target to sue when their loved one dies in the care of a nursing home, detox center, hospital, assisted facilities, and on. We have to submit annual drug testing for licensing every year. Thems the breaks.
And we did we did have great candidates. They were here on TPS who are being removed because of racism. Stop covering for the racism with the facetious idea that the people doing this care about workers, their wages when they are the same folks working to lower wages. There are plenty of doctors, nurses, nursing assistants who are being removed solely because Stephen Miller can't get it up unless he is hurting POC.
The healthcare industry survives solely in exploitation of nurses. As a former healthcare worker, countless numbers of us have looked at the shitty deal the career offers and have said no thanks.
When I tell people I'm never working for a hospital, I'm not kidding. I am absolutely not going to spend the next two decades trying to save boomers who put themselves and us in this shitty situation.
Every industry survives on the exploitation of workers because we have eroded worker protections over the years in pursuit of profit and the system is designed around extracting as much value from the workers while compensating them the least to hand out that extracted value to the capitalist class.
The social contract has been broken and this will only lead to further exploitation until the populace can no longer bear it.
She said the wages are not a big problem because there are other jobs that pay less. She said instead the problem is the work is harder. So I'm pointing out the wages are a problem because the work is hard, so the salaries should be even higher.
The patriarchy told social reproductive labor like childcare, elder care, incontinence care to go to hell and the value they create is turned into heat to cook the planet or yachts, golf courses, designer drugs and plastic surgery for the elites instead of pay for those occupations.
Sounds like the pay is too low for the work if you can’t attract Americans eh. If the pay is so hard and nasty it should be paid way way more . In the Bay Area nurses get paid $100 an hour. I bet you’d have zero problems finding Americans who pass all the checks for $100 an hour.
If we didn’t have an endless supply of cheap migrant labor your employer would be forced to raise wages multiple times over or close shop.
I mean, there is another option - we provide terrible care because they're badly short-staffed, and management refuses to hire anything beyond a skeleton crew of the most dedicated people while paying them shit
I think one issue is that a lot of places receive Federal funding. Because it's still illegal at a Federal level places are afraid of risking that funding by not totally banning THC.
this. even in lower-stakes industries, the only big companies that don't do UAs for entry-level positions are doing it bc turnover is high enough that eating the insurance cost makes more sense than paying for (a ton of failed) UAs
Right. All the drugs that are usually issues leave your system pretty quick. My workplace quit testing for THC when we were short employees. We now have plenty of new hires and current employees aren’t losing jobs over something trivial.
Stop pretending that cannabis prohibition is a serious stance and see how many qualified workers were already there. It might be the law, but it is stupid.
Well yeah, if they are American atleast you can check their background. For foreigners, won't have a background to check because they came from another country. And could of been a wanted criminal which you would pick over an American with a DUI charge.
You can’t call having immigration laws being enforced racism. It simply doesn’t work anymore. On one hand the U.S. has a looming debt crisis along with big government spending. If Americans don’t want to do the work for the pay being offered then it is the pay that needs to go up. Bringing in people from other countries because of cheap labor costs doesn’t help anyone, including the immigrants.
There is an option and you can see it right now. They keep listing wages at rates no one will take and the job stays empty. I know of a hospital system that is doing this, even for salaried positions, they currently have no speech therapists, no occupational therapists, a shortage of many Doctors and support staff, and it turns out, they had to put themselves up for sale because of a shortfall in revenue. Middle managers are willing to let the business fail before paying more.
Not all cost increases are due to inflation. Inflation implies the value of the dollar going down. Paying a fair wage would not decrease the value of the dollar.
Nah. These companies are built on cheap labor, it's a part of their business model. Some of them can survive raising it but a lot will fail and get bailed one way or another.
They will just raises prices and everything will become even more unaffordable for low income people. Elder care will just cost even more, groceries and dining out will cost more, the companies arnt just going to accept lower profit margins
…and prices will go up for the services in line with the rising costs and that will lower the number of people who can afford the service and the companies will end up cutting jobs. So yes some people will get a higher salary and some will lose their jobs and not be able to find one unless they’re willing to take a lower salary. It’s a whole system that finds its own equilibrium. Money doesn’t just appear in the economy out of no where.
That makes sense. Let the prices raise for that reason If a job can be done with less labor so be it. It’s a better option that unfettered immigration and a resulting unfettered increases in government assistance
It’s not just cheap labor, sometimes it’s finding any labor at all. Need your roof fixed? The contractor can maybe schedule you in next year. Even higher wages won’t necessarily fix a lack of people to actually do the work.
The other option is just maintain a "shortage" of services as the marginal value of the labor has risen, so the lower value services just aren't produced
Inflation from companies forced to pay more to get these jobs filled? Or inflation from the money printer running forever via UBI to fund unemployed people unemployed thanks to the Gen AI boom?
Companies aren't and won't pay. Stuff will just break and suck instead. And they've monopolized the market, so there will be no alternative. System failure. /r/collapse
Child care is another example. Families will be forced to pay more for daycare or nannie’s given fewer options available. As a result, more parents will be forced to drop out of the workforce to be a stay at home wife/husband.
Of course they do, my republican senator told me so. He gave birth to a kid and within the next 24 hours that kid was worth 4 billion dollars and had a cover on Forbes. He didn’t even have shoe strings to pull himself from!
So am I supposed to listen to what YOUR show wearing champaign communist have to say? This is why we need to bomb the Middle East, honestly.
My conspiracy is theocracy is incoming. If not that, breaking down the walls of separation to begin getting their second best wet dream - Christian nation officially.
It's the Jevons Paradox but writ in salaries (instead of a complicated discussion about steam/coal economics)
The availability of cheap labor made certain business opportunities economical to pursue, creating jobs. It follows that destroying cheap labor would make business opportunities disappear, taking those jobs too.
I work in HR Operations for a healthcare company, and we just had to let close to 20 Haitian RNs go. They were all great employees and it killed us to have to do it.
Lmao pay better wages? What fantasy land are you living in? No they will hire even less staff now, they will drug your parents so when they aren’t getting care they need they won’t complain.
They will clean them up when you occasionally come for a visit and just basically rush them to an earlier grave than needed. All while charging us even more for the privilege of their services and funneling as much money as possible to one person to make another billionaire.
Just google it, here is a story from May this year but this has already been happening for years and as more people age this isn’t going to get any better especially when regulations aren’t even being enforced.
see the Ontario, Canada, COVID-19 fiasco where the military had to be called in to clean up the private old folks homes due to the atrocious conditions people were living/dying in.
As someone who used to do home healthcare and had to temp a few times in short staffed AL and nursing homes.... I've seen suites with shit caked on the wall, patients falling and being permanently disabled, etc because there just aren't enough workers to attend to them. It's pretty horrifying. These places would rather let their residents die in squalor and filth than pay for proper care/staffing coverage or livable wages. And they get away with it, so why bother changing?
I work in a completely different field now because of how damn depressing it is. I felt myself losing my soul by having to play a part in it, even when I put my job on the line and advocated to resident's family to get them out of there for their own well-being. And those places are expensive, you'll pay a ridiculous amount just to be medically neglected and die miserably.
The memory care place my dad was at got bought out by a private capital group. He was kicked out due to "not being equipped to handle him". They had far far worse patients but I'm sure they were clearing house of patients they couldn't leave alone for long periods. The staff was severely cut and that place really tanked in care.
He was able to get into 1 more facility and it was ok at best... thankfully his time was short there at the very least.
Private capital really sucks the good out of things. Its disgusting places like that can be for profit.
This world never acclimated to the longevities of humans. We didn’t design public finance, public healthcare, infrastructure, nothing, to accommodate the aged and infirm.
We wanted longer lifespans, and it’s a credit to humanity’s brilliance that we have achieved much longer lifespans in a short term period. We made medicine, therapy, and disease prevention a profit center, and we got longer lifespans as the result.
Seems like a regulation issue. So they do have the money to pay higher wages as you state they make the owners billions on nursing home profits.
Staffing levels are set by the states, seems like that could be enforced. As could monitoring the care.
Nothing in your post justifies keeping wages low by exploiting immigrants. Maybe higher paid workers with better job prospects would more vigorously advocate for patients.
Even if implemented perfect regulations today, it would still shock the system having a suddenly huge jump in labor costs. It needs to be a gradual change over time.
Those costs passed down to regular Americans, who will no longer be able to afford a nursing home. So one of the kids might have to quit their job to take care of the parents, and suffer financially themselves to do so.
I know you want to simplify it and make the answer easy, but it just isn’t
SB 525 Health Care Wage: Licensed home health agencies, or home care workers dispatched directly by a covered hospital system, follow accelerated schedules targeting a $25.00/hour maximum tier (with intermediate local minimums scaling up depending on the size and type of the parent health system). [1, 2, 3] In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS): State-funded IHSS program rates vary by county, with many local jurisdictions pushing base pay toward a $20.00-per-hour floor. [1]
Facilities, medications, administration, food/prep, security, insurance… labor is just one piece. Most facilities can handle the increase without much cost passed on.
Idk why you think facilities can pass on increased labor costs without raising prices. They already run on razor thin margins (esp if they rely on gov programs a lot). Labor is one of the largest expenses on healthcare balance sheets. Idk what point you’re even trying to make at this point.
Why does it need to be gradual? While it would be a shock economies have survived worse. The free market can handle it.
Government programs currently pay for 77% of all long term care patients, so some small minority might see an increase in costs. Of the 23% private pay some are rich enough to afford it, others would deplete their savings faster and go onto those government programs.
The same time labor costs increase other things like rent and auto insurance could decrease. Many secondary impacts I am probably missing.
Bottom line is your understanding of how this might play out is not accounting for who currently pays for the majority of long term care or the secondary impacts of a change like this
Because in general it’s not wise to shock your economy. This sub is generally about economics.
Just because the gov will be the one paying those costs doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect us. Not to mention the government will use your assets to pay for care.
Just from a quick google search (I know, I know, it’s the AI overview blah blah. It might be wrong but I certainly don’t trust your numbers)
>Government programs like Medicaid cover the primary share of costs or residents in specific institutional settings (such as roughly 44% to 48% of overall paid long-term care services and supports expenditures), but the vast majority of daily care hours are unpaid family care. [1, 2, 3, 4]
You really don’t understand how nursing homes are paid for and still make claims about people quitting their job if nursing home prices go up.
Nursing homes are generally a one way street. Once in you spend down your money until broke, then the government will pay. Increased costs simply mean you might spend everything before dying. There is no taking someone home because the cost went up.
The average person lives for about a year in a nursing home. The nursing homes I worked with really wanted to see about a year’s assets before admission, they knew the odds of dying were in their favor before they got government rates.
You and I looked at the same source. The government pays for 1/2 the cost of nursing homes in America, but that is 75% of the people in nursing homes ( private pay costs more). Taking care of your mom and dad yourself is generally unpaid as it has always been.
Sounds like a structural issue with the economy then …
Workforce and employers will eventually come to a nee equilibrium , and elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service . If one can afford it, great, but just like many of life’s other luxuries not everyone can .
When COVID landed and caused every nation to properly shut down their borders, it forcibly repriced the value of labor by cutting off the unlimited supply of expendable bodies with no alternatives except to work for whatever is offered.
Many American workers saw more progress in wages in benefits in those 18 months than all of the previous fifty years combined. The fact that this progress fizzled out the moment the last admin blew the gates wide open was not lost on a lot of people.
>elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service
People should abandon their careers to perform a service 24/7, for free, for which they have no experience or training? No, that is definitely not the answer. And I hate to break the news to you that relative-caregivers are not above financial, emotional, and physical abuse, up to and including murder.
As the commenter below stated, they're doing that shady shit at staffed nursing homes that mainly employ citizens too. Nursing homes have major issues and market dynamics around wages are not the major issue.
Well I’m not sure the seniors and their families can afford to pay much more. So this may result in more seniors evicted from nursing facilities for wealthier seniors who can pay for it.
If you believe most nursing home owners are going to raise wages you need to look into the industry. It is heavily run by consolidators and individuals who make their money by running as cheaply as possible while charging the most. Many operators would rather run a clinic into the ground then take a profit hit. As has happened many times.
Much like the restaurant, hotel and agriculture Americans aren’t willing to do the hard work for the basic wage. And people aren’t going to put up with the wage driven inflation for the basic prices as well. Our economy was built on low wage jobs supported by immigrants. Heck the head of the TX Restaurant Association just wrote an oped this week on how Congress should pass an immigrant work pass system for restaurants just like did for Ag because restaurants need cheap labor.
This is an “economic “ subreddit. Staffing levels are fixed by law in many places. Somehow the business owners have convinced everyone supply and demand doesn’t work for the industries they happen to own. Strange.
Apparently it’s just fine exploiting immigrants so you can save $10 on a hotel stay or $5 on a meal.
We already subsidize low wage workers via social programs and medical care. Claiming Americans won’t do restaurant work is of course totally false ( I see them working every day) even more would do it for better pay.
Except they cut social programs as well. Minimum wage is not a living wage in most states. They couldn't even rent an apartment because you need to earn 3 times the rental cost.
More of an issue of supply than a demand problem. In places where we build more housing, housing costs have come down even with an influx of people from other states. It's why we're probably going to see a shift in congressional apportionment from blue states to red states in 2030.
Wow you magically took the opposite lesson there considering most of our housing is built by immigrant labor and they tend to live in multifamily households.
Most of the housing is not built by immigrant workers. Plenty of citizens work the trades.
Immigrants work all kinds of jobs, it’s not like every single one is building housing. Unless they cross the border with a house, they compete for housing.
Immigrant labor is a significant component of the construction industry. While they're only a third of tradesmen, they actually have a majority in several trades. Even if it doesn't translate into most housing, the loss of these workers would seriously slow the construction industry.
Without the illegal workers suppressing wages those trades would pay more. That would attract many more people into the trades if they could afford to raise a family on the income.
Somehow we built housing without massive immigration 30 years ago.
Without growing the population 50 million since 2000 we wouldn’t need so much housing. Our other infrastructure would be much less stressed
It's not just simple supply and demand unless you're okay with future generations working predominantly on supporting the elderly instead of starting their own families.
It's a demographics issue. You need a new generation of workers to support the elderly. If people aren't having enough children, then you have to import labor to make up the difference.
Either that or accept a massive decline in living standards for retirees and push MAID on social security recipients.
Basically you want to push a pyramid scheme on everyone, requiring ever larger population to keep things going.
Or we could become more efficient and automate everything we can.
Its not a demographic issue if you get more efficient. It looks like AI might be freeing up a bunch of people to do new jobs anyway as it wipes out a bunch of white collar jobs.
The other problem with your claim of a demographic issue is that labor force participation is currently at a multi decade low. We have a lot of people that could work but don’t right now
Americans did low wage jobs for a long time, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s. Illegal immigration become more prominent in the late 90s and early 2000s and into the 2010s.
Millennials, in their 20s, were working for cheap in the restaurant and hotel industries for a long time, until they upgraded to higher earning careers/roles. Gen Z/Gen Y doesn't want to do these jobs. The restaurant and hotel industries are just awful on this regard.
Agricultural is still heavy in immigration and I think that is where the culprit is.
The restaurant business model is dying and the head of the TX Restaurant Association knows this. He needs/wants injection of cheap labor for better margins. I say, let him die on his hill screaming alone.
You mean to say "Gen Z/Gen Y doesn't want to do these jobs for the pay being offered".
As ever, we fail to address the equivalent quality of life of a worker doing the job in say, the 90's versus now.
I suspect with the lack of meaningful wage increases for some of these jobs and the rapid increase in utility and housing costs younger workers doing these jobs will just have a worse quality of life if they are paid what is being offered.
"Gen Z/Gen Y isn't poor enough to be motivated to take these jobs" is probably more accurate. GenX didn't want to do these jobs either. But there was no other reasonable way to get the car and community college classes needed to advance.
Elder care industry, hospitality conglomerates, manufacturing concerns, logistics firms, big ag, every C-Suite loves to see an endless supply of desperate humans that can undercut US citizen and legal immigrant workers. After all they all use sub contractors that provide plausible deniability.
Of course. Then in this economic subreddit people are claiming the laws of supply and demand don’t apply to industries that exploit immigrant workers. Its very confusing
That's why as the kid of a midwest and Appalachian region union coal and steel worker family it is very confusing to me how the DSA and progressives can claim to simultaneously be pro-labor and pro open border.
Because the DSA and progressive left don’t understand economics. The working classes are the ones dealing with competition in the labor and housing markets. Apparently the DSA doesn’t care
Elder care is a low profit margin industry and the taxpayer and consumer already stretched thin, so higher wages mean higher prices more people dropping out of the labor force to take care of their parents.
That is NOT how privatized health care works. At all.
They do not raise wages. They cut staff. They don't raise wages. They cut equipment. These are private companies, and the only thing they care about is profit. They are more than happy to let grandma rot in a bed covered in her own excrement if it means they can get an extra 10 cents on the dollar.
From care services to medicine to insurance, the for-profit health industry is an engine of cruelty and callousness. It is a giant amoral profit extraction machine fueled by the pain, suffering, and death of the people.
They are businesses, where there's limited competition and customers are basically captives. You can almost smell the quality of service they deliver on average.
There is something like 18,000 nursing homes in the USA. Certainly we could come up with ways to reward those who have the best care since 77% of the people use government funds to pay
There are actually less beds and capacity compared to before covid: https://www.mcknights.com/news/us-nursing-home-capacity-declines-twice-as-steep-as-estimated-jama-study/. Demand of course grows as population ages and life expectancy rises.
Think about it, the government of course wants to pay as little as possible per patient since tax revenue isn't limitless, and the businesses operating nursing homes want to maximize profit.
Analysis has shown that not-for-profit nursing homes, about a quarter of the total, tend to have better staffing levels and care because there's no investor waiting to be paid. We need a lot more of them.
I am not surprised. Covid went through the local nursing homes like a buzz saw, they lost a bunch of patients and continue to lose them every time the facilities have an outbreak.
It used to be some patients would pass away from the flu or pneumonia every year, now we have covid taking a few on top of that. The facility I visit has 1/4 shut down for lack of patients and staff, it seems the medically weaker are just smaller in number right now.
Reimbursement rates for home caregivers under Medicaid has increased quite a bit in the past 10 years, and especially post covid, which is going to account for some of this as well.
more likely they will replace with fewer humans and more technology. meaning AI and robots.
So, that means more capital investment and more expensive care. They might outsource robot watchers in another country. So ultimately, it doesn’t necessarily result in lower cost, better care or more jobs in the US.
Its really why we need force a minimal baseline of services thru taxes for regular people, because the market will almost always invest in AI or remote tech if they think they can save a dime on US employee wages and benefits.
Currently we have a patchwork of healthcare, disability insurance, FMLA and maternity leave, etc, that fall on businesses with regulation and “rational actor theory.” We’d get more efficiency and value if we made these taxpayer services and freed businesses of some of the extra obligation. their job is to navigate the market for profit. The government needs to go back to regulation and providing services so that businesses dont have to manage profit and try to b3 taxpayer services. Just collect taxes from businesses and people and provide the services.
They won’t be paying better wages, people’s desperation will have them take those jobs for Pennie’s on the dollar AND as they start arresting people for crimes they may have thought of committing, will be fortunate enough to be enslaved in “the system” for free labor. Buckle up! They do not have good plans for us.
>So the jobs being “stolen” were only here because immigrants were willing to work them by being exploited via substandard wages and inhospitable working conditions.
FTFY. If these employers were willing to pay a living wage, not understaff, and provide better working conditions then native citizens would be willing to work these jobs.
It's not like a healthcare job is like working on a farm or in a field, so that excuse doesn't apply here.
Did you read the article. These are not typical healthcare jobs. Elderly services is a nice way of saying taking care of confused incontinent people. So getting attacked by a confused grandpa with a shitty diaper. So yeah, a lot of people don’t want that healthcare jobs.
If entire industries will "collapse" if they're forced to pay wages that are acceptable to ordinary Americans, maybe the employers in those industries don't deserve to exist in the first place.
The demand for healthcare and elder care isn't going to disappear. Perhaps instead of trying to make an essential industry function under a for-profit model, we could try a different model like how virtually every other country handles it.
Fact check: While it is true that Venezuelans will lose their Temporary Protective Status that 400,000 numbers includes Venezuelans doing construction and hospitality as well as healthcare. And yes, it will still have a negative effect.
also they'd stop lowering wages if we gave them legal statuses. instead of keeping them to pay taxes and stimulate the economy, we opted to waste resources to lose their revenue to gain nothing.
We’ve all heard the fallacy of the trickle down economy. I wonder if this is a real-world example of the trickle up economy. Low cost foreign workers forming the foundation that allows the rest of us to get ahead.
I have been struggling to find a job in Healthcare because its cheaper for me to stay home than pay for gas, daycare and other expenses on the dirt wages the entry level jobs pay. Sorry but maybe dont characterize exploitation labor as a bonus to Americans. If the lowest wages go up, so does everyone else's. Offering visas to desperate immigrants without adequate wage protection is fucking gross and damages everyone.
edit to say: this article also conveniently glosses over the fact that cuts to social services (not just deportations) are why people cant afford to pay for their loved ones to get care.
If it's more cost effective for people to quit their jobs to care for their parents or partners than to pay someone else to do it, then what's the issue? Those employers will need to raise wages or just deal with it.
When family members quit jobs to provide unpaid care, it saves money on formal care costs, but it triggers major systemic issues. Workers lose wages, retirement savings, and career growth, while the economy faces labor shortages and strained public health systems that cannot simply absorb the lost productivity.
Also, let’s be real: retirement homes “just dealing with it” will affect the care their patients receive most of all.
If someone never has kids because their child-bearing years are taken up by nursing their elderly parents, congratulations, you just pushed the problem into the future 30 years.
How can wages be lost when the opportunity cost is well below the savings gained by providing care vs paying a facility?
Why would someone work when it costs them $2 in care bills for every dollar they earn? An example ratio, not actual figures. It's a net win for someone to quit such a job and provide care until a better paying opportunity comes up.
If a worker earns $30,000 but care costs $50,000, quitting feels like a $20,000 win today. However, if that choice costs them $300,000 in lifetime retirement savings and prevents them from ever getting a promotion, the long-term net math becomes deeply negative.
It also has downstream effects because when people earn, they spend which employs other people. Undocumented workers also disproportionately pay tax toward services they do not use.
Leaving society, homeschooling and “living off the land” are all similar in that they a very romantic ideas, but it overall creates large systemic inefficiencies.
Our society, culture and technology tend toward interdependence and multiculturalism; this drive to nativistic autarky is antiamerican
It's often a much easier calculation because significant care often costs $10-12k per month, so DIY turns it into basically a $180k/yr job after accounting for taxes (though you end up with $0 at the end of the month). Most people would jump at a 180k/yr job.
Uhh, how exactly is someone going to save for retirement when their expenses already grossly exceed the income? Assuming 10% savings rate plus interest, you're still looking at well over fifty years to save $300k off a job paying 30k a year. And 10% savings is already a horribly unrealistic assumption unless that person makes decent money off the books.
Because you’re assuming things like (a) that they’re unmarried and thus have no other household income and that (b) they’re earning $30,000 that whole ten years (or that its only ten years). This still gets at your shorter-term perspective rather than seeing the compounding long-term workforce benefits.
Seems like if what you’re saying holds water, high schoolers should just drop out to take care of their grandparents at home since the high schoolers aren’t going to be earning meaningful wages during that time anyways, right? Or does the long-term perspective favor keeping them in school so their ability to contribute is greater over time?
With the AI doing AI stuff to the entry level jobs that require formal education, this is an ugly but very relevant question. The jury is going to be out on this one for a few years at least. Though anyone who's got five or six digits of student debt should expect and prepare for the worst.
As for the other sources of income, I'm only going based off of what you presented in your previous reply. A dollar is still a dollar, and in that case one scenario is a net $20k negative, whereas reallocating labor by quitting an outside job is a net zero expense.
The fact that some industries will have to try a bit harder to get and retain workers is irrelevant to the individual in your scenario.
According to the article it is 400,000 Venezuelan workers, not necessarily working in healthcare. Read the article before you come and preach to us.
Further, it isn't clear how many of them are actually workers, it is an assumption that they all have jobs. 400,000 Venezuelans may indeed be losing TPS, that doesn't mean they are all in the workforce tho
Most may in fact have jobs. But as to those that don't, maybe they live with a relative? Or maybe they engage in criminal activity? Who tf knows.
The fact is you don't need to work to have TPS, it isn't a status that is contingent on having a job. You can work but it is not a requirement. So to say or imply that x number of people that are on TPS are also all working is flat out wrong.
At best the article is being lazy with wording, at worst it is being deliberately misleading
Gee! If only someone had seen this coming. Like, where were all the policy experts and economists? Oh yeah, they were there pointing out this wold fail the whole time! This is the problem when expertise is vilified and people who know nothing about these issues pontificate and get elected. It's almost like they shouldn't have done this with simultaneous expectations derived from stories that Americans were just waiting in the wings for these jobs.
The same economists that promoted migrant workers as cheaper replacements for the American workforce.
My hospital can’t find workers because they refuse to update salaries, so they went through an agency and now all our CNAs can’t speak English and have no uniform care standard.
So many people - including the majority of people here on reddit - seem to think that immigrants steal jobs, or that if we remove immigrants, businesses will suddenly have to pay more and everything will be great. It's pretty wild.
On one thread, people complain about how their groceries are so expensive they can barely afford them... Or how it's impossible to eat out... Or travel... Or how their grandma can't afford a nursing home... Or how all kinds of other stupid things are so expensive now...
Then they're in threads like these being like... "Yeah finally businesses will have to pay more for staff!" With no understanding that all those costs are getting passed onto them.
So many US economic policies now are basically populist nonsense - on both the left and right - and it's a big problem. All that stuff does is lower the standard of living.
The unspoken rule is that you are not supposed to actually try to raid businesses and deport immigrants. You're only supposed to rely on the rhetoric to win votes from the morons. I always inferred these people are too dumb, or too outside the establishment, to appreciate the game being played.
We have plenty of domestic and legal labor to meet demand without illegal immigration. What we have is an unwillingness of employers to pay appropriate wages.
Maybe you meant in general, but the healthcare workers the article is talking about are not here illegally. It's just that the government has suddenly decided to remove their legal status.
Fact is US taxpayers cannot afford to fund enough nursing facilities on the wage Americans expect for these demanding and thankless jobs. On average each US citizen (including children) already owes foreign debt holders $27k, not even counting the debt we owe other Americans.
There are 7 million people on the unemployment roles, if you deport 10 million illegals and push out another 20 million legal immigrants where does the other 23 million come from?
Oh no industries might have to adapt to be more efficient, pay more, and perhaps even sponsor temporary work visas instead of illegally employing undocumented workers. The horror.
That leaves about 4 million, but many of these are early retirees, the idle rich, or people who otherwise don't need or want to work.
There's some overlap with these numbers but there's no secret vast horde of nonworking Americans who can replace tens of millions of deported workers and families
Their countries of origins can't attract immigrants like America can, which is why they have higher unemployment and lower wages.
Since its founding America has imported workers to build it's economy and every level, creating economic growth, higher wages and more employment for Americans who were born here.
No one said America was built ethically. That would be an asinine statement. The richest man in the US was its first president and made his money on stolen land speculation and slave labor. America is built by and for the rich and has been since day one.
Did I say that? I don’t believe in American Exceptionalism. But like I replied in a different comment, some prices have a ceiling at which they can no longer be sustained. If it costs $30 to pick a pint of strawberries, then that job just goes away so you have to be ok with fewer jobs overall.
You and me both know that none of those are happening. This administration is making it even harder to immigrate legally by slow walking green card applications, cutting H1B grace period so that people have to leave immediately when they lose their job instead of having 60 days to find another job, etc. You’re waving at a solution that this administration has actively closed the door on.
The problem is the jobs the illegal immigrants are doing are VERY hard. Consider working outside in Texas heat, which most US citizens and legal immigrants will not do. There are other examples like restaurants.
The first imported workers were slaves but once outlawed it just became immigrants. America was built by slaves/immigrants and cheap labor and funded by the rich for the rich. Whether it was the Chinese building the economic driver of the 19th century, or the Hispanics farming the southwest, African Americans in the south and good old fashioned European refugees for the northeast in various waves, the US was built by immigration whether forced, legal, or illegal.
Something no one mentions is most of those immigrants flourish and build a beautiful life in America called the American dream while being able to support their family back home. They trying so hard to kill the American dream
I’m living it so I’d say otherwise. Immigrant from Mexico who has a good career in USA and just baught my 5 bedroom home in SoCal in February. It’s still alive just harder to reach
Also, I hope I did not send a message of anti immigration. I know many foreign born people doing well. I am saying the dream is bait to induce immigration.
That's all fine and dandy that immigrants can find upward class mobility through migration to a country with a stronger economy, but that doesn't exactly help the people who were born here and doing worse off than their parents. Every generation since the industrial revolution was wealthier than the generation before them. However that's been declining for generations now. Millennials are roughly just as likely to be worse-off than their parents as they are better-off, and genz is on-track to be the first generation that is statistically more likely to have less wealth than their parents by 30. Immigrants flooding the market with cheap labor isn't exactly helping those Americans.
The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can achieve success, prosperity, and upward mobility through hard work, determination, and initiative. Everyone has the same opportunities that I had so what’s your point? I busted my ass off and got where I am through hard work isn’t that what republicans preach? I don’t get what you’re trying to say this is America which was built by slave and immigrants and this has been going on since America was made. Imigrants coming to America and building it has been a thing since America was made just work hard for what you want it’s still possible in the USA
The small businesses also get higher profits because of this. Most of mom and pop restaurants I had chance to looked at the kitchen is full of Latinos (in North Texas) even in ethnic restaurants. The busboys in chains are Latinos also.
Is slave wages good? No. But are Americans prepared to pay higher cost? Also No.
How do you change the cycle? I do not know. I am just pointing out that simply disputing OPs (of this thread ) simply saying “we have labor at home” does not work. US economy has always been based on slave labor/wages. And these kind of statement really just for Reddit karma.
cool. so where is that spirit of american entrepreneurial innovation to make these jobs less shit, compensated adequately and using technology to make them easier.
any idiot can rely on cheap/slave labor from immigrants. time to get innovating
A lot of these innovations come from immigrant Americans. Humans should not be property of any state rather the state is the property of humans. Where you are born should not be more important than what you can contribute and provide and create for the society you live in.
Paying “appropriate wages” (whatever that means) leads to higher costs for consumers, which can mean that people buy less of those items, or less of some other items, to compensate. It doesn’t just come out in the wash.
Which can mean the market shrinks because no one buys. When things get too expensive, people stop buying them. Labor is the single biggest cost in most of the goods and services we buy. Raise it too much and demand will shrink.
This is going to cause a response of "people on assistance should work these jobs!" before it meets the response of "maybe employers should pay appropriate wages".
NGL, this does sound like eventually it creates a situation where businesses will have to raise wages to hire staff or go under.
If wages are artificially lowered due to undocumented labor supply then Americans will benefit in wages when that supply leaves. To some extent this is the equivalent (at the macro) of a union worked on strike (legal American worker who wont work due to too low of wages) whose scab just got deported so the business has to decide to pay better wages to the union worker or go out of business.
Other factors are the price sensitivity of demand, substitution options, and imports.
Some of that can be controlled somewhat, some can not.
I’m all for $15 hamburgers with livable wages vs $5 hamburgers exploiting workers. But let’s be real - many people will stop eating hamburgers and overall employment will go down. Which means some businesses will go under even if they increase wages to get the employees they need.
This just means our current system of resource distribution is fundamentally broken. Might have something to do with a tiny subset of the population siphoning everything off the top and disappearing it into the caymans or whatever, maybe.
Really, the same concept where almost all businesses will opt for mass firings rather than across the board wage cuts when the business is slow and payroll has to come down.
That’s not how the economy works. While immigrants take jobs, they also create demand. If you deport 10% of US population, yes there’d be 10% less people competing for job opportunities at a burger chain, but the burger chain will also see 10% less customers, so they’d be hiring 10% less people. Everything scales roughly linearly and there’s no free lunch.
It definitely can, but it will raise prices for everyone else. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but we’ll have to wait and see how this all shakes out.
Exactly. I’m not buying the bias of the article. Canada is in the opposite situation with to much foreign workforce, wages are atrocious, stagnated, and businesses are taking full advantage.
These caretaking roles are mostly paid by households. I want people to be paid good wages, but this won’t stick it to “businesses” or “employers”. It will stick it to a lot of middle class families trying to keep two earners working instead of having one quit to take care of family. It’s a catch 22
As long as we can all agree that some businesses will just not be able to exist if they are paying a livable wage and healthcare costs. There will be fewer but better paying jobs overall but we could easily end up with fewer overall jobs and less economic growth. I am not arguing those are good or bad, I’m just saying that is a likely possibility. You can see it happening to fast food now. McDonald’s would be twice its current already inflated costs. When that McDonalds closes it is a franchise, so likely a local owner and all the low and medium wage workers are out of a job. I don’t care if McDonald’s ceases to exist but it is just one example of a business that probably is not sustainable with livable wage costs.
No, labor markets will crumble. The “economics” of certain sectors will change.
Let me rephrase this, let’s say you are just able to meet the wage demands of elder care. Now the costs of these services increase dramatically. If you can’t afford it, there is no “just pay someone more to do it” scenario.
That’s something people don’t consider.
Like fruit picking. No one is going to pay much buyer prices for fruit. They’ll cut back and the industry as a whole will suffer.
At the end of the day, even if you argue “people should be paid more, if you don’t have a plan that address all sides of the economic issues, you end up with a lose-lose.
This is only true where margins are thin. But there are a lot of companies in the US with large margins that can afford to raise wages. And there are companies where labor is not the major driver of prices and they can afford to raise prices enough to raise wages enough to retain workers.
It's also important to note that both things will happen at the same time. If a company is facing a situation where they either reduce their workforce and sell less, or pay workers more and run an operating loss, some companies will choose to raise prices, some will make cuts to the business, some will find new efficiencies, some will find was to pass costs on to the consumer that they can tolerate. Assuming an industry with some competition, all of that happens at the same time across the many businesses in the space, and the net effect is a more expensive product/service that's harder to access and worse than before. And in at least some areas some workers that remain in the industry will earn more.
Only in a monopoly market will you see one strategy pursued exclusively.
Exactly, some prices have a ceiling. No one is happy with $30 per pint strawberries. Strawberries just disappear or become another product exclusively for the rich.
Ah, the Argentine beef special. Time to import e-medicine from India and cut actual doctors. We have the technology. You can see a doctor after going through 3-4 e-visits and we manage to check off the boxes until we're forced to do something in person after appeasing the insurance overlords. Who know medicine better than my doctor.
Currently experiencing this for both pre and now, post surgery complications. Boy do I not support Mario's brother.
Has anyone ever died from an acute strawberry deficiency? If a handful of luxury items and luxury services get repriced, that's just acceptable losses.
It's just an example. It would affect other labor markets the same. You could just as well say that houses are a luxury item that are acceptable losses and people should be happy living in apartments instead.
With all the fear mongering about communism it's kind of funny to see capitalism recreating the same conditions my parents grew up under in communist Poland where everyone grew their own fruits and vegetables because they were too expensive to buy and lived in hastily constructed apartments (but at least they owned them).
so people want illegal migrants to work in terrible conditions for low pay, just so they can heave cheaper stuff? remind me why that position is "moral" instead of being basically pro slavery?
I love how you took a nuanced economic situation, which benefited everyone, and turned into an absurdist, overly-simplistic sound bite to promote a system that benefits no one and harms everyone.
They're not slaves. They are immigrants. When my father came here as an immigrant, he worked 4 jobs. He did it for 5 years. He eventually was able to meet my mother and and build a very good life here. He owned 2 homes, and raised children who went to college and are financially independent and sucessful.
You: "it would be better if they deported him when he was 25 because it's basically slavery"
Ignoring it's NOT slavery, and they can come and go whenever they want, and these immigrants choose this sacrifice at one point in their lives for the opportunity to grow a family in the US, deporting him and millions of others has ZERO positive influence on anything. it makes everything worse for everyone.
If the outcome is worse for everyone, even the low-wage immigrant workers, what is the argument here? You basically chopped the legs out of someone that chose to come here and work in this system for the chance at a better life for their family in the next generation, raised prices on essential goods and services, people can afford less of them, and those industries suffer, all without seeing a meaningful increase in wages or job growth.
It’s simple when you make it simple. But it’s not simple. There is a reason why no reputable economist ever supported that kind of policy. Everyone suffers. No one wins.
My friend, you must learn class consciousness and think bigger and better, not just for yourself but for all of us. The rich are never, ever going to magically change their hearts. They have way more legislative and legal loopholes than you do, and they are wealth hoarders. They have a sickness.
Check out America’s Labor Rights Movement and the push into the Progressive Era. It’s been a century now. We’re overdue.
Nobody expects the folks on the better end of the income distribution to budge out of goodness of heart. Which is why a good number of Americans feel that a much more feasible way to fix the issue is by forcibly reducing the labor supply through additional immigration enforcement.
Of course it is. Those companies weren't willing to pay actual wages sto survive so they just closed up shop or stopped hiring. Now we have tons to do and prices are through the roof because good wages aren't affordable by most small businesses or normal person until the corporate profiteering and monopolies stops which at this pace is never going to happen.
As long as every small business is squeezed out of existence and costs of basic materials and foods are skyrocketing theres no extra money to create jobs or increase pay. Its easier to just markup doritoes to 7$ a bag.
Its not raising quality of life or opportunity for anyone. Its just making us all as poor as the immigrants were the day they arrived.
Lots of people have been laid off, I hope everyone that currently has not had much luck getting stable employment do get those jobs so they can get back on their feet.
The illusion that this workforce shortage could eventually increase wages ignores the bigger truth that the deportation induced recession will preemptively wipe out these effects.
If the entire system is dependent on underpaid workers, deporting those workers won't materialise better outcomes, that would require significant reforms completly countrary to the political platform of the party Americans entrusted with governing.
If the entire system is dependent on an infinite supply of migrant workers to exploit, perhaps we shouldn't be using this system in the first place.
There are ways to reduce the number of migrant workers without snapping our fingers to make them all disappear overnight. Shutting off the inflow of immigrants and gradually cracking down on employers of illegal immigrants will force employers to adapt without shocking the entire economy.
Why do you think the people that callously cheer for mass deportation give a single fuck if the system afterwards is equitable or even bearable for the remaining underclass?
Many of them would glady slave away their last days if that means less immigrants.
Anti immigration is just about providing the native population with the joy of not having to see a foreigner and its supporters are either ignorant or partially ready for all the costs this will bring.
It's possible to look at the issue without viewing it through the lens of the two-party system. I disagree with Republicans on their reasoning for disliking immigration. I disagree with Democrats due to the cognitive dissonance that comes from supporting increasing the number of immigrants while also opposing corporate greed and claiming to be the pro-worker party.
Please explain to me how immigration benefits working class Americans instead of trying to refute the argument by pointing out that xenophobic people also don't like immigrants.
I’m ok with the Rich and UMC paying more for local labor. Maybe their quality of life goes down, but the working class employees should see an overall improvement. Less income inequality is a good thing!
Importing immigrant workers as "cheap labor" not only hurts the American worker but also exploits immigrants. Companies need to cut their profit margins and pay American workers livable wages. It's that simple.
We don’t need no experts. Fearless leader is a genius who knows all and has bestowed wisdom of all the ages into his amazing orange noggin that is festooned with a golden mane of silken splendor
Come on. It was NEVER going to work. GDP is a function of population, not citizenship. This is about appealing to racists and bigots while asking them to overlook the economic damage being done on their behalf. And besides, when you can just lie that the economy is doing great and it’s a golden age…
Wow crazy not a single person thought to tell them that this was a highly likely outcome. If only we had known that removing an established pillar of the low paid economy wouldn’t just magically improve.
I don’t know how some people can think the only people willing to work for dirt cheap in our country is stealing their jobs and driving up prices. It can only be racism idk
Undercutting labor by not being held to the same standard is a completely valid concern for working class people. If an American citizen who is a plumber legally has to have a license, insurance, driver’s license, car insurance, pay taxes, and wants to live not in a complete dump gets undercut by an illegal immigrant who doesn’t adhere to any of those things, the American is justified in not wanting to be undercut.
It’s not racism, it’s a scheme from the ultra wealthy to crash labor costs by undercutting Americans with illegal immigrants who Americans can’t compete with legally.
Of course it is backfiring whether America likes it or not immigration helps power the economy for three reason. One it makes labor cheaper to the labor pay taxes, but doesn’t get for Social Security benefit and three with labor available more projects and work gets done. Where the United States is doing is following Japan’s example Japan is very racist and only allows Japanese residence for the most part two immigrate and so their population is shrinking and so is there as their economy that workforce ages the birth rate continues to drop. Get ready for a lot of shrinkage in our economy and things to continue to get more expensive. With the less labor in the economy, the dollar value shrinks and inflation will continue as labor gets more expensive.. I find it so ironic that America’s racism is gonna have an economic impact on them as well. And don’t forget Trump is deporting not just migrant farm workers. He’s deporting scientist and educated foreigners that help power our economy. What is it? Trump‘s cabinet is made up of mainly Fox correspondents at this point, true believers that don’t know how the government, but we’re selected for the loyalty to Trump. to Trump..
This is just a puzzle piece of the culling of the herd of humans for a small corporatocracy. It’s the Las Vegas syndrome. Get more revenue from very rich few than little revenue from many. Humans are yesterday’s news. You don’t need workers to take care of elderly when it’s good that people lose jobs to take care of their elderly. Then eventually the jobless people will lose income, fall further into poverty and they can catalyze the deaths of those human lives. Then we can have the Epstein class, AI infrastructure doing what humans used to and there won’t be any pesky humans. Now we just need Gen Z to become electricians and get it done so. Get in the trades!
The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can achieve success, prosperity, and upward mobility through hard work, determination, and initiative. Everyone has the same opportunities that I had so what’s your point? I busted my ass off and got where I am through hard work isn’t that what republicans preach? I don’t get what you’re trying to say this is America which was built by slave and immigrants and this has been going on since America was made. Imigrants coming to America and building it has been a thing since America was made just work hard for what you want it’s still possible in the USA
Cha-ching my guy. Don't threaten me with a good time.
This is why the jobs that are here, which cannot be shipped overseas nor offloaded to ai & automatons, will be forced to pay an appropriate wage. I also suspect this is a gross overestimation of the human labor inputs that will be required by 2035.
This is a big misconception that right wingers and I guess now left wingers think will happen if we have a worker shortage by cutting off immigration.
Now I’m not advocating for mass immigration but having an appropriate method for bringing talented workers for industries in demand doesn’t hurt wages or the economy. But let’s say you’re right, let’s say since the 1980s we go with the no immigrants plan.
That means overnight about 8 trillion dollars in economic activity (housing, consumption, taxes, etc..) is gone. Another 800,000 kids leave the school districts with those property taxes disappearing. And the cost of labor (what you want) skyrockets. But is that a good thing?
We can look at countries where this already happened at, such as Switzerland (which has immigration but by western standards basically zero).
A Big Mac (Big Mac index) in Switzerland costs almost 10 US dollars in the country. A liter of milk around 5 US Dollars (sorry actually 5). If you want anything done to your house for contracting, the costs will be anywhere between 80-120 US Dollars an hour. Meaning if you want a patio, instead of paying 12,000 dollars like you might in America. It will cost you nearly 45,000 dollars.
Everything, and I mean everything will be expensive. This means that consumers have to literally LEAVE the country to buy groceries and sometimes even basic goods for a good deal.
They’re currently German and French towns by the border that are filled with Swiss consumers due to the market discrepancy between the borders.
And that’s just price. We haven’t even talked about the gdp, and towns disappearing. If we had little to no immigrants since the 1980s, literal towns and cities would be wiped off the map.
Almost half of Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona cities are majority foreign born or 1st generation immigrants.
You’ve just managed to depopulate 60% of the cities and towns in the southwest. Things would not get cheaper, not at all, industries would disappear and as such the tax base. On top of that, the average American would go from being 39 years of age to about 47.5.
You keep making my point. Retirees and rich people just want to prop up an economy that increasingly only benefits them at any cost. The American worker needs payroll inflation to outpace asset inflation so that their spending power becomes more meaningful against the assets of the investor class.
>A Big Mac (Big Mac index) in Switzerland costs almost 10 US dollars in the country.
In big part due to being made 100% from locally sourced beef, mostly small farms, best burger McDonalds makes.
>A liter of milk around 8 US Dollars.
From local mostly small farms.
>If you want anything done to your house for contracting, the costs will be anywhere between 80-120 US Dollars an hour. Meaning if you want a patio, instead of paying 12,000 dollars like you might in America. It will cost you nearly 45,000 dollars.
This will be a problem from white collars.
If blue collars want a patio, they build one for themselves.
In Europe you can't just randomly wake up and build a patio you actually have to work with an authorised building company and get an authorization for said modification to the house. It's not like if you're a plumber you can randomly build a patio.
What is stupid is thinking that purposefully harming the economy by removing parts of the workforce amid labor shortages is a good idea. It will suck for a long time and not get better due to the fact that the size of the working age population's share of total population is decreasing relative to the share of the retired population and will continue to do so in the future.
The people ignorant of basic economics and demographics act like bad policies act in the absence of reality.
Left populists live under the delusion that businesses secretly have the ability pay workers an arbitrarily large sum of money instead of their marginal revenue product of labor. The reality is immigrants don't depress wages, their losses won't be replaced, and the economy will just shrink.
I wonder how all the fraud in the Medicaid is playing into this. I mean there has been a massive amount of people exposed in this industry defrauding taxpayers.
kptknuckles | a month ago
So the jobs being “stolen” were only here because immigrants were willing to work them. Without the cheap labor in social services, healthcare and elder care, people have to leave the workforce to care for their parents and grandparents. Cue lowering jobs and unemployment figures.
400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers are losing their temporary status in October so buckle up.
Jkid | a month ago
Employers are going to have to start paying more to get these jobs filled. Two or 3 times the minimum wage. There is no option. The days is going to come where cheap labor is unsustainable.
Mission_Ad5139 | a month ago
I work in a cross section of the social services/healthcare industry and I'm going mention that while pay is an issue that isn't the biggest issue prohibiting hiring US citizens. A lot of these positions pay better than other jobs that just require a high school diploma.
A large part is that working in healthcare/eldercare/childcare/mental healthcare is a lot of work and it's working with difficult populations. A lot of Americans don't want to deal with someone's crotchety grandpa or change diapers.
But the other issue we keep having in our industry is that US citizens, when we go to hire them they can't pass background checks or drug tests. And these industries legally or financially require employees to be drug free and without a criminal history.
Signed someone who had to deny 3 new hires in a month and a half because they all failed drug tests. Position came with great healthcare, PTO, and first year raise for job certification.
*Edit to clarify: wages are surprised all around and a lot of these jobs pay above or well above the median. A lot of these require specific certifications or degrees, like nursing.
As for the weed thing, I personally don't care if someone smokes weed. As I noted the prohibition stems from a lot of legal and insurance rules. You are considered a liability. It doesn't matter if it is prescription a lot of the time you can be considered a liability. One of the first things lawyers and the state ask for when there is an incident is drug testing records. Distraught family members will look for any target to sue when their loved one dies in the care of a nursing home, detox center, hospital, assisted facilities, and on. We have to submit annual drug testing for licensing every year. Thems the breaks.
And we did we did have great candidates. They were here on TPS who are being removed because of racism. Stop covering for the racism with the facetious idea that the people doing this care about workers, their wages when they are the same folks working to lower wages. There are plenty of doctors, nurses, nursing assistants who are being removed solely because Stephen Miller can't get it up unless he is hurting POC.
elbow8075 | a month ago
The healthcare industry survives solely in exploitation of nurses. As a former healthcare worker, countless numbers of us have looked at the shitty deal the career offers and have said no thanks.
When I tell people I'm never working for a hospital, I'm not kidding. I am absolutely not going to spend the next two decades trying to save boomers who put themselves and us in this shitty situation.
cos1ne | a month ago
Every industry survives on the exploitation of workers because we have eroded worker protections over the years in pursuit of profit and the system is designed around extracting as much value from the workers while compensating them the least to hand out that extracted value to the capitalist class.
The social contract has been broken and this will only lead to further exploitation until the populace can no longer bear it.
MammothUnique4147 | a month ago
Sounds like the wages and benefits are still too low if you can't find suitable candidates.
No_Ad_5517 | a month ago
So if the work is hard the wages should reflect this, no?
Zepcleanerfan | a month ago
Lol
Tammer_Stern | a month ago
Is that not what they said is happening?
No_Ad_5517 | a month ago
She said the wages are not a big problem because there are other jobs that pay less. She said instead the problem is the work is harder. So I'm pointing out the wages are a problem because the work is hard, so the salaries should be even higher.
aaronespro | a month ago
The patriarchy told social reproductive labor like childcare, elder care, incontinence care to go to hell and the value they create is turned into heat to cook the planet or yachts, golf courses, designer drugs and plastic surgery for the elites instead of pay for those occupations.
Legal-Chocolate8482 | a month ago
Sounds like the pay is too low for the work if you can’t attract Americans eh. If the pay is so hard and nasty it should be paid way way more . In the Bay Area nurses get paid $100 an hour. I bet you’d have zero problems finding Americans who pass all the checks for $100 an hour.
If we didn’t have an endless supply of cheap migrant labor your employer would be forced to raise wages multiple times over or close shop.
ComputerStrong9244 | a month ago
I mean, there is another option - we provide terrible care because they're badly short-staffed, and management refuses to hire anything beyond a skeleton crew of the most dedicated people while paying them shit
That's REAL capitalism, baby!
fiveswords | a month ago
Let them smoke a little weed on the weekends, Hitler.
Wonderfestl-Phone | a month ago
I think one issue is that a lot of places receive Federal funding. Because it's still illegal at a Federal level places are afraid of risking that funding by not totally banning THC.
SolScorpii | a month ago
Most insurance companies won't insure the business without the UAs. It's less to do with safety and more to do with money to be made
ComradePyro | a month ago
this. even in lower-stakes industries, the only big companies that don't do UAs for entry-level positions are doing it bc turnover is high enough that eating the insurance cost makes more sense than paying for (a ton of failed) UAs
kronicpimpin | a month ago
Right. All the drugs that are usually issues leave your system pretty quick. My workplace quit testing for THC when we were short employees. We now have plenty of new hires and current employees aren’t losing jobs over something trivial.
Hyperion1144 | a month ago
>And there industries legally or financially require employees to be drug free and without a criminal history.
It's not their call to make.
Meatball-Tuna-Sub | a month ago
Stop pretending that cannabis prohibition is a serious stance and see how many qualified workers were already there. It might be the law, but it is stupid.
fwfiv | a month ago
They didn't make the certification rules
widdowbanes | a month ago
Well yeah, if they are American atleast you can check their background. For foreigners, won't have a background to check because they came from another country. And could of been a wanted criminal which you would pick over an American with a DUI charge.
CuteWasabi5724 | a month ago
Ending TPS is not racism. It was always Temporary.
ViolatoR08 | a month ago
You can’t call having immigration laws being enforced racism. It simply doesn’t work anymore. On one hand the U.S. has a looming debt crisis along with big government spending. If Americans don’t want to do the work for the pay being offered then it is the pay that needs to go up. Bringing in people from other countries because of cheap labor costs doesn’t help anyone, including the immigrants.
dinosaurkiller | a month ago
There is an option and you can see it right now. They keep listing wages at rates no one will take and the job stays empty. I know of a hospital system that is doing this, even for salaried positions, they currently have no speech therapists, no occupational therapists, a shortage of many Doctors and support staff, and it turns out, they had to put themselves up for sale because of a shortfall in revenue. Middle managers are willing to let the business fail before paying more.
microphohn | a month ago
Higher wages are a good thing, usually.
Zepcleanerfan | a month ago
Also inflationary.
snowrazer_ | a month ago
Not all cost increases are due to inflation. Inflation implies the value of the dollar going down. Paying a fair wage would not decrease the value of the dollar.
microphohn | a month ago
Only when higher wages are due to larger money supply.
CspanSF | a month ago
Those industries are low profit margin industries so you have to pass the cost on to the consumers so hire prices and lower real wages
snowrazer_ | a month ago
When you realize the same argument was used to justify slavery long ago.
Strange-Maize9536 | a month ago
That would be awesome when it happens. Less public assistance needed
NivianDeDanu | a month ago
I think companies that dont pay enough in 40 hours to get off welfare should pay a tax that goes to support welfare... like Walmart.
BangBangMeatMachine | a month ago
I agree, but it's much simpler to just raise the minimum wage.
Hyperion1144 | a month ago
So simple that it hasn't been done for decades.
plummbob | a month ago
Absent welfare, workers would need to work more hours to make up the shortfall, lowering wages
sycamotree | a month ago
Nah. These companies are built on cheap labor, it's a part of their business model. Some of them can survive raising it but a lot will fail and get bailed one way or another.
Yoishma23 | a month ago
They will just raises prices and everything will become even more unaffordable for low income people. Elder care will just cost even more, groceries and dining out will cost more, the companies arnt just going to accept lower profit margins
elbow8075 | a month ago
> the companies arnt just going to accept lower profit margins
Then they'll die as they should.
Acceptable-Peace-69 | a month ago
No, more public assistance needed to pay for all the things that used to be cheap.
Chris_Codes | a month ago
…and prices will go up for the services in line with the rising costs and that will lower the number of people who can afford the service and the companies will end up cutting jobs. So yes some people will get a higher salary and some will lose their jobs and not be able to find one unless they’re willing to take a lower salary. It’s a whole system that finds its own equilibrium. Money doesn’t just appear in the economy out of no where.
wehrmann_tx | a month ago
Weird how musk seems to print some by making an over inflated IPO price.
Strange-Maize9536 | a month ago
That makes sense. Let the prices raise for that reason If a job can be done with less labor so be it. It’s a better option that unfettered immigration and a resulting unfettered increases in government assistance
Defiant_Freedom_249 | a month ago
Ummmm... Try to see the full circle.
WCland | a month ago
It’s not just cheap labor, sometimes it’s finding any labor at all. Need your roof fixed? The contractor can maybe schedule you in next year. Even higher wages won’t necessarily fix a lack of people to actually do the work.
ap1618 | a month ago
Mate no corporation is paying $20/hour to pick blueberries.
Blood_Casino | a month ago
> Mate no corporation is paying $20/hour to pick blueberries.
Oh well. Blueberry buyers can pick their own or go without then.
ap1618 | a month ago
We were perfectly fine before all this performative ICE bullshit
Blood_Casino | a month ago
>”We were perfectly fine when foreign fruit pickers were in the field where they belong”
Very persuasive
ap1618 | a month ago
You’re just denying the basic realities of labor supply and demand and calling it a solution
shallowshadowshore | a month ago
There are absolutely other options - the wages never rise, the jobs never get filled, and people suffer/die due to lack of care.
plummbob | a month ago
The other option is just maintain a "shortage" of services as the marginal value of the labor has risen, so the lower value services just aren't produced
Jkid | a month ago
So a permanment shortage instead if raising pay by even a dollar
Least_Homework_9720 | a month ago
And then there goes more inflation.
Jkid | a month ago
Which type of inflation you prefer:
Inflation from companies forced to pay more to get these jobs filled? Or inflation from the money printer running forever via UBI to fund unemployed people unemployed thanks to the Gen AI boom?
mrpickles | a month ago
Companies aren't and won't pay. Stuff will just break and suck instead. And they've monopolized the market, so there will be no alternative. System failure. /r/collapse
Agile-View-8330 | a month ago
Child care is another example. Families will be forced to pay more for daycare or nannie’s given fewer options available. As a result, more parents will be forced to drop out of the workforce to be a stay at home wife/husband.
Live-Comfortable2026 | a month ago
People will stop having kids.
jjt64 | a month ago
Already are.
judgejuddhirsch | a month ago
Or God forbid pay state taxes into public school
VicisZan | a month ago
Kids don’t go to school as soon as they are born.
Eyesofmalice | a month ago
Of course they do, my republican senator told me so. He gave birth to a kid and within the next 24 hours that kid was worth 4 billion dollars and had a cover on Forbes. He didn’t even have shoe strings to pull himself from!
So am I supposed to listen to what YOUR show wearing champaign communist have to say? This is why we need to bomb the Middle East, honestly.
PunctualDromedary | a month ago
School ends at like 3:30. My job doesn't end until six.
imnewhere-gsh | a month ago
You know kids come home from school before normal jobs are close to ending right?
AlexanderNigma | a month ago
Do you even know school hours or years that children go?
Jesus, there are years of no school followed by years where school doesn't completely overlap with work
fumar | a month ago
You have no public options until they're at least 4 and usually 5. So until then you're completely dependent on private sources of childcare
instantcrackpot | a month ago
Having women become trad wives is the goal.
chockingduck | a month ago
Probably part of their long term plan.
My conspiracy is theocracy is incoming. If not that, breaking down the walls of separation to begin getting their second best wet dream - Christian nation officially.
GoogleIsYourFrenemy | a month ago
It's the Jevons Paradox but writ in salaries (instead of a complicated discussion about steam/coal economics)
The availability of cheap labor made certain business opportunities economical to pursue, creating jobs. It follows that destroying cheap labor would make business opportunities disappear, taking those jobs too.
Magnolia05 | a month ago
I work in HR Operations for a healthcare company, and we just had to let close to 20 Haitian RNs go. They were all great employees and it killed us to have to do it.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Imagine the nursing homes have to pay better wages because they can’t exploit immigrant workers anymore.
Sounds like a win
CommentAccount001 | a month ago
Lmao pay better wages? What fantasy land are you living in? No they will hire even less staff now, they will drug your parents so when they aren’t getting care they need they won’t complain.
They will clean them up when you occasionally come for a visit and just basically rush them to an earlier grave than needed. All while charging us even more for the privilege of their services and funneling as much money as possible to one person to make another billionaire.
Just google it, here is a story from May this year but this has already been happening for years and as more people age this isn’t going to get any better especially when regulations aren’t even being enforced.
https://www.statnews.com/2026/03/19/antipsychotic-drug-misuse-nursing-homes-hhs-oig-reports/
Hussar223 | a month ago
this person gets it.
see the Ontario, Canada, COVID-19 fiasco where the military had to be called in to clean up the private old folks homes due to the atrocious conditions people were living/dying in.
goddamn_slutmuffin | a month ago
As someone who used to do home healthcare and had to temp a few times in short staffed AL and nursing homes.... I've seen suites with shit caked on the wall, patients falling and being permanently disabled, etc because there just aren't enough workers to attend to them. It's pretty horrifying. These places would rather let their residents die in squalor and filth than pay for proper care/staffing coverage or livable wages. And they get away with it, so why bother changing?
I work in a completely different field now because of how damn depressing it is. I felt myself losing my soul by having to play a part in it, even when I put my job on the line and advocated to resident's family to get them out of there for their own well-being. And those places are expensive, you'll pay a ridiculous amount just to be medically neglected and die miserably.
seventysevensevens | a month ago
The memory care place my dad was at got bought out by a private capital group. He was kicked out due to "not being equipped to handle him". They had far far worse patients but I'm sure they were clearing house of patients they couldn't leave alone for long periods. The staff was severely cut and that place really tanked in care.
He was able to get into 1 more facility and it was ok at best... thankfully his time was short there at the very least.
Private capital really sucks the good out of things. Its disgusting places like that can be for profit.
061826heart | a month ago
This world never acclimated to the longevities of humans. We didn’t design public finance, public healthcare, infrastructure, nothing, to accommodate the aged and infirm.
We wanted longer lifespans, and it’s a credit to humanity’s brilliance that we have achieved much longer lifespans in a short term period. We made medicine, therapy, and disease prevention a profit center, and we got longer lifespans as the result.
Now what?
krastem91 | a month ago
Most sensible comment in this thread …
Hussar223 | a month ago
i dont know, but seeing that wealth inequality is at levels not seen since ancient egypt, funding and capital should not be a problem
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Seems like a regulation issue. So they do have the money to pay higher wages as you state they make the owners billions on nursing home profits.
Staffing levels are set by the states, seems like that could be enforced. As could monitoring the care.
Nothing in your post justifies keeping wages low by exploiting immigrants. Maybe higher paid workers with better job prospects would more vigorously advocate for patients.
Lower labor supply, higher wages. Pretty basic
SelectKangaroo | a month ago
>seems like a regulation issue
idk what to tell you but Trump's pedo regime isn't going to improve this either
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
I guess we should throw our hands in the air and give up. That’s how children handle difficult problems
SelectKangaroo | a month ago
Pedocon rolls a 1 on the persuasion check, asked to log off the internet
Gswag6969 | a month ago
Regulations? We don't need no stinking regulation. Just cuts into dividends
Strange-Maize9536 | a month ago
💯
Apart-Badger9394 | a month ago
Even if implemented perfect regulations today, it would still shock the system having a suddenly huge jump in labor costs. It needs to be a gradual change over time.
Those costs passed down to regular Americans, who will no longer be able to afford a nursing home. So one of the kids might have to quit their job to take care of the parents, and suffer financially themselves to do so.
I know you want to simplify it and make the answer easy, but it just isn’t
Acceptable-Peace-69 | a month ago
California:
SB 525 Health Care Wage: Licensed home health agencies, or home care workers dispatched directly by a covered hospital system, follow accelerated schedules targeting a $25.00/hour maximum tier (with intermediate local minimums scaling up depending on the size and type of the parent health system). [1, 2, 3]
In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS): State-funded IHSS program rates vary by county, with many local jurisdictions pushing base pay toward a $20.00-per-hour floor. [1]
Facilities, medications, administration, food/prep, security, insurance… labor is just one piece. Most facilities can handle the increase without much cost passed on.
Apart-Badger9394 | a month ago
Idk why you think facilities can pass on increased labor costs without raising prices. They already run on razor thin margins (esp if they rely on gov programs a lot). Labor is one of the largest expenses on healthcare balance sheets. Idk what point you’re even trying to make at this point.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Why does it need to be gradual? While it would be a shock economies have survived worse. The free market can handle it.
Government programs currently pay for 77% of all long term care patients, so some small minority might see an increase in costs. Of the 23% private pay some are rich enough to afford it, others would deplete their savings faster and go onto those government programs.
The same time labor costs increase other things like rent and auto insurance could decrease. Many secondary impacts I am probably missing.
Bottom line is your understanding of how this might play out is not accounting for who currently pays for the majority of long term care or the secondary impacts of a change like this
Apart-Badger9394 | a month ago
Because in general it’s not wise to shock your economy. This sub is generally about economics.
Just because the gov will be the one paying those costs doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect us. Not to mention the government will use your assets to pay for care.
Just from a quick google search (I know, I know, it’s the AI overview blah blah. It might be wrong but I certainly don’t trust your numbers)
>Government programs like Medicaid cover the primary share of costs or residents in specific institutional settings (such as roughly 44% to 48% of overall paid long-term care services and supports expenditures), but the vast majority of daily care hours are unpaid family care. [1, 2, 3, 4]
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
You really don’t understand how nursing homes are paid for and still make claims about people quitting their job if nursing home prices go up.
Nursing homes are generally a one way street. Once in you spend down your money until broke, then the government will pay. Increased costs simply mean you might spend everything before dying. There is no taking someone home because the cost went up.
The average person lives for about a year in a nursing home. The nursing homes I worked with really wanted to see about a year’s assets before admission, they knew the odds of dying were in their favor before they got government rates.
You and I looked at the same source. The government pays for 1/2 the cost of nursing homes in America, but that is 75% of the people in nursing homes ( private pay costs more). Taking care of your mom and dad yourself is generally unpaid as it has always been.
Foreign_Telephone349 | a month ago
Or we just let peoples’ old parents die destitute because they can’t afford care. This is America.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
So much room for improvement in nursing homes.
Dying destitute means nothing if you are in a nursing facility. What exactly do you need the money for?
Honestly the future will have many more people opting for right to die instead of living out their last months demented and in diapers.
AlexandbroTheGreat | a month ago
Probably simultaneously crying about how AI is taking all the jobs, too.
krastem91 | a month ago
Sounds like a structural issue with the economy then …
Workforce and employers will eventually come to a nee equilibrium , and elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service . If one can afford it, great, but just like many of life’s other luxuries not everyone can .
Infinite_Dress_3312 | a month ago
>elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service
Tell me youve never actually had to care for an elderly family member that requires around the clock skilled nursing attention without telling me
PatchyWhiskers | a month ago
Im sure it’s a guy who thinks it’s “woman’s work”
krastem91 | a month ago
Two actually … for about 2 and a half years each …
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
Sounds like?!! It is.
When COVID landed and caused every nation to properly shut down their borders, it forcibly repriced the value of labor by cutting off the unlimited supply of expendable bodies with no alternatives except to work for whatever is offered.
Many American workers saw more progress in wages in benefits in those 18 months than all of the previous fifty years combined. The fact that this progress fizzled out the moment the last admin blew the gates wide open was not lost on a lot of people.
INTPretty | a month ago
So true
floridorito | a month ago
>elderly care should predominantly fall upon family members , not an outsourced service
People should abandon their careers to perform a service 24/7, for free, for which they have no experience or training? No, that is definitely not the answer. And I hate to break the news to you that relative-caregivers are not above financial, emotional, and physical abuse, up to and including murder.
krastem91 | a month ago
Okay, so what do you propose ?
We subsidise elderly care on a national or state level ? To what degree and at the expense of what other program …
The things you stated are all true; and are facts of life , some people are shitty, others are dealt a shitty hand …
AddanDeith | a month ago
As the commenter below stated, they're doing that shady shit at staffed nursing homes that mainly employ citizens too. Nursing homes have major issues and market dynamics around wages are not the major issue.
Dazzling-Rub-8550 | a month ago
Well I’m not sure the seniors and their families can afford to pay much more. So this may result in more seniors evicted from nursing facilities for wealthier seniors who can pay for it.
Sryzon | a month ago
So a service that's already only available to the rich will require even more money?
The vast majority of American seniors age in place until they're forced into hospice.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Nursing homes charge 10k or more a month per patient. Are you sure management couldn’t find something in the budget to give a raise?
Nope, it’s better for ownership to bring in low cost labor. Then stick the public with the medical and infrastructure costs for their employees
Wurm42 | a month ago
For-profit nursing homes should be illegal!
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Non profit corporations can still overpay senior executives. The issue is proper regulation
JitteryJoes1986 | a month ago
Either way, this just means we need a more simplified, humane system.
We'll never get it.
Alone_Hunt1621 | a month ago
Tell that to the medical bills.
joepez | a month ago
If you believe most nursing home owners are going to raise wages you need to look into the industry. It is heavily run by consolidators and individuals who make their money by running as cheaply as possible while charging the most. Many operators would rather run a clinic into the ground then take a profit hit. As has happened many times.
Much like the restaurant, hotel and agriculture Americans aren’t willing to do the hard work for the basic wage. And people aren’t going to put up with the wage driven inflation for the basic prices as well. Our economy was built on low wage jobs supported by immigrants. Heck the head of the TX Restaurant Association just wrote an oped this week on how Congress should pass an immigrant work pass system for restaurants just like did for Ag because restaurants need cheap labor.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
This is an “economic “ subreddit. Staffing levels are fixed by law in many places. Somehow the business owners have convinced everyone supply and demand doesn’t work for the industries they happen to own. Strange.
Apparently it’s just fine exploiting immigrants so you can save $10 on a hotel stay or $5 on a meal.
We already subsidize low wage workers via social programs and medical care. Claiming Americans won’t do restaurant work is of course totally false ( I see them working every day) even more would do it for better pay.
Aloysiusakamud | a month ago
Except they cut social programs as well. Minimum wage is not a living wage in most states. They couldn't even rent an apartment because you need to earn 3 times the rental cost.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
There is another impact of low skill immigration. Competition for housing, which hits our least paid the hardest
Dakizhu | a month ago
More of an issue of supply than a demand problem. In places where we build more housing, housing costs have come down even with an influx of people from other states. It's why we're probably going to see a shift in congressional apportionment from blue states to red states in 2030.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Lol. Without growing our population by 50 million since 2000 we wouldn’t have any housing crisis. Without this overwhelming demand there is no issue.
Petrichordates | a month ago
Wow you magically took the opposite lesson there considering most of our housing is built by immigrant labor and they tend to live in multifamily households.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Most of the housing is not built by immigrant workers. Plenty of citizens work the trades.
Immigrants work all kinds of jobs, it’s not like every single one is building housing. Unless they cross the border with a house, they compete for housing.
Plenty of citizens live in shared housing
Dakizhu | a month ago
Immigrant labor is a significant component of the construction industry. While they're only a third of tradesmen, they actually have a majority in several trades. Even if it doesn't translate into most housing, the loss of these workers would seriously slow the construction industry.
(Source: link)
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Without the illegal workers suppressing wages those trades would pay more. That would attract many more people into the trades if they could afford to raise a family on the income.
Somehow we built housing without massive immigration 30 years ago.
Without growing the population 50 million since 2000 we wouldn’t need so much housing. Our other infrastructure would be much less stressed
iamjakub | a month ago
Immigrants can be citizens bro.
Dakizhu | a month ago
It's not just simple supply and demand unless you're okay with future generations working predominantly on supporting the elderly instead of starting their own families.
It's a demographics issue. You need a new generation of workers to support the elderly. If people aren't having enough children, then you have to import labor to make up the difference.
Either that or accept a massive decline in living standards for retirees and push MAID on social security recipients.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Basically you want to push a pyramid scheme on everyone, requiring ever larger population to keep things going.
Or we could become more efficient and automate everything we can.
Its not a demographic issue if you get more efficient. It looks like AI might be freeing up a bunch of people to do new jobs anyway as it wipes out a bunch of white collar jobs.
The other problem with your claim of a demographic issue is that labor force participation is currently at a multi decade low. We have a lot of people that could work but don’t right now
Laruae | a month ago
Show me where "wage driven inflation" has occurred.
It's a boogieman dreamed up by those who don't want wages to increase, stating that any wage changes will directly drive inflation.
wehrmann_tx | a month ago
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FT3dO3GWUAINtAy.jpg
PatchyWhiskers | a month ago
Unlike elder nursing care we can all go without so many trips to a restaurant
JitteryJoes1986 | a month ago
That's not necessarily 100% true.
Americans did low wage jobs for a long time, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s. Illegal immigration become more prominent in the late 90s and early 2000s and into the 2010s.
Millennials, in their 20s, were working for cheap in the restaurant and hotel industries for a long time, until they upgraded to higher earning careers/roles. Gen Z/Gen Y doesn't want to do these jobs. The restaurant and hotel industries are just awful on this regard.
Agricultural is still heavy in immigration and I think that is where the culprit is.
The restaurant business model is dying and the head of the TX Restaurant Association knows this. He needs/wants injection of cheap labor for better margins. I say, let him die on his hill screaming alone.
Laruae | a month ago
> Gen Z/Gen Y doesn't want to do these jobs.
You mean to say "Gen Z/Gen Y doesn't want to do these jobs for the pay being offered".
As ever, we fail to address the equivalent quality of life of a worker doing the job in say, the 90's versus now.
I suspect with the lack of meaningful wage increases for some of these jobs and the rapid increase in utility and housing costs younger workers doing these jobs will just have a worse quality of life if they are paid what is being offered.
RosemaryBiscuit | a month ago
"Gen Z/Gen Y isn't poor enough to be motivated to take these jobs" is probably more accurate. GenX didn't want to do these jobs either. But there was no other reasonable way to get the car and community college classes needed to advance.
anewbys83 | a month ago
Ah, but they won't. They'll just cut service quality, like they already do. Grandma will have to wait all day to get her incontinence brief changed.
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
People need to figure out if they want jobs with living wages or cheap exploitable labor.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Well apparently the nursing home ownership wants cheap labor and no regulation on staffing levels.
And they absolutely will close if profits are only 700 million instead of a billion this year. Who would bother to work for 700 million?
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
Elder care industry, hospitality conglomerates, manufacturing concerns, logistics firms, big ag, every C-Suite loves to see an endless supply of desperate humans that can undercut US citizen and legal immigrant workers. After all they all use sub contractors that provide plausible deniability.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Of course. Then in this economic subreddit people are claiming the laws of supply and demand don’t apply to industries that exploit immigrant workers. Its very confusing
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
That's why as the kid of a midwest and Appalachian region union coal and steel worker family it is very confusing to me how the DSA and progressives can claim to simultaneously be pro-labor and pro open border.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
Because the DSA and progressive left don’t understand economics. The working classes are the ones dealing with competition in the labor and housing markets. Apparently the DSA doesn’t care
CspanSF | a month ago
Elder care is a low profit margin industry and the taxpayer and consumer already stretched thin, so higher wages mean higher prices more people dropping out of the labor force to take care of their parents.
Super_Mario_Luigi | a month ago
It's crazy that the narrative around here is either "pay a living wage" or "pay illegal labor"
karina87 | a month ago
Yet plenty of the immigrants were able to live in America with the current wages? Wouldn’t that already be a “living wage”?
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
Tell that to the labor organizers who want 30, 40 or even 50 dollar minimum wages.
br_k_nt_eth | a month ago
Ah so you’ve never actually dealt with this industry, huh. These places are all owned by venture capitalist creeps and monopolies now.
Sure though, the Epstein class and their boy in the White House will hop right on that lmao
Xyrus2000 | a month ago
That is NOT how privatized health care works. At all.
They do not raise wages. They cut staff. They don't raise wages. They cut equipment. These are private companies, and the only thing they care about is profit. They are more than happy to let grandma rot in a bed covered in her own excrement if it means they can get an extra 10 cents on the dollar.
From care services to medicine to insurance, the for-profit health industry is an engine of cruelty and callousness. It is a giant amoral profit extraction machine fueled by the pain, suffering, and death of the people.
Better wages? What a joke.
Stompnutz | a month ago
Wait until you find out how the world actually works. But oh, you're an engineer-- seems like you may have the disease.
alilhillbilly | a month ago
Yeah, it's basically the inheritance tax and nursing homes get 60% and the government gets nothing.
buythedipnow | a month ago
Not for the seniors draining their savings to just exist
FrequentBox2148 | a month ago
Oh sweet summer child.
Petrichordates | a month ago
Win for whom?
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
American low wage health care workers
Moral-Relativity | a month ago
They are businesses, where there's limited competition and customers are basically captives. You can almost smell the quality of service they deliver on average.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
There is something like 18,000 nursing homes in the USA. Certainly we could come up with ways to reward those who have the best care since 77% of the people use government funds to pay
Moral-Relativity | a month ago
There are actually less beds and capacity compared to before covid: https://www.mcknights.com/news/us-nursing-home-capacity-declines-twice-as-steep-as-estimated-jama-study/. Demand of course grows as population ages and life expectancy rises.
Think about it, the government of course wants to pay as little as possible per patient since tax revenue isn't limitless, and the businesses operating nursing homes want to maximize profit.
Analysis has shown that not-for-profit nursing homes, about a quarter of the total, tend to have better staffing levels and care because there's no investor waiting to be paid. We need a lot more of them.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
I am not surprised. Covid went through the local nursing homes like a buzz saw, they lost a bunch of patients and continue to lose them every time the facilities have an outbreak.
It used to be some patients would pass away from the flu or pneumonia every year, now we have covid taking a few on top of that. The facility I visit has 1/4 shut down for lack of patients and staff, it seems the medically weaker are just smaller in number right now.
curiousengineer601 | a month ago
The number in nursing homes has dropped since 2015
2015: 15,648 facilities; ~1.37 million residents.
2020: ~15,300 facilities; 1.32 million residents.
2021–2022: Sharp drop to 14,700 facilities; resident numbers bottomed near 1.10 million. (Covid deaths)
2025: 14,742 certified facilities; recovering slightly to 1.24 million residents.
I think there are more assisted living facilities taking some people who used to be in nursing homes. Along with memory care
thewimsey | a month ago
Reimbursement rates for home caregivers under Medicaid has increased quite a bit in the past 10 years, and especially post covid, which is going to account for some of this as well.
Grimke42 | a month ago
Yea that is not what is going to happen.
jebsalump | a month ago
Oh, they’ll just be shuttered before that.
CatPesematologist | a month ago
more likely they will replace with fewer humans and more technology. meaning AI and robots.
So, that means more capital investment and more expensive care. They might outsource robot watchers in another country. So ultimately, it doesn’t necessarily result in lower cost, better care or more jobs in the US.
Its really why we need force a minimal baseline of services thru taxes for regular people, because the market will almost always invest in AI or remote tech if they think they can save a dime on US employee wages and benefits.
Currently we have a patchwork of healthcare, disability insurance, FMLA and maternity leave, etc, that fall on businesses with regulation and “rational actor theory.” We’d get more efficiency and value if we made these taxpayer services and freed businesses of some of the extra obligation. their job is to navigate the market for profit. The government needs to go back to regulation and providing services so that businesses dont have to manage profit and try to b3 taxpayer services. Just collect taxes from businesses and people and provide the services.
No-Permit-9331 | a month ago
They won’t be paying better wages, people’s desperation will have them take those jobs for Pennie’s on the dollar AND as they start arresting people for crimes they may have thought of committing, will be fortunate enough to be enslaved in “the system” for free labor. Buckle up! They do not have good plans for us.
SleepyHobo | a month ago
>So the jobs being “stolen” were only here because immigrants were willing to work them by being exploited via substandard wages and inhospitable working conditions.
FTFY. If these employers were willing to pay a living wage, not understaff, and provide better working conditions then native citizens would be willing to work these jobs.
It's not like a healthcare job is like working on a farm or in a field, so that excuse doesn't apply here.
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
The horror, wealthy people with "In This House..." signs might have to start paying local living wage to their servants that are not afraid of ICE.
Oh no!
iamjakub | a month ago
Did you read the article. These are not typical healthcare jobs. Elderly services is a nice way of saying taking care of confused incontinent people. So getting attacked by a confused grandpa with a shitty diaper. So yeah, a lot of people don’t want that healthcare jobs.
Swoly_Deadlift | a month ago
If entire industries will "collapse" if they're forced to pay wages that are acceptable to ordinary Americans, maybe the employers in those industries don't deserve to exist in the first place.
The demand for healthcare and elder care isn't going to disappear. Perhaps instead of trying to make an essential industry function under a for-profit model, we could try a different model like how virtually every other country handles it.
ThatNewspaperDude | a month ago
Oh no CNAs will finally make good money. What a nightmare!
Syntactico | a month ago
Oh, the horror of caring for your family rather than having underpaid minorities bear the burden.
mattjf22 | a month ago
>400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers are losing their temporary status in October so buckle up
Fuck we can definitely expect another disease or virus a couple months later.
jan1of1 | a month ago
Fact check: While it is true that Venezuelans will lose their Temporary Protective Status that 400,000 numbers includes Venezuelans doing construction and hospitality as well as healthcare. And yes, it will still have a negative effect.
sum_dude44 | a month ago
news flash-- immigration lowers costs of goods & services through cheap labor by increasing supply
it's amazing how Republicans have been lobotomized by MAGA
illegalmorality | a month ago
also they'd stop lowering wages if we gave them legal statuses. instead of keeping them to pay taxes and stimulate the economy, we opted to waste resources to lose their revenue to gain nothing.
These_Foolish_Things | a month ago
We’ve all heard the fallacy of the trickle down economy. I wonder if this is a real-world example of the trickle up economy. Low cost foreign workers forming the foundation that allows the rest of us to get ahead.
Ok-Compote6002 | a month ago
this is a good thing in the long term. and hate to be pedantic here but better them than us.
MundaneOrdinary7493 | a month ago
Less cheap labor means high prices on everything, don’t forget.
Ok-Highlight8715 | a month ago
I have been struggling to find a job in Healthcare because its cheaper for me to stay home than pay for gas, daycare and other expenses on the dirt wages the entry level jobs pay. Sorry but maybe dont characterize exploitation labor as a bonus to Americans. If the lowest wages go up, so does everyone else's. Offering visas to desperate immigrants without adequate wage protection is fucking gross and damages everyone.
edit to say: this article also conveniently glosses over the fact that cuts to social services (not just deportations) are why people cant afford to pay for their loved ones to get care.
Born_Common_5966 | a month ago
That is one of the goals of the Republican Regime to force women out of the paid workforce to care for family
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
If it's more cost effective for people to quit their jobs to care for their parents or partners than to pay someone else to do it, then what's the issue? Those employers will need to raise wages or just deal with it.
theStaircaseProject | a month ago
When family members quit jobs to provide unpaid care, it saves money on formal care costs, but it triggers major systemic issues. Workers lose wages, retirement savings, and career growth, while the economy faces labor shortages and strained public health systems that cannot simply absorb the lost productivity.
Also, let’s be real: retirement homes “just dealing with it” will affect the care their patients receive most of all.
PatchyWhiskers | a month ago
If someone never has kids because their child-bearing years are taken up by nursing their elderly parents, congratulations, you just pushed the problem into the future 30 years.
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
How can wages be lost when the opportunity cost is well below the savings gained by providing care vs paying a facility?
Why would someone work when it costs them $2 in care bills for every dollar they earn? An example ratio, not actual figures. It's a net win for someone to quit such a job and provide care until a better paying opportunity comes up.
theStaircaseProject | a month ago
If a worker earns $30,000 but care costs $50,000, quitting feels like a $20,000 win today. However, if that choice costs them $300,000 in lifetime retirement savings and prevents them from ever getting a promotion, the long-term net math becomes deeply negative.
DeathFlameStroke | a month ago
It also has downstream effects because when people earn, they spend which employs other people. Undocumented workers also disproportionately pay tax toward services they do not use.
Leaving society, homeschooling and “living off the land” are all similar in that they a very romantic ideas, but it overall creates large systemic inefficiencies.
Our society, culture and technology tend toward interdependence and multiculturalism; this drive to nativistic autarky is antiamerican
Not_FinancialAdvice | a month ago
It's often a much easier calculation because significant care often costs $10-12k per month, so DIY turns it into basically a $180k/yr job after accounting for taxes (though you end up with $0 at the end of the month). Most people would jump at a 180k/yr job.
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
Uhh, how exactly is someone going to save for retirement when their expenses already grossly exceed the income? Assuming 10% savings rate plus interest, you're still looking at well over fifty years to save $300k off a job paying 30k a year. And 10% savings is already a horribly unrealistic assumption unless that person makes decent money off the books.
theStaircaseProject | a month ago
Because you’re assuming things like (a) that they’re unmarried and thus have no other household income and that (b) they’re earning $30,000 that whole ten years (or that its only ten years). This still gets at your shorter-term perspective rather than seeing the compounding long-term workforce benefits.
Seems like if what you’re saying holds water, high schoolers should just drop out to take care of their grandparents at home since the high schoolers aren’t going to be earning meaningful wages during that time anyways, right? Or does the long-term perspective favor keeping them in school so their ability to contribute is greater over time?
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
With the AI doing AI stuff to the entry level jobs that require formal education, this is an ugly but very relevant question. The jury is going to be out on this one for a few years at least. Though anyone who's got five or six digits of student debt should expect and prepare for the worst.
As for the other sources of income, I'm only going based off of what you presented in your previous reply. A dollar is still a dollar, and in that case one scenario is a net $20k negative, whereas reallocating labor by quitting an outside job is a net zero expense.
The fact that some industries will have to try a bit harder to get and retain workers is irrelevant to the individual in your scenario.
morbie5 | a month ago
> 400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers
According to the article it is 400,000 Venezuelan workers, not necessarily working in healthcare. Read the article before you come and preach to us.
Further, it isn't clear how many of them are actually workers, it is an assumption that they all have jobs. 400,000 Venezuelans may indeed be losing TPS, that doesn't mean they are all in the workforce tho
br_k_nt_eth | a month ago
Yeah for sure that won’t hurt anything. Look at how well farms are doing after all!
God, the cope from y’all. Your vote fucked us. Congrats. Please do wear your hats in public so everyone can identify you moving forward.
morbie5 | a month ago
Giving facts and correcting someone that was too lazy to even report what the article said correctly is now 'cope'? lolz
Alone_Hunt1621 | a month ago
How do they eat, clothe, and shelter themselves if they aren’t working?
morbie5 | a month ago
Most may in fact have jobs. But as to those that don't, maybe they live with a relative? Or maybe they engage in criminal activity? Who tf knows.
The fact is you don't need to work to have TPS, it isn't a status that is contingent on having a job. You can work but it is not a requirement. So to say or imply that x number of people that are on TPS are also all working is flat out wrong.
At best the article is being lazy with wording, at worst it is being deliberately misleading
Alone_Hunt1621 | a month ago
So some of these people could be children?
morbie5 | a month ago
Some of them almost certainly are children
OddlyFactual1512 | a month ago
>400,000 Venezuelan healthcare workers are losing their temporary status in October so buckle up.
I'll fix it for you:
400,000 Venezuelan ~~healthcare workers~~ refugees are losing their temporary status in October so buckle up.
anewbys83 | a month ago
Gee! If only someone had seen this coming. Like, where were all the policy experts and economists? Oh yeah, they were there pointing out this wold fail the whole time! This is the problem when expertise is vilified and people who know nothing about these issues pontificate and get elected. It's almost like they shouldn't have done this with simultaneous expectations derived from stories that Americans were just waiting in the wings for these jobs.
Turbulent_Target_784 | a month ago
Oh we don’t listen to experts in American anymore. We just listen to “influencers”.
ThatNewspaperDude | a month ago
The same economists that promoted migrant workers as cheaper replacements for the American workforce.
My hospital can’t find workers because they refuse to update salaries, so they went through an agency and now all our CNAs can’t speak English and have no uniform care standard.
aaahhhhhhfine | a month ago
So many people - including the majority of people here on reddit - seem to think that immigrants steal jobs, or that if we remove immigrants, businesses will suddenly have to pay more and everything will be great. It's pretty wild.
On one thread, people complain about how their groceries are so expensive they can barely afford them... Or how it's impossible to eat out... Or travel... Or how their grandma can't afford a nursing home... Or how all kinds of other stupid things are so expensive now...
Then they're in threads like these being like... "Yeah finally businesses will have to pay more for staff!" With no understanding that all those costs are getting passed onto them.
So many US economic policies now are basically populist nonsense - on both the left and right - and it's a big problem. All that stuff does is lower the standard of living.
31LIVEEVIL13 | a month ago
you're assuming that they don't mean to cause economic chaos and looming catastrophe.
makemeking706 | a month ago
The unspoken rule is that you are not supposed to actually try to raid businesses and deport immigrants. You're only supposed to rely on the rhetoric to win votes from the morons. I always inferred these people are too dumb, or too outside the establishment, to appreciate the game being played.
HumbledManSeeks | a month ago
This. I work in construction and if we just relied on our own citizen labor nothing and I mean LITERALLY nothing, would ever get built.
Fieos | a month ago
We have plenty of domestic and legal labor to meet demand without illegal immigration. What we have is an unwillingness of employers to pay appropriate wages.
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
Just see Bernie Sanders' speeches from before 2025.
Moral-Relativity | a month ago
Maybe you meant in general, but the healthcare workers the article is talking about are not here illegally. It's just that the government has suddenly decided to remove their legal status.
Fact is US taxpayers cannot afford to fund enough nursing facilities on the wage Americans expect for these demanding and thankless jobs. On average each US citizen (including children) already owes foreign debt holders $27k, not even counting the debt we owe other Americans.
ContributionBig5976 | a month ago
There are 7 million people on the unemployment roles, if you deport 10 million illegals and push out another 20 million legal immigrants where does the other 23 million come from?
Swoly_Deadlift | a month ago
Oh no industries might have to adapt to be more efficient, pay more, and perhaps even sponsor temporary work visas instead of illegally employing undocumented workers. The horror.
ContributionBig5976 | a month ago
But probably they'll just have layoffs due to lower demand and inability to find workers.
BlackCow | a month ago
To be fair that number is massively underinflated.
ContributionBig5976 | a month ago
There are 210 milly working aged Americans
160 million employed
20 million in college
11 million at home parents or care givers
7 million on unemployment roles
8 million on disability
That leaves about 4 million, but many of these are early retirees, the idle rich, or people who otherwise don't need or want to work.
There's some overlap with these numbers but there's no secret vast horde of nonworking Americans who can replace tens of millions of deported workers and families
BlackCow | a month ago
Yeah right cuz the government would never lie to us lol. The real number is much higher, bet.
ContributionBig5976 | a month ago
I'm not the government?
BlackCow | a month ago
The government releases the unemployment numbers. If you believe that you probably believe the economy is good right now too! XD
ContributionBig5976 | a month ago
None of those numbers I just gave you came from the government
BlackCow | a month ago
The government, some neoliberal think tank, your ass? All one in the same.
ContributionBig5976 | a month ago
Sorry if I've offended you. Give me your numbers so I won't make this mistake again.
Fieos | a month ago
Reformed legal immigration, seasonal worker immigration, etc. Why aren't those people adding value to their country of origin?
ContributionBig5976 | a month ago
Because America can pay more for that value.
Their countries of origins can't attract immigrants like America can, which is why they have higher unemployment and lower wages.
Since its founding America has imported workers to build it's economy and every level, creating economic growth, higher wages and more employment for Americans who were born here.
Fieos | a month ago
Nice way to lower the floor of labor costs and maximize profits. Unethical as hell too
iamjakub | a month ago
No one said America was built ethically. That would be an asinine statement. The richest man in the US was its first president and made his money on stolen land speculation and slave labor. America is built by and for the rich and has been since day one.
Fieos | a month ago
So you are good with perpetuating it?
iamjakub | a month ago
Did I say that? I don’t believe in American Exceptionalism. But like I replied in a different comment, some prices have a ceiling at which they can no longer be sustained. If it costs $30 to pick a pint of strawberries, then that job just goes away so you have to be ok with fewer jobs overall.
Fieos | a month ago
So you are good with slave labor or a lower caste for strawberries?
Ignoth | a month ago
The solution to slavery was to free them. Grant them full rights and protections. Not to deport them.
I’m down for that.
Give immigrants full rights and worker protections. Fine businesses that fail to comply.
That should make everyone happy, yeah?
Venous | a month ago
You're getting bodied so hard and for free too. Entertaining to watch.
No-Ad8127 | a month ago
Got any ideas that people will actually go with?
ContributionBig5976 | a month ago
Are there any countries with less immigration and higher wages?
No_Permission6930 | a month ago
You and me both know that none of those are happening. This administration is making it even harder to immigrate legally by slow walking green card applications, cutting H1B grace period so that people have to leave immediately when they lose their job instead of having 60 days to find another job, etc. You’re waving at a solution that this administration has actively closed the door on.
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
Shh, livable wages are cryptonite for service economies.
Tintoverde | a month ago
The problem is the jobs the illegal immigrants are doing are VERY hard. Consider working outside in Texas heat, which most US citizens and legal immigrants will not do. There are other examples like restaurants.
Fieos | a month ago
So they should do hard jobs at slave wages so you can have cheaper stuff or some company can have higher profits?
Yoboicharly97 | a month ago
That’s USA to you
iamjakub | a month ago
The first imported workers were slaves but once outlawed it just became immigrants. America was built by slaves/immigrants and cheap labor and funded by the rich for the rich. Whether it was the Chinese building the economic driver of the 19th century, or the Hispanics farming the southwest, African Americans in the south and good old fashioned European refugees for the northeast in various waves, the US was built by immigration whether forced, legal, or illegal.
Yoboicharly97 | a month ago
Something no one mentions is most of those immigrants flourish and build a beautiful life in America called the American dream while being able to support their family back home. They trying so hard to kill the American dream
iamjakub | a month ago
The American dream is a carrot on a stick.
Yoboicharly97 | a month ago
I’m living it so I’d say otherwise. Immigrant from Mexico who has a good career in USA and just baught my 5 bedroom home in SoCal in February. It’s still alive just harder to reach
iamjakub | a month ago
If one in a million hit the lottery it doesn’t make it the norm.
iamjakub | a month ago
Also, I hope I did not send a message of anti immigration. I know many foreign born people doing well. I am saying the dream is bait to induce immigration.
Swoly_Deadlift | a month ago
That's all fine and dandy that immigrants can find upward class mobility through migration to a country with a stronger economy, but that doesn't exactly help the people who were born here and doing worse off than their parents. Every generation since the industrial revolution was wealthier than the generation before them. However that's been declining for generations now. Millennials are roughly just as likely to be worse-off than their parents as they are better-off, and genz is on-track to be the first generation that is statistically more likely to have less wealth than their parents by 30. Immigrants flooding the market with cheap labor isn't exactly helping those Americans.
Yoboicharly97 | a month ago
The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can achieve success, prosperity, and upward mobility through hard work, determination, and initiative. Everyone has the same opportunities that I had so what’s your point? I busted my ass off and got where I am through hard work isn’t that what republicans preach? I don’t get what you’re trying to say this is America which was built by slave and immigrants and this has been going on since America was made. Imigrants coming to America and building it has been a thing since America was made just work hard for what you want it’s still possible in the USA
Fieos | a month ago
Genuinely happy for you
Tintoverde | a month ago
You have data to back up that “most of the …” ?
Yoboicharly97 | a month ago
https://ranabr.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj26066/files/media/file/mobility_draft_august_1_2020.pdf
Swoly_Deadlift | a month ago
Everyone who hates capitalism adopts the mentality of a sociopathic CEO the moment you bring up immigration.
Tintoverde | a month ago
The small businesses also get higher profits because of this. Most of mom and pop restaurants I had chance to looked at the kitchen is full of Latinos (in North Texas) even in ethnic restaurants. The busboys in chains are Latinos also.
Is slave wages good? No. But are Americans prepared to pay higher cost? Also No.
How do you change the cycle? I do not know. I am just pointing out that simply disputing OPs (of this thread ) simply saying “we have labor at home” does not work. US economy has always been based on slave labor/wages. And these kind of statement really just for Reddit karma.
Tintoverde | a month ago
No. I am trying to point to us keyboard warriors there is no easy fix.
shiningdickhalloran | a month ago
Restaurants are a very different ballgame from Texas summer heat in the fields, roofing and the like. It's tiny margins killing restaurant wages.
BangBangMeatMachine | a month ago
A lot of people would tough it out for $150k/yr.
DingbattheGreat | a month ago
No, that isn’t the problem.
Tintoverde | a month ago
Then what is THE problem? Everything looks simple in Reddit
Hussar223 | a month ago
cool. so where is that spirit of american entrepreneurial innovation to make these jobs less shit, compensated adequately and using technology to make them easier.
any idiot can rely on cheap/slave labor from immigrants. time to get innovating
iamjakub | a month ago
A lot of these innovations come from immigrant Americans. Humans should not be property of any state rather the state is the property of humans. Where you are born should not be more important than what you can contribute and provide and create for the society you live in.
Tintoverde | a month ago
Sigh
tentwelveeight | a month ago
Just going to leave this here. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/alabamas-immigration-disaster
romuloskagen | a month ago
Paying “appropriate wages” (whatever that means) leads to higher costs for consumers, which can mean that people buy less of those items, or less of some other items, to compensate. It doesn’t just come out in the wash.
Fieos | a month ago
Market value for labor
romuloskagen | a month ago
Which can mean the market shrinks because no one buys. When things get too expensive, people stop buying them. Labor is the single biggest cost in most of the goods and services we buy. Raise it too much and demand will shrink.
riseandshine_3719 | a month ago
Jobs Americans don’t want to do? Can we stop with this bullshit?
Illustrious-Sugar-84 | a month ago
This is going to cause a response of "people on assistance should work these jobs!" before it meets the response of "maybe employers should pay appropriate wages".
whiskey_priest_fell | a month ago
NGL, this does sound like eventually it creates a situation where businesses will have to raise wages to hire staff or go under.
If wages are artificially lowered due to undocumented labor supply then Americans will benefit in wages when that supply leaves. To some extent this is the equivalent (at the macro) of a union worked on strike (legal American worker who wont work due to too low of wages) whose scab just got deported so the business has to decide to pay better wages to the union worker or go out of business.
Pjpjpjpjpj | a month ago
Yes, to a degree.
Other factors are the price sensitivity of demand, substitution options, and imports. Some of that can be controlled somewhat, some can not.
I’m all for $15 hamburgers with livable wages vs $5 hamburgers exploiting workers. But let’s be real - many people will stop eating hamburgers and overall employment will go down. Which means some businesses will go under even if they increase wages to get the employees they need.
RagePoop | a month ago
This just means our current system of resource distribution is fundamentally broken. Might have something to do with a tiny subset of the population siphoning everything off the top and disappearing it into the caymans or whatever, maybe.
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
Really, the same concept where almost all businesses will opt for mass firings rather than across the board wage cuts when the business is slow and payroll has to come down.
So_HauserAspen | a month ago
Homeless people will work for a lower wage and businesses don't care about quality
No_Permission6930 | a month ago
That’s not how the economy works. While immigrants take jobs, they also create demand. If you deport 10% of US population, yes there’d be 10% less people competing for job opportunities at a burger chain, but the burger chain will also see 10% less customers, so they’d be hiring 10% less people. Everything scales roughly linearly and there’s no free lunch.
CombinationSilent877 | a month ago
It definitely can, but it will raise prices for everyone else. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but we’ll have to wait and see how this all shakes out.
-mudflaps- | a month ago
Sure but they McDonald's pays $23ph in other countries and the prices are the same, labor costs are about 20% of their total operating costs
chalkrow | a month ago
And then those wages (costs) get passed on to the consumer directly which makes a lot of services unaffordable/pricier.
ACivtech | a month ago
Exactly. I’m not buying the bias of the article. Canada is in the opposite situation with to much foreign workforce, wages are atrocious, stagnated, and businesses are taking full advantage.
Flab-a-doo | a month ago
These caretaking roles are mostly paid by households. I want people to be paid good wages, but this won’t stick it to “businesses” or “employers”. It will stick it to a lot of middle class families trying to keep two earners working instead of having one quit to take care of family. It’s a catch 22
daylily | a month ago
“Even as some employers lose those workers, we’re not going to be able to afford to replace them at the wages necessary,” Swonk warned.
So wages for new employees, legal workers, should go up.
303Carpenter | a month ago
The absolute horror that people might be able to make more money
tetrisoutlet | a month ago
The absolute horror that we dont have 2nd class citizens with no legal protections for their employment
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
Truly the end of the world. Damn that Bernie Sanders with his xenophonic talk about illegals depressing wages and stuff.
Tyler10274 | a month ago
He terk our jerbs gab em to da emmigrants and, now! We're being forced to take em back, and raise da pay? WHADAFACK.
iamjakub | a month ago
As long as we can all agree that some businesses will just not be able to exist if they are paying a livable wage and healthcare costs. There will be fewer but better paying jobs overall but we could easily end up with fewer overall jobs and less economic growth. I am not arguing those are good or bad, I’m just saying that is a likely possibility. You can see it happening to fast food now. McDonald’s would be twice its current already inflated costs. When that McDonalds closes it is a franchise, so likely a local owner and all the low and medium wage workers are out of a job. I don’t care if McDonald’s ceases to exist but it is just one example of a business that probably is not sustainable with livable wage costs.
303Carpenter | a month ago
That's a lot of words to say working class and blue collar people need to sacrifice their livelyhoods, health and futures for everyone else
iamjakub | a month ago
Nope. A lot of words to say some business models are built on low wages so an increase will get rid of some. I did not make any suggestions.
303Carpenter | a month ago
I wasn't calling for any living wage legislation I just don't think American workers should have to compete against third world labor rates
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
Right? Everyone likes to protest and argue for living wage. Now they want illegal alien labor that's easy to exploit? Okay.
Z0idberg_MD | a month ago
No, labor markets will crumble. The “economics” of certain sectors will change.
Let me rephrase this, let’s say you are just able to meet the wage demands of elder care. Now the costs of these services increase dramatically. If you can’t afford it, there is no “just pay someone more to do it” scenario.
That’s something people don’t consider.
Like fruit picking. No one is going to pay much buyer prices for fruit. They’ll cut back and the industry as a whole will suffer.
At the end of the day, even if you argue “people should be paid more, if you don’t have a plan that address all sides of the economic issues, you end up with a lose-lose.
BangBangMeatMachine | a month ago
This is only true where margins are thin. But there are a lot of companies in the US with large margins that can afford to raise wages. And there are companies where labor is not the major driver of prices and they can afford to raise prices enough to raise wages enough to retain workers.
It's also important to note that both things will happen at the same time. If a company is facing a situation where they either reduce their workforce and sell less, or pay workers more and run an operating loss, some companies will choose to raise prices, some will make cuts to the business, some will find new efficiencies, some will find was to pass costs on to the consumer that they can tolerate. Assuming an industry with some competition, all of that happens at the same time across the many businesses in the space, and the net effect is a more expensive product/service that's harder to access and worse than before. And in at least some areas some workers that remain in the industry will earn more.
Only in a monopoly market will you see one strategy pursued exclusively.
Z0idberg_MD | a month ago
I don’t think the industries where undocumented workers are concentrated are not “high margin”. agriculture, hospitality, food service etc
Either way, what do we gain from this? Wages are not going to increase substantially.
BangBangMeatMachine | a month ago
I'm not advocating for deportation. I'm just saying that it's not as cut-and-dried as services needing to be cut in all cases.
iamjakub | a month ago
Exactly, some prices have a ceiling. No one is happy with $30 per pint strawberries. Strawberries just disappear or become another product exclusively for the rich.
grimtree | a month ago
Or they'll just import instead of distributing pricier local produce. Something that can't be done for healthcare services.
Tyler10274 | a month ago
Ah, the Argentine beef special. Time to import e-medicine from India and cut actual doctors. We have the technology. You can see a doctor after going through 3-4 e-visits and we manage to check off the boxes until we're forced to do something in person after appeasing the insurance overlords. Who know medicine better than my doctor.
Currently experiencing this for both pre and now, post surgery complications. Boy do I not support Mario's brother.
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
Has anyone ever died from an acute strawberry deficiency? If a handful of luxury items and luxury services get repriced, that's just acceptable losses.
Tyler10274 | a month ago
Russia is having a little bit of a tantrum over their wildberries. Probably the closest currently.
HeinousMcAnus | a month ago
Calling strawberries a luxury item is wild.
rvkevin | a month ago
It's just an example. It would affect other labor markets the same. You could just as well say that houses are a luxury item that are acceptable losses and people should be happy living in apartments instead.
MaterialWillingness2 | a month ago
With all the fear mongering about communism it's kind of funny to see capitalism recreating the same conditions my parents grew up under in communist Poland where everyone grew their own fruits and vegetables because they were too expensive to buy and lived in hastily constructed apartments (but at least they owned them).
Emergency-Style7392 | a month ago
so people want illegal migrants to work in terrible conditions for low pay, just so they can heave cheaper stuff? remind me why that position is "moral" instead of being basically pro slavery?
Z0idberg_MD | a month ago
I love how you took a nuanced economic situation, which benefited everyone, and turned into an absurdist, overly-simplistic sound bite to promote a system that benefits no one and harms everyone.
They're not slaves. They are immigrants. When my father came here as an immigrant, he worked 4 jobs. He did it for 5 years. He eventually was able to meet my mother and and build a very good life here. He owned 2 homes, and raised children who went to college and are financially independent and sucessful.
You: "it would be better if they deported him when he was 25 because it's basically slavery"
Ignoring it's NOT slavery, and they can come and go whenever they want, and these immigrants choose this sacrifice at one point in their lives for the opportunity to grow a family in the US, deporting him and millions of others has ZERO positive influence on anything. it makes everything worse for everyone.
br_k_nt_eth | a month ago
Yeah for sure. Venture capitalists are absolutely known for increasing wages and not passing on costs to the customers they bleed dry.
Fieos | a month ago
Your solution to the problem is illegal/slave labor? Are you the venture capitalist?
Z0idberg_MD | a month ago
If the outcome is worse for everyone, even the low-wage immigrant workers, what is the argument here? You basically chopped the legs out of someone that chose to come here and work in this system for the chance at a better life for their family in the next generation, raised prices on essential goods and services, people can afford less of them, and those industries suffer, all without seeing a meaningful increase in wages or job growth.
It’s simple when you make it simple. But it’s not simple. There is a reason why no reputable economist ever supported that kind of policy. Everyone suffers. No one wins.
Fieos | a month ago
[ Removed by Reddit ]
br_k_nt_eth | a month ago
My friend, you must learn class consciousness and think bigger and better, not just for yourself but for all of us. The rich are never, ever going to magically change their hearts. They have way more legislative and legal loopholes than you do, and they are wealth hoarders. They have a sickness.
Check out America’s Labor Rights Movement and the push into the Progressive Era. It’s been a century now. We’re overdue.
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
Nobody expects the folks on the better end of the income distribution to budge out of goodness of heart. Which is why a good number of Americans feel that a much more feasible way to fix the issue is by forcibly reducing the labor supply through additional immigration enforcement.
Fieos | a month ago
I'll take my economic background and education over yours, but thanks.
br_k_nt_eth | a month ago
If all it’s done is lead you to “the only other possibility for fixing depressed ages and exploitation is slavery,” you’re doing yourself no favors.
Fieos | a month ago
Run for office and get this all sorted out for us then. Thanks in advance.
br_k_nt_eth | a month ago
Working on it. You volunteering during the midterms? Now’s the time to link up to someone. You need help finding a candidate or cause in your state?
Lazar76 | a month ago
good shit for taking action
Fieos | a month ago
Let us know when you're done.
br_k_nt_eth | a month ago
You didn’t answer my question. You are getting active and involved in your community for the midterms so we can unfuck this, right?
Right?
throwaway43234235234 | a month ago
Of course it is. Those companies weren't willing to pay actual wages sto survive so they just closed up shop or stopped hiring. Now we have tons to do and prices are through the roof because good wages aren't affordable by most small businesses or normal person until the corporate profiteering and monopolies stops which at this pace is never going to happen.
As long as every small business is squeezed out of existence and costs of basic materials and foods are skyrocketing theres no extra money to create jobs or increase pay. Its easier to just markup doritoes to 7$ a bag.
Its not raising quality of life or opportunity for anyone. Its just making us all as poor as the immigrants were the day they arrived.
No-Distribution-6841 | a month ago
Lots of people have been laid off, I hope everyone that currently has not had much luck getting stable employment do get those jobs so they can get back on their feet.
spiringTankmonger | a month ago
The illusion that this workforce shortage could eventually increase wages ignores the bigger truth that the deportation induced recession will preemptively wipe out these effects.
If the entire system is dependent on underpaid workers, deporting those workers won't materialise better outcomes, that would require significant reforms completly countrary to the political platform of the party Americans entrusted with governing.
Swoly_Deadlift | a month ago
If the entire system is dependent on an infinite supply of migrant workers to exploit, perhaps we shouldn't be using this system in the first place.
There are ways to reduce the number of migrant workers without snapping our fingers to make them all disappear overnight. Shutting off the inflow of immigrants and gradually cracking down on employers of illegal immigrants will force employers to adapt without shocking the entire economy.
spiringTankmonger | a month ago
Why do you think the people that callously cheer for mass deportation give a single fuck if the system afterwards is equitable or even bearable for the remaining underclass?
Many of them would glady slave away their last days if that means less immigrants.
Anti immigration is just about providing the native population with the joy of not having to see a foreigner and its supporters are either ignorant or partially ready for all the costs this will bring.
Swoly_Deadlift | a month ago
It's possible to look at the issue without viewing it through the lens of the two-party system. I disagree with Republicans on their reasoning for disliking immigration. I disagree with Democrats due to the cognitive dissonance that comes from supporting increasing the number of immigrants while also opposing corporate greed and claiming to be the pro-worker party.
spiringTankmonger | a month ago
This dynamic also applies to politics in multyparty and dominant party systems, its absolutely not exlusive to two party systems.
Its just an inherent feature of anti immigration politics.
Swoly_Deadlift | a month ago
Here are six studies which found immigration lowers wages:
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source 4
Source 5
Source 6
Please explain to me how immigration benefits working class Americans instead of trying to refute the argument by pointing out that xenophobic people also don't like immigrants.
Platos-ghosts | a month ago
I’m ok with the Rich and UMC paying more for local labor. Maybe their quality of life goes down, but the working class employees should see an overall improvement. Less income inequality is a good thing!
Tintoverde | a month ago
Well it costs higher for every one.
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | a month ago
Limousine liberals hate paying more for their working class neighbors to have good paying jobs.
ChexAndBalancez | a month ago
We'll adjust. Illegal immigrants are direct competitors to blue collar American workers for jobs and housing.
Americans can and do every tough job. They need to be paid appropriately.
If you support illegal immigration... you don't support the poor workers of America.
tmbgisrealcool | a month ago
Importing immigrant workers as "cheap labor" not only hurts the American worker but also exploits immigrants. Companies need to cut their profit margins and pay American workers livable wages. It's that simple.
Swoly_Deadlift | a month ago
But what if the green line doesn't go up? 😨
tmbgisrealcool | a month ago
The c suite shall be banished to the land of wind and ghosts.
Accomplished_Bee_666 | a month ago
Ok
Retired-Yam8988 | a month ago
We don’t need no experts. Fearless leader is a genius who knows all and has bestowed wisdom of all the ages into his amazing orange noggin that is festooned with a golden mane of silken splendor
Leather-Map-8138 | a month ago
Come on. It was NEVER going to work. GDP is a function of population, not citizenship. This is about appealing to racists and bigots while asking them to overlook the economic damage being done on their behalf. And besides, when you can just lie that the economy is doing great and it’s a golden age…
MaddogFinland | a month ago
Wow crazy not a single person thought to tell them that this was a highly likely outcome. If only we had known that removing an established pillar of the low paid economy wouldn’t just magically improve.
dampishslinky55 | a month ago
You mean the thing that economists warn us would happen, is actually happening. Who could have foreseen this!? No one could have possibly known.
MichaelHawk008 | a month ago
Wages will go up in the affected industries, then wages will go up in the industries that lose workers to these fields, and so on.
Having an unlimited supply of cheap workers isn’t good for the average American.
Sufficient-Silver938 | a month ago
I don’t know how some people can think the only people willing to work for dirt cheap in our country is stealing their jobs and driving up prices. It can only be racism idk
Tough-Notice3764 | a month ago
Undercutting labor by not being held to the same standard is a completely valid concern for working class people. If an American citizen who is a plumber legally has to have a license, insurance, driver’s license, car insurance, pay taxes, and wants to live not in a complete dump gets undercut by an illegal immigrant who doesn’t adhere to any of those things, the American is justified in not wanting to be undercut. It’s not racism, it’s a scheme from the ultra wealthy to crash labor costs by undercutting Americans with illegal immigrants who Americans can’t compete with legally.
BekindBebetter60 | a month ago
Of course it is backfiring whether America likes it or not immigration helps power the economy for three reason. One it makes labor cheaper to the labor pay taxes, but doesn’t get for Social Security benefit and three with labor available more projects and work gets done. Where the United States is doing is following Japan’s example Japan is very racist and only allows Japanese residence for the most part two immigrate and so their population is shrinking and so is there as their economy that workforce ages the birth rate continues to drop. Get ready for a lot of shrinkage in our economy and things to continue to get more expensive. With the less labor in the economy, the dollar value shrinks and inflation will continue as labor gets more expensive.. I find it so ironic that America’s racism is gonna have an economic impact on them as well. And don’t forget Trump is deporting not just migrant farm workers. He’s deporting scientist and educated foreigners that help power our economy. What is it? Trump‘s cabinet is made up of mainly Fox correspondents at this point, true believers that don’t know how the government, but we’re selected for the loyalty to Trump. to Trump..
whogotthekeys2mybima | a month ago
This is just a puzzle piece of the culling of the herd of humans for a small corporatocracy. It’s the Las Vegas syndrome. Get more revenue from very rich few than little revenue from many. Humans are yesterday’s news. You don’t need workers to take care of elderly when it’s good that people lose jobs to take care of their elderly. Then eventually the jobless people will lose income, fall further into poverty and they can catalyze the deaths of those human lives. Then we can have the Epstein class, AI infrastructure doing what humans used to and there won’t be any pesky humans. Now we just need Gen Z to become electricians and get it done so. Get in the trades!
Yoboicharly97 | a month ago
The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can achieve success, prosperity, and upward mobility through hard work, determination, and initiative. Everyone has the same opportunities that I had so what’s your point? I busted my ass off and got where I am through hard work isn’t that what republicans preach? I don’t get what you’re trying to say this is America which was built by slave and immigrants and this has been going on since America was made. Imigrants coming to America and building it has been a thing since America was made just work hard for what you want it’s still possible in the USA
Tall-Control8992 | a month ago
In 2026, American Dream is about as real as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
ProfessorSmoker | a month ago
Nice try Billionaires.
Deporting workers shrinks the economy? You don't say.
Oh well, the economy can shrink for awhile. The USA has 350 Million people, which is plenty of people.
Thanks though top economist.
JustTaxLandbro | a month ago
40% of Americans don’t work.
About 40 million Americans will enter retirement by 2035. Only to be replaced by about 25 million Americans. Leaving a 15 million gap.
Estimates by the us government
4.5 million retirements every year
3.1 million high school graduates every year (or turning 18).
morbie5 | a month ago
> Leaving a 15 million gap.
AI says 'hi'
JustTaxLandbro | a month ago
It’s a pretty big gamble to risk your entire economy on AI backfilling roles.
morbie5 | a month ago
I didn't say I'm happy about it. It is just what is going to happen imo
RosemaryBiscuit | a month ago
I keep asking it to do the dishes. No help yet.
morbie5 | a month ago
Do you have live in help that does your dishes every night as of right now?
ProfessorSmoker | a month ago
Cha-ching my guy. Don't threaten me with a good time.
This is why the jobs that are here, which cannot be shipped overseas nor offloaded to ai & automatons, will be forced to pay an appropriate wage. I also suspect this is a gross overestimation of the human labor inputs that will be required by 2035.
JustTaxLandbro | a month ago
This is a big misconception that right wingers and I guess now left wingers think will happen if we have a worker shortage by cutting off immigration.
Now I’m not advocating for mass immigration but having an appropriate method for bringing talented workers for industries in demand doesn’t hurt wages or the economy. But let’s say you’re right, let’s say since the 1980s we go with the no immigrants plan.
That means overnight about 8 trillion dollars in economic activity (housing, consumption, taxes, etc..) is gone. Another 800,000 kids leave the school districts with those property taxes disappearing. And the cost of labor (what you want) skyrockets. But is that a good thing?
We can look at countries where this already happened at, such as Switzerland (which has immigration but by western standards basically zero).
A Big Mac (Big Mac index) in Switzerland costs almost 10 US dollars in the country. A liter of milk around 5 US Dollars (sorry actually 5). If you want anything done to your house for contracting, the costs will be anywhere between 80-120 US Dollars an hour. Meaning if you want a patio, instead of paying 12,000 dollars like you might in America. It will cost you nearly 45,000 dollars.
Everything, and I mean everything will be expensive. This means that consumers have to literally LEAVE the country to buy groceries and sometimes even basic goods for a good deal.
They’re currently German and French towns by the border that are filled with Swiss consumers due to the market discrepancy between the borders.
And that’s just price. We haven’t even talked about the gdp, and towns disappearing. If we had little to no immigrants since the 1980s, literal towns and cities would be wiped off the map.
Almost half of Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona cities are majority foreign born or 1st generation immigrants.
You’ve just managed to depopulate 60% of the cities and towns in the southwest. Things would not get cheaper, not at all, industries would disappear and as such the tax base. On top of that, the average American would go from being 39 years of age to about 47.5.
ProfessorSmoker | a month ago
Yeah. You guys gotta pay huh?
You keep making my point. Retirees and rich people just want to prop up an economy that increasingly only benefits them at any cost. The American worker needs payroll inflation to outpace asset inflation so that their spending power becomes more meaningful against the assets of the investor class.
PunkPirate56364 | a month ago
>A Big Mac (Big Mac index) in Switzerland costs almost 10 US dollars in the country.
In big part due to being made 100% from locally sourced beef, mostly small farms, best burger McDonalds makes.
>A liter of milk around 8 US Dollars.
From local mostly small farms.
>If you want anything done to your house for contracting, the costs will be anywhere between 80-120 US Dollars an hour. Meaning if you want a patio, instead of paying 12,000 dollars like you might in America. It will cost you nearly 45,000 dollars.
This will be a problem from white collars.
If blue collars want a patio, they build one for themselves.
grimtree | a month ago
In Europe you can't just randomly wake up and build a patio you actually have to work with an authorised building company and get an authorization for said modification to the house. It's not like if you're a plumber you can randomly build a patio.
Sorryallthetime | a month ago
A shrinking economy translates into lower economic activity which translates into a lower standard of living.
If you're willing to bear that - fantastic. The entire planet can't enjoy a profligate western lifestyle so let's lower the bar. It's good for planet.
Stay green baby.
ProfessorSmoker | a month ago
Exactly, which is also why we also have to take control of the worlds oil supply, to save everybody. This guy gets it.
N7day | a month ago
Lunacy
Confused_by_La_Vida | a month ago
These articles are repeatedly so stupid. It will suck, for a time. Maybe a few years. Then Americans will fill the roles and it will get better.
The so called “economists” that write these articles act like 9 women can make a baby in a month.
eduardom98 | a month ago
What is stupid is thinking that purposefully harming the economy by removing parts of the workforce amid labor shortages is a good idea. It will suck for a long time and not get better due to the fact that the size of the working age population's share of total population is decreasing relative to the share of the retired population and will continue to do so in the future.
The people ignorant of basic economics and demographics act like bad policies act in the absence of reality.
Confused_by_La_Vida | a month ago
What’s even more stupid is continuously doing the obviously stupid thing because the stupid thing is the only short term option.
feral401k9 | a month ago
Left populists live under the delusion that businesses secretly have the ability pay workers an arbitrarily large sum of money instead of their marginal revenue product of labor. The reality is immigrants don't depress wages, their losses won't be replaced, and the economy will just shrink.
violetferns | a month ago
Imagine thinking there’s a "left" in the United States.
feral401k9 | a month ago
dsa, but I'm talking about reddit/this thread
Embarrassed_Rise_556 | a month ago
I wonder how all the fraud in the Medicaid is playing into this. I mean there has been a massive amount of people exposed in this industry defrauding taxpayers.