I don't know of any data on these topics but it would be nice to see. Here are my opinions/thoughts:
  • Is the garage service provided by a government, if so, I'm not surprised they don't operator well.
  • This whole "people don't want to work" issue is really a "people don't want to work for what the job is paying" issue. Any time I hear a company wine about "no one wants to work", what I hear is "I'm not willing to pay people more for this job, so I'll just complain about it and blame an external force".
  • I think being able to work from home during covid (and still) really changed things. Why would you take a job getting paid $15 at a local store where you have to go in if you could get a job getting paid $15 working from home? Hell, I'd take a pay cut to work from home.
  • From what I hear a lot of younger folks are living at home longer, but idk if that's actually true.
Again these are just my opinions/thoughts, take them with a grain of salt.
In this case, the garbage company is private.
Wrt "not wanting to work at the stipulated wages" that's for sure true. I think a lot of companies are in a Mexican standoff with their competitors over raising prices, which is keeping them from raising wages. Presumably they will eventually cave, but there's probably a stretch where it's existential: whoever raises first loses customers to the others who don't.
I hadn't thought that maybe some people are rotating away from being garbagemen to ... something they can do online. That must be happening somewhat -- so one pie shrinks, another grows. Can that really explain so much of it, though?
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I do believe it explains considerably. Even though computers, mobile phones, Amazon, YouTube, Etsy, etc are around for quite a while, it looks like they achieved true mainstream status more recently (to all economic classes and geographies worldwide), especially after COVID.
Workers now have more options than ever:
  • Marketplaces (such as Amazon) allow anyone to buy & sell to niches;
  • YouTube / Instagram allow anyone to become some sort of celebrity and monetize content;
  • Anyone can switch careers more easily as knowledge is widely available for free (less reliant on schools & diplomas).
We may be in the middle of a huge labour market shift and prices / wages should gradually adjust to reflect new preferences.
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I think you are right that we are in a main labour market shift!! Due to information being free everywhere information jobs can be created.
I think stacker.news is an example of this next new economy. You could get paid in sats by only having a wallet.
Wherever you are in the world. You can be paid micro payments for your service, your knowledge, delivering value.
When people have a website and integrate it with lightning, web wallets like mutinywallet they can just join the economy. They have alternatives for the crappy dirty jobs.
During Covid they already stayed at home, they used zoom, the internet, netflix, amazon like you said.
But there is one more trend:AI. Artificial intelligence. Chatgpt, Dalle,.
These AI tools let you create content, automated your job, create images, video, more and more.
This will disrupt the job market at the top or middle sections. Not the low skilled manual jobs. Everything that can be done through and with a computer that can be automated will be automated.
And next you will see many office jobs disappear or change. And those high paid jobs like accountant, graphic designer, programmer will change and people will loose their jobs. While others that master AI (the people who can prompt the AI and let it do what is needed) will see their salaries increase.
So wait and see and within 2-3 years you see banks, pension funds, insurance companies etc announce massive job cuts in USA and some developped countries in Europe.
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