Where did all the people go?

[great white]

I did 30 years in the military, 20 of that in front line SAR.

Got so busted up (physically and mentally) the flight surgeon looked at me one day on an annual aircrew medical and said “I just can’t let you do this to yourself anymore”. Then they medically retired me. Basically, I was given a golden parachute.

That was 2019, just before the pandemic.

Help wanted signs are all over the place here as well.

But I’ve done my time and made my bones. Wife and I are comfy where we are and set up well for finances (pensions, disability, insurance, savings, investments, medical benefits, etc).

Not getting me back into the workforce again. Ever. I feel no shame in it either.

I’ve paid my dues, time to actually live my life the way I want to….time for the next generation to pick up that torch. If they don’t want to, so be it. They’ll find out in short order that SAR is one of those things the world can’t do without for very long.

 

[jbobb1]

Not getting me back into the workforce again. Ever. I feel no shame in it either.

Like I said; I’ve paid my dues, time to actually live my life the way I want to….

Retirement is just a few months away for me, and I can relate to this. Almost 50 years of blood, sweat and tears makes a man old before he's time!

 

[great white]

Retirement is just a few months away for me, and I can relate to this. Almost 50 years of blood, sweat and tears makes a man old before he's time!

Probably a lot of why the people seem to have “disappeared”.

We’ve known for decades the workforce is old and only getting older. People working longer and “stopping up” the senior positions hasn’t helped either.

I’ve been part of many senior meetings and Tiger teams at 1 CAN Air Div trying to figure out what to do about 75% of our senior personnel coming up to mandatory retirement age (of which I was one). Lots of ideas thrown around, but it always came back to recruitment for the bottom end and things like mentorship programs to get the middle experienced people up to speed faster. But it never would pan out becuase you just couldn’t recruit fast enough to replace the bodies falling off at the top end. Basically, we were facing the same issues civvie street was and we couldn’t get much more traction than the civilian side of things.

When you look at the ages compared to the jobs, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out we were rapidly approaching a “mass retirement” event, everywhere, and the subsequent labor market problems.

I’d say covid just bumped that time schedule up by a couple years and we would have been dealing with the same issues, just a few years later.

 

[mmcmdl]

Doing some work for a helicopter firm right now.

Owned by Textron by any chance ?

 

[mmcmdl]

Retirement is just a few months away for me, and I can relate to this. Almost 50 years of blood, sweat and tears makes a man old before he's time!

Same here and I agree , but dayyyum do we have fun !

 

[mmcmdl]

My one boss says the company has about 2 years left at the rate we are going . No machinists , no mechanics , no operators ...............but plenty of fresh out of college chart makers starting at $125 K a year . Well jeez , wonder what the problem is ?

 

[RJSakowski]

Several years back there was all the uproar about a $15/hr minimum wage. As a result, many of the employers at the lower end of the wage scale started increasing their starting salary. Most are paying close to, if not more than $15.hr.

If you can make $15/hr flipping burgers while listening to your favorite playlist on your earbuds or jawing with your fellow workers, why would you want to take a job where you might actually have to break a sweat or have a modicum of responsibility to answer to for $15 or even $20?

Employers will fill their vacancies if they raise the hourly wage high enough to make it irresistible to workers. Then of course, the wage/salary increases will have to ripple up the hierarchy. As a result, the cost of goods will increase as well and all of a sudden, that $15/hr is not a living wage again. There is a name for this; inflation.

Unfortunately, all of us who are living on fixed incomes with savings that we ser aside years ago will have found that our buying power has decreased in inverse proportion.

 

[great white]

Several years back there was all the uproar about a $15/hr minimum wage. As a result, many of the employers at the lower end of the wage scale started increasing their starting salary. Most are paying close to, if not more than $15.hr.

If you can make $15/hr flipping burgers while listening to your favorite playlist on your earbuds or jawing with your fellow workers, why would you want to take a job where you might actually have to break a sweat or have a modicum of responsibility to answer to for $15 or even $20?

Employers will fill their vacancies if they raise the hourly wage high enough to make it irresistible to workers. Then of course, the wage/salary increases will have to ripple up the hierarchy. As a result, the cost of goods will increase as well and all of a sudden, that $15/hr is not a living wage again. There is a name for this; inflation.

Unfortunately, all of us who are living on fixed incomes with savings that we ser aside years ago will have found that our buying power has decreased in inverse proportion.

Guess I should be grateful my pension is indexed to the annual cost of living rates.

if it goes up, so does my pension. If it goes down, my pension stays the same…

 

[Aaron_W]

We just got back from a Southwest and Pacific Northwest trip.
Every town we went through had, Help Wanted or Now Hiring signs all over the place.

I just wonder what those people that were working, before Covid, are doing now to eat and pay the rent? Forever Unemployment has stopped and the stimulus checks aren't coming anymore.
There seems to be a lot of employers in this country that can't find help. This starts with low skill jobs to the skilled vocations.

I know I couldn't replace a 20 year veteran auto tech to save my life. Now with the industry changing over to electric vehicles, the shortage will get worse, as traditional automotive mechanical repairs will be slowly dwindling.

I got out at a good time.

I think a lot of dual income families went to single income during the shut down and have realized that without child care costs and commuting expenses that they can survive on one salary and actually have a parent home with the kids. That is a lot of potential employees opting out of the workforce without it being a case of them having no income, simply a budgeting adjustment.

Guess I should be grateful my pension is indexed to the annual cost of living rates.

if it goes up, so does my pension. If it goes down, my pension stays the same…

Me too, and since my retirement pay cost of living is hard tied to inflation this past year I got the biggest cost of living raise I've had in the last 10 years. My salary was loosely based on inflation indexes, but reality was whatever congress / the president decided to give us. Since 2010 it was practically nothing, 3 years of a freeze followed by 4 years of 1% which was well below inflation.

 

[mmcmdl]

So i saw this the other day on FB . Big ad . 4 years ago , the mechanics didn't make this much . I had to dig it up . So an operator can still make $100 K a year with no experience .

Packaging Machine Operator Aberdeen, MD Hiring Event 7/12 (Aberdeen, Maryland) | Frito-Lay

**Registered Hiring Event Candidates Preferred**<br><br> The Packaging Machine Operator is responsible for setting up and operating assigned packaging machines and...

www.fritolayemployment.com