12 Sep Wage trimming
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay
“Walmart is trimming its starting wage for some new employees in a sign the red-hot U.S. labor market is cