There seems to be some confusion here over my use of the expression, "The Great Resignation." https://www.investopedia.com/the-great-resignation-5199074
This is a economic/workforce phenomenon that began amidst the pandemic and continues. (The NY Times reported today that there are 11.4 million unfilled jobs. That's historically off the charts.)
My company operates/ed a job board and a staffing business. Both ran like traditional job boards (Indeed, Zip Recruiter, etc) and staffing companies (Kelly, Adecco, etc.), except being focused entirely on the formerly incarcerated. This is how large employers source many, many employees.
The staffing business was much larger. In this model, we serve as the hirer-of-record, and essentially lease out the workers to our client employers, who cover all our costs (wages, unemployment insurance, taxes, etc.) plus our mark-up (profit). It's a high volume, low margin business.
During the Great Resignation, we found it took 10x the time and effort to get someone placed, eroding our already thin margins. Plus, if a worker left (which they began doing at a great rate), we're obligated to replace them. All of this made it pretty much impossible for us to make money. (Again, we're a for-profit business). I hope this clarifies things.
> During the Great Resignation, we found it took 10x the time and effort to get someone placed, eroding our already thin margins. Plus, if a worker left (which they began doing at a great rate)
Where do you think they went? If they mostly went to work elsewhere because as part of the "Great Resignation" because they found better opportunities, then perhaps you accomplished your social mission (which was presumably giving them a foot in the door of gainful work), even if it was at the price of the business.
Maybe structural impediments to employment for felons came down due to a tightening labor market?
For example, in CA, laws are being passed to allow formerly incarcerated wildlands firefighters to work in that job after release:
This describes the "Great Resignation" but doesn't explain it.
Of course, there are a lot of things going on. However, I think one important thing is that American workplaces, over the last twenty or more years, gradually accumulated immensely toxic/abusive cultures. At the point of the pandemic, when many people had unemployment/work-at-home/savings, a lot of workers' had their tolerance of that interrupted and then just refused to return.
The thing with the situation is toxic work environments basically are going to double down on their claims, their view of what a sane environment and reasonable pay are. So these organizations are eating through employees and so they'd be the worst customers of a job board. The question how much 70m Record vetted their customers.
I know this is a bit off topic, but even during the "Great Resignation", as I always do I keep my eyes open on the job market (non-felon with a good work history, so this is a departure from the conversation, I apologize). With all of the complaints from employers about "We can't find people to work for us!", even in the software industry (which is well payed, compared to a lot of my friends), I didn't see the expected raise in the offering salaries for such claimed desperation. Especially when inflation is pushing from the bottom and housing prices (at least in the Seattle area, my area) are still nuts. The expectations of experience are laughable and, frankly, to be to be ignored at this point. I'm not even sure who writes the spec sheets for positions.
If you click the ‘wage level’ button you can see that workers everywhere are seeing growth but workers in the lowest quartile are seeing higher growth.
A few explanations other than the one you don’t see evidence for:
- the growth is in nominal dollars, inflation explains the spike and everyone is down in real terms, so even though the lowest-paid are doing better, they still aren’t seeing wage growth (but you are also observing nominal pay with your open eyes…)
- the lowest-paid are quitting, or the number of workers is decreasing in the higher quartile such that the average individual chosen from the first quartile would not have seen wage growth but rather higher-paid people are now counting as part of their quartile and pushing up the averages
How many people got a job and quit after a few days as you described?
Did this have any impact on recidivism?
Is it possible that these employees found better jobs? If so, could it have theoretically been possible to retain them had you offered better wages, benefits or assignments?
I just don’t fundamentally understand the position of “I had a group of people that truly needed my business, but a phenomenon called The Great Resignation changed the world in such a way that they… didn’t need it anymore (?)”
Is it possible that your business model of (in your parlance) leasing out convicts maybe had some sort of innate flaw unrelated to covid?
Staffing agencies, from a super cynical point of view, take a slice of money that would otherwise go to the people actually working.
I think in the more nuanced view staffing agencies allow people with irregular rhythms to still have a job. And of course helping people actually get a foot in the door! But if you're going to work full time anyways, and there's more open-ness to you being hired, why go through a staffing agency? I think the reasons end up being limited to "could not get hired yourself".
Maybe, but maybe not - and maybe that negotiated difference leads to the profit slice or a higher profit slice.
Why would a person make $14.50/hour when they could make $15/hour applying directly to places?
The issue may be that so few people are looking for work right now that it's easier for convicted felons to be hired, perhaps not worrying about or taking on whatever vetting process that may or may not happen through an agency for people with a criminal record.
It’s kinda odd. I’d expect people to be happy to have a new job, but if they (regularly) quit after only a few days, then it sounds like being jobless is more comfortable for them (they can’t all find a different position after just a few days).
Either they like being jobless (which isn’t really a typical type of person in my experience), or the job itself was terrible due to pay, commute, working conditions, company culture, etc. or they were able to find more favorable employment outside of 70M.
I would love to know what jobs were difficult to fill and how much they paid because “The Great Resignation” narrative (kind of conveniently) squarely puts the blame for the failure of this business on a caricature of lazy poors and the government. This narrative also absolutely vindicates the founder and management because the demise is because of an uncontrollable external force.
Those are all possible explanations, but it seems unlikely that previously acceptable jobs suddenly turned unacceptable at the same time COVID started?
Kind of hard to think something suddenly changed about the operation of the company that had been running well for the past few years.
> Now our workers were reticent to come back to work. And if they did accept a job, they’d often leave after only a few days.
Businesses fail for myriad reasons every day, even ones that functioned perfectly for years. Not every business, however, lays blame on a big and uncontrollable phenomenon to explain why it folded.
The author did not mince words — people no longer wanted to use his service. He has decided that that’s because people didn’t want to work due to a sociopolitical phenomenon that’s entirely decoupled from basics like “How good were the jobs?”, “How much did they pay?”, “How were the working conditions at these workplaces?”
This narrative completely avoids any possibility of his business making poor decisions or simply not offering a service that people want.
Someday the historians will puzzle how so many people quit their jobs hit at the heels of the great 2023 Depression. How could they have missed the signs?
Given people wanting to donate to support you and an apparent issue being the inability to earn sufficient profit margins, why not organize as a non-profit instead? You're clearly trying to perform a socially-beneficial service here, focusing on underserved populations. Missions like that are the entire reason for the 501(c)(3) carve-out and you could potentially survive if you didn't have to earn profit or pay taxes. Most states even allow you to apply for hardship exemptions to property taxes, which can help a lot on office expense.
My company operates/ed a job board and a staffing business. Both ran like traditional job boards (Indeed, Zip Recruiter, etc) and staffing companies (Kelly, Adecco, etc.), except being focused entirely on the formerly incarcerated. This is how large employers source many, many employees.
The staffing business was much larger. In this model, we serve as the hirer-of-record, and essentially lease out the workers to our client employers, who cover all our costs (wages, unemployment insurance, taxes, etc.) plus our mark-up (profit). It's a high volume, low margin business.
During the Great Resignation, we found it took 10x the time and effort to get someone placed, eroding our already thin margins. Plus, if a worker left (which they began doing at a great rate), we're obligated to replace them. All of this made it pretty much impossible for us to make money. (Again, we're a for-profit business). I hope this clarifies things.