Low-Wage Employers Struggle After ‘Cheap-Labor Bubble’ Bursts

[Elderberry]

Breitbart by Neil Munro 20 Dec 2021

Millions of Americans are walking out of tough, low-wage jobs, and many of their employers are surprised they cannot easily recruit cheap replacements, according to a Washington Post article about workers and wages in Liberty County, Ga.

“It was nothing personal,” hotel maid Monique Rolle told the Post. “Target was paying more, so I dropped [working at] the hotel.”

“The reason that so many of these companies are unable to find workers now is because they rely on a flawed business model that only succeeds when the payroll is artificially held low [by an inflow of] foreign workers,” said Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Since 1990, the federal government has imported millions of cheap workers for business. This policy of inflating the labor supply  allowed many employers to launch many low-productivity companies that cannot survive a higher-wage economy, he added.

President Donald Trump’s popular migration curbs and the coronavirus disease together burst the cheap-labor bubble, Law said.

    The pro-amnesty billionaires lust for cheap labor to fatten their already enormous profits. https://t.co/tOYwhYENC6

    — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) November 14, 2020

Hasit Patel is an Indian legal immigrant who operates the two-star La Quinta franchise budget hotel where Rolle worked for roughly $8.50 an hour before she took her $15-an-hour job at Target.

Patel’s business plan depended on cheap migrant labor, according to what he told the Washington Post:

    [His] struggle to find [replacement] labor felt like a blow to his whole notion of what made America great. An immigrant from India, he believed that the health of the U.S. economy was protected by a constant refreshing of the workforce, an injection of striving immigrants willing to take on some of the unpleasant jobs that many Americans are loath to do — like cleaning [his] hotel rooms.

Patel’s expectation was rational: From 1990 to 2017, the federal government inflated the labor force by adding roughly one migrant — both legal and illegal — for every three Americans who joined the workforce.

More: https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2021/12/20/washington-post-low-wage-employers-struggle-after-cheap-labor-bubble/

[DefiantMassRINO]

So, Ross Perot was right about the giant sucking sound of jobs leaving America.  Now I don't feel so bad about throwing my vote away in 1992.

So, an immigrant from a $h!thole country came to America to start a business that depends on cheap immgrant labor from other $h!thole countries.  Isn't globalism grand?

https://www.businessinsider.com/looks-like-ross-perot-was-right-about-the-giant-sucking-sound-2011-2

Looks Like Ross Perot Was Right About The “Giant Sucking Sound”
Global Economic Intersection
Feb 11, 2011, 4:17 PM

Perot is famous (among other things) for his statement during the 1992 presidential campaign that if NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was not a two way street would create a “giant sucking sound” of jobs going south to the cheap labor markets of Mexico. ...

[GtHawk]

What happens when people like the maid who left for a job at Target find out that the higher pay they left for suddenly becomes a lower hour job because people don't have the money to maintain the spending they have been. I was around long enough in management to know the cycle blindfolded, wages increase, prices increase but not enough to cover labor, so payroll is cut and workload increased to compensate. Oh yeah, happy days ahead for folks like this upwardly mobile maid.

[catfish1957]

So, an immigrant from a $h!thole country came to America to start a business that depends on cheap immgrant labor from other $h!thole countries.  Isn't globalism grand?

Probably a more telling and impactful statistic that really describes the deterioration of jobs and wages in this country?

In 1947 32% of the nation's employment was in the manufacturing sector.  In 2015, (and probably even less now) that number had shrank to 8.7%.  Typically wages in that sector is 2X to 3X the rest of the others.

The fed is this report candy coats it as a play on automation and efficiency with overall impact on national GDP....   But I  think the 24% fewer working at these better jobs probably really care about their own finances than a national statistic.

When I started in industry in about 1980, these jobs were plentiful for those for who wanted to take the time and effort to work hard, and progress.   By the time I retired, it pretty much became more important to have an inside track, and who you knew at the plants.  That is hard it became to get these kind of jobs.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/us-manufacturing-really-declining