Note that the question was basically "which of the following influenced your decision to turn down a job offer", not "what was the primary reason you turned down a job offer."
Respondents could select more than one reason; it could be that many of these people had a more important reason for turning down the job like "child care obligations" or "the job didn't offer enough hours of work", but also selected "I receive enough money from unemployment" because that was one of the secondary factors they considered.
They also only polled 463 people and are extrapolating the 1.8 million number based on the fact that 13% (~60 people) included "unemployment insurance" as one of the factors that influenced their decision.
> They also only polled 463 people and are extrapolating the 1.8 million number based on the fact that 13% (~60 people) included "unemployment insurance" as one of the factors that influenced their decision.
463 people drawn from population of 14 million, assuming unbiased sampling, with a 13%/87% split on their answers to a yes/no question would have a confidence interval of about 3 at 95% confidence, so it is reasonable to conclude that the correct percentage is probably in the 10-16% range, or 1.4 million to 2.2 million.
At 99% confidence, the confidence interval would be about 4, giving 1.26 to 2.38 million.
I guess that plays a HUGE role. Like, if you will be working only part-time, with a low wage, no benefits, earning the same (or less) than the unemployment benefit doesn't seem enticing.
If a job is paying less than what the government deems the minimum amount of money you need per month to survive, then it's an obvious choice. It's also obvious what employers need to do if they are short-staffed.
> If a job is paying less than what the government deems the minimum amount of money you need per month to survive
Unemployment benefits are designed to pay less than what people earned during their recent employment. Traditionally, it wouldn't make sense for someone to turn down a job offer in favor of unemployment unless the new job offer had drastically lower compensation than their previous job.
The pandemic unemployment assistance change this with additional $300/week payments, but that still adds up to less than typical entry-level wages in many locations.
This isn't really about jobs not paying people enough to survive. The survey responses included "I receive enough money from unemployment insurance without having to work" and a separate response for "I was not given enough money to return to work" with similar response rates.
Yeah honestly it's a bit wild to me that this is a controversial take, and the proposals to "solve" this problem have largely been to cut people off from benefits.
It doesn’t mean that the job pays less, it just means it doesn’t pay to sufficiently provide an incentive to take it.
People simply might not take what is likely a physically demanding job if the compensation isn’t sufficiently high.
There can be also other reasons like the fact that they might be looking for a better opportunity and not simply taking on any job.
Other things like the hidden cost of having a job which can include things like commuting costs, loss of other employment opportunities like part time jobs or side gigs or added costs due to having to pay for child care can also be a good reason why one might not take a job even if it does pay above minimum wage and even above the local living wage.
The 'obvious choice' is to not take money from the government/community that you're not supposed to be taking.
How on earth did we just just dropped all pretense at being civic?
And also: "It's also obvious what employers need to do if they are short-staffed."
That's actually not obvious. Have you owned a small business? Like a cafe, especially through a pandemic? Do they just have magic pools of profit from which to pay people more? Some places do, but usually they're the big chains. These kinds of situations just push regular owners further downhill vis-a-vis the Starbucks down the street which some might argue is 'good for efficiency' but I'd argue that we lose in choice and authenticity quite a lot.
This is a good thing. It means employees have an option to chose work that’s good for them, and can reject jobs that would demand unbearable sacrifice with little reward. It allows folks who would otherwise never get a chance to breathe to learn new skills and compete for better work. I don’t want to live in a society where 2 million jobs are taken only on threat of starvation.
This is not a good thing. The government (funded by tax payers who work and produce) is paying people while they are not producing to the economy. Someone pays for this, through taxes and lowered value of the dollar/purchase power for those who do work. There is no free lunch.
Also - you say 2 million is OK... what if it were 20 mil, 200 mil who got paid while not working. Who would pay for this?
It's worth noting that childcare is an especially huge issue right now... because there aren't enough workers. And raising wages is a Catch-22 because it directly affects childcare costs.
I suspect that actual number is probably even higher. If I were on extended unemployment benefits I would be very hesitant to answer this poll truthfully for fear of getting cut off. Could it be an audit masquerading as an independent pollster? Better safe than sorry.
Exactly. There's no reason to suspect this number is being over-reported, but it's very reasonable to expect hesitancy (both to polling in general and this type of polling specifically).
Also, people lie to themselves. Few people would probably want to see themselves as turning down a job simply because they already get enough from unemployment benefits.
Good for them. It's called unemployment insurance for a reason. I could pay my whole life for the insurance and never cash in. If given the opportunity, I would extract every cent out of it I can. I would rather slowly look for a job than jump at the first mediocre/underpaying opportunity.
To call it "insurance", you need to at least imagine how the accounting and risk management might work if it were like a car/homeowners/term-life insurance policy.
First of all, do the payments alone support the program, or does it need cash infusions from taxes or money supply increases? How much would the premiums be if it was self-supporting?
Second, are those making higher premium payments (when you also account for the money infusions) at proportionally higher risk of payouts? What factors should be considered in the premium payment?
What the underpayment of the lower end of the workforce signals to me is that we have a massive amount of unrealized inflation coming in. Clearly we have to adjust wages up and that’s the consequence, adding to the fact that the way official inflation/CPI numbers are calculated seems to keep them artificially low.
I was just talking to someone about their father in the 70s having two cars, a 3 BR middle class house, and annual vacations as a postman. The bottom has dropped out of the buying power of American wages in the last 50 years.
>adding to the fact that the way official inflation/CPI numbers are calculated seems to keep them artificially low.
No they are not. How do people even come up with this idea? The official CPI is 5% which is exactly where it should be. Even if you change how they are calculated it doesn't change anything except make it harder to do proper monetary policy. Keeping inflation down doesn't even make any logical sense because interest rates depend on how close you are to full employment rather than the current level of inflation. Inflation tends to be a useful indicator for full employment in normal times but we know the exact opposite is happening right now.
If anything central banks want higher inflation because the zero lower bound restricts the influence of monetary policy and persistently low inflation and deflation requires unconventional monetary policy which has a huge track record of failure. Getting off the bad monetary policy requires that evil inflation that so many people fear. It's kind of funny. All that "hyperinflation" in stocks, housing and Bitcoin is actually the result of low inflation.
Right? My parents raised a family in a house they owned, with two cars, good public schools, and sent us both to college which it turned out was practically free by current standards, on the pay of a coastguardsman. People used to be able to afford life. Desperation is not normal.
This article and its chart is sending mixed messages. I wonder if the writer and graph guy are the same person.
The poll lists a dozen reasons that 9%-14% ticked as reasons turning for down job offer. Third is benefits. Conspicuously missing is "salary too low " or "expect/hope for a better offer soon." Surely, those are also normal reasons for turning down job offers.
IDK what the true "story" is here, but regardless... this does not necessarily sound bad to me. "Hard to find employees" is much better than "hard to find jobs." They are basically opposites. If there are no jobs, employees are plentiful. If jobs are plentiful, employees are not.
Why shouldn't we want a bull market for labour? What's the next concern, "salary increases?"
That means that 1.8M Americans are potentially available to work at any business that can offer more pay and dignity than unemployment. If this labor shortage exists, businesses know what number they need to beat. Is that difficult?
It means that 1.8M Americans who can work and choose not to work are having their pay and dignity provided by the Americans who can work and choose to work.
As one of the Americans who can work and chooses to work, I can inform you that our patience is limited.
I am oddly confused. People are making rational and sound financial decision that benefits them personally and that is deemed a problem? I can't say it is weird, because I can see the constant drum of like 'news messages' on various news channels. I put it in the same corner as anti-WFH stories. Propaganda.
This is a good thing employers have too much power when negotiating salaries for low end jobs. Results in people working full time but still needing food stamps/government support to survive. If you cant run a business while paying a decent wage your business is not viable.
I'm surprised to see that rejecting non-remote job offers is the reason for 11% of the respondents rather than a smaller portion. I guess that's another positive indicator that the shift to long term remote work is going strong.
"Getting people to move from relying on unemployment insurance to wage income doesn't just automatically happen,"
The luxury of not working and able to decline jobs must be really great. In my twenty five years of work, I don’t think I’ve be ever been so privileged. To other people have this flexibility? Between kids and health insurance I’ve fought like hell to minimize time between jobs.
Yes. As a single man in my 20's, when I would get laid off from restaurant jobs (I worked in an area with a large share of summer tourism and september layoffs were common) I would spend the full time on unemployment because the wage difference was pretty minimal.
Even now in my mid-30s, when I was laid off for covid I waited until the expanded benefits were almost exhausted for the exact same reason (I actually made about 20 dollars more per paycheck on unemployment during the pandemic than I did at the Digital PM job I was let go from).
The term "fun-employment" is frequently used for people who have negligible difference in quality of life between employment/unemployment.
Yes, people do. And many more should. Your treadmill existence is the polar opposite of rational actors with bargaining power as invoked by economists.
Uhh wait are you actually complaining about having kids and a job? Wasn't that all your choice?! Didn't a $300 tax break per child just get sent out directly to you? Isn't that paid for by everyone even people without kids? Aren't you getting a free lunch? I demand you send me your $$ or stop your whining
It's not a UBI because you have to be unemployed. It does confirm that some people stop working if they receive "welfare" which is not very surprising.
What percentage of the total currently unemployed population is the 1.8m in this headline? I know there are various ways to measure unemployment in the US. I wonder which unemployment classification group they come from.
* U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force
* U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force
* U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
* U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers
* U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
* U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
Spend lots of calories, possibly risk your health and be stressed to earn 10N or have none of those things and earn 7N and spend the extra time trying to better yourself and escape the neo-serf existence.
Seems obvious to me.
For all the people saying this is a bad thing I invite you to quit your high paying tech job, give away all your savings and possessions, move to a fly-over state and get a blue collar job or two.
I think it would have been a good idea to have a "cash out" option for benefits. Of course people aren't going to turn down free money. But if you could get a lump sum of 75% of the benefits you are entitled to when you accept a job, people would be more likely to go back to work.
I visited a few cities earlier this year, Flagstaff AZ, St. George UT, and a few others and I was shocked how many "help wanted" signs were out on almost every single business. I talked to a few employees about the help wanted signs at a restaurant or two and they said nobody is applying to these jobs. I would say its a few things, some people are concerned due to covid and getting infected. Alot of people are overworked and due to unemployment being high are taking a much needed break from work. I think those are both valid reasons, Childcare is also a big one as many a spouse quit their job to take care of children due to shuttered schools and daycare, I personally know a few.
That's such a weird way to frame things. You have some amount of finite time where you receive unemployment benefits in order to find a new job. Logically, you will try to find the best new job you can while you are given this buffer to do so, so obviously you'll turn down crappy jobs that don't pay well, because you have this benefit that gives you the leeway to do so in order to find yourself the better job.
Also, you've worked for this benefit, it isn't given to you "for free", your prior work contributed to the unemployment benefit which you are now using, and your future work will also go back to paying for it.
[+] [-] ntrz|4 years ago|reply
Respondents could select more than one reason; it could be that many of these people had a more important reason for turning down the job like "child care obligations" or "the job didn't offer enough hours of work", but also selected "I receive enough money from unemployment" because that was one of the secondary factors they considered.
They also only polled 463 people and are extrapolating the 1.8 million number based on the fact that 13% (~60 people) included "unemployment insurance" as one of the factors that influenced their decision.
[+] [-] tzs|4 years ago|reply
463 people drawn from population of 14 million, assuming unbiased sampling, with a 13%/87% split on their answers to a yes/no question would have a confidence interval of about 3 at 95% confidence, so it is reasonable to conclude that the correct percentage is probably in the 10-16% range, or 1.4 million to 2.2 million.
At 99% confidence, the confidence interval would be about 4, giving 1.26 to 2.38 million.
[+] [-] dbt00|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FalconSensei|4 years ago|reply
I guess that plays a HUGE role. Like, if you will be working only part-time, with a low wage, no benefits, earning the same (or less) than the unemployment benefit doesn't seem enticing.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] itsdrewmiller|4 years ago|reply
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
[+] [-] staticautomatic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] res0nat0r|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
Unemployment benefits are designed to pay less than what people earned during their recent employment. Traditionally, it wouldn't make sense for someone to turn down a job offer in favor of unemployment unless the new job offer had drastically lower compensation than their previous job.
The pandemic unemployment assistance change this with additional $300/week payments, but that still adds up to less than typical entry-level wages in many locations.
This isn't really about jobs not paying people enough to survive. The survey responses included "I receive enough money from unemployment insurance without having to work" and a separate response for "I was not given enough money to return to work" with similar response rates.
[+] [-] missedthecue|4 years ago|reply
Employers are competing with the government to buy people's time, and the government is willing and has the means to push the price to infinity.
[+] [-] macdamaniac|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogma1138|4 years ago|reply
People simply might not take what is likely a physically demanding job if the compensation isn’t sufficiently high.
There can be also other reasons like the fact that they might be looking for a better opportunity and not simply taking on any job.
Other things like the hidden cost of having a job which can include things like commuting costs, loss of other employment opportunities like part time jobs or side gigs or added costs due to having to pay for child care can also be a good reason why one might not take a job even if it does pay above minimum wage and even above the local living wage.
[+] [-] jeffbee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethammons|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jollybean|4 years ago|reply
How on earth did we just just dropped all pretense at being civic?
And also: "It's also obvious what employers need to do if they are short-staffed."
