urbanwalker72 said:When considering wage levels, there is a mechanism far more critical than simple market forces: labor productivity.
Regardless of how market relations fluctuate, wages cannot realistically sustain long-term growth without a corresponding increase in productivity.
Honestly, the biggest factor for a paycheck should be responsibility. Everything else is just secondary...
Because for an employer, having someone reliable is everything. How productive they are is almost a footnote if they actually use their brain...
The main thing is getting the job done, and knowing—as the boss—that it’s done without you even having to check. It all comes down to trust.
At least, that's how it works in my field—field service and installations...
Whether an employee knocks out four service calls or five in a shift isn't what matters for the bottom line, but if they handle one call recklessly and screw things up, you lose a customer forever. You might take a massive financial hit, so you can imagine why sending an irresponsible person out there is such a pointless waste of money...
It's the same deal with a machine that costs, say, $150,000. If some guy goes in being totally careless and causes a breakdown that costs tens of thousands to fix, it doesn't matter how many units he pumped out on that machine today...
Sure, earnings and productivity are huge too.
Businesses aren't charities. If they aren't bringing in enough to cover labor costs and wage growth, then obviously those raises aren't happening...
That said, a boss won't just hand out raises for fun. But if they realize they have a rock-solid, trustworthy worker who might jump ship for better pay, they’ll find a way to offer more—even if the budget is tight...
Also (and I'm speaking as an employer here), your chart doesn't prove that American workers are bad due to low productivity; it shows that management is the real failure.
And I say that without hesitation. ☕
Because you boost productivity through better organization, not by squeezing the worker harder...
In this country, we've dealt with chronic organizational chaos for ages. Whether it's big business or local shops, the workflow is often a total disaster with no logic whatsoever...
You'll see guys sent to a job site only to find there's no material because nobody ordered it, paid for it, or even picked it up...
Then suddenly, the worker "isn't being productive" because he's standing around a site waiting for parts that aren't there...
Yet, they still send him back to that same empty site every single day. He shows up, does his part, but nothing gets accomplished...
You end up with machines that are painfully slow and inefficient, sucking up massive amounts of electricity while producing barely enough to cover the power bill...
A worker can break his back running a machine, but it won't matter if the equipment is such an energy hog that production can't keep up with the overhead...
And the bigger the company, the bigger the headache. When a worker tells someone they're missing gear, one manager says "go find it," another says "there's no budget," and another says "ask the director" or "just figure it out." It's a mess...
There are two sides to every story, and around here, it's hard to tell which is worse: finding a decent worker or finding a decent boss...