That's actually not obvious. Have you owned a small business? Like a cafe, especially through a pandemic? Do they just have magic pools of profit from which to pay people more? Some places do, but usually they're the big chains. These kinds of situations just push regular owners further downhill vis-a-vis the Starbucks down the street which some might argue is 'good for efficiency' but I'd argue that we lose in choice and authenticity quite a lot.
[+] [-] philosopher1234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacob2484|4 years ago|reply
Also - you say 2 million is OK... what if it were 20 mil, 200 mil who got paid while not working. Who would pay for this?
[+] [-] rufus_foreman|4 years ago|reply
What society would that be? It certainly isn't the US. Starvation is virtually unknown in the US.
[+] [-] blakesterz|4 years ago|reply
The largest groupd said child care, followed by COVID, and 4th was health limitations are keeping them off.
Also almost as many (at #5) said "I was not given enough money to return to work", which feels like the same thing?
And way, way more people had other reasons like "didn't allow remore work" and "required too many hours" (which also kind of feels the same?)
[+] [-] legitster|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BitwiseFool|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] levzettelin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lapetitejort|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|4 years ago|reply
So, yeah, this isn’t actually a form of insurance.
[+] [-] chmod600|4 years ago|reply
First of all, do the payments alone support the program, or does it need cash infusions from taxes or money supply increases? How much would the premiums be if it was self-supporting?
Second, are those making higher premium payments (when you also account for the money infusions) at proportionally higher risk of payouts? What factors should be considered in the premium payment?
[+] [-] bpodgursky|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] user3939382|4 years ago|reply
I was just talking to someone about their father in the 70s having two cars, a 3 BR middle class house, and annual vacations as a postman. The bottom has dropped out of the buying power of American wages in the last 50 years.
[+] [-] imtringued|4 years ago|reply
No they are not. How do people even come up with this idea? The official CPI is 5% which is exactly where it should be. Even if you change how they are calculated it doesn't change anything except make it harder to do proper monetary policy. Keeping inflation down doesn't even make any logical sense because interest rates depend on how close you are to full employment rather than the current level of inflation. Inflation tends to be a useful indicator for full employment in normal times but we know the exact opposite is happening right now.
If anything central banks want higher inflation because the zero lower bound restricts the influence of monetary policy and persistently low inflation and deflation requires unconventional monetary policy which has a huge track record of failure. Getting off the bad monetary policy requires that evil inflation that so many people fear. It's kind of funny. All that "hyperinflation" in stocks, housing and Bitcoin is actually the result of low inflation.
[+] [-] jeffbee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalbasal|4 years ago|reply
The poll lists a dozen reasons that 9%-14% ticked as reasons turning for down job offer. Third is benefits. Conspicuously missing is "salary too low " or "expect/hope for a better offer soon." Surely, those are also normal reasons for turning down job offers.
IDK what the true "story" is here, but regardless... this does not necessarily sound bad to me. "Hard to find employees" is much better than "hard to find jobs." They are basically opposites. If there are no jobs, employees are plentiful. If jobs are plentiful, employees are not.
Why shouldn't we want a bull market for labour? What's the next concern, "salary increases?"
[+] [-] notquitehuman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rufus_foreman|4 years ago|reply
As one of the Americans who can work and chooses to work, I can inform you that our patience is limited.
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xbmcuser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fundamental|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] underseacables|4 years ago|reply
The luxury of not working and able to decline jobs must be really great. In my twenty five years of work, I don’t think I’ve be ever been so privileged. To other people have this flexibility? Between kids and health insurance I’ve fought like hell to minimize time between jobs.
[+] [-] moate|4 years ago|reply
Even now in my mid-30s, when I was laid off for covid I waited until the expanded benefits were almost exhausted for the exact same reason (I actually made about 20 dollars more per paycheck on unemployment during the pandemic than I did at the Digital PM job I was let go from).
The term "fun-employment" is frequently used for people who have negligible difference in quality of life between employment/unemployment.
[+] [-] jacob2484|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindslight|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newsiehey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nomoreplease|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|4 years ago|reply
No, its (another, of many) experiment with exactly the kind of system UBI is defined in opposition to.
[+] [-] imtringued|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MuffinFlavored|4 years ago|reply
* U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force
* U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force
* U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
* U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers
* U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
* U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
[+] [-] holografix|4 years ago|reply
Seems obvious to me.
For all the people saying this is a bad thing I invite you to quit your high paying tech job, give away all your savings and possessions, move to a fly-over state and get a blue collar job or two.
[+] [-] legitster|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okareaman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subsubzero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] didibus|4 years ago|reply
Also, you've worked for this benefit, it isn't given to you "for free", your prior work contributed to the unemployment benefit which you are now using, and your future work will also go back to paying for it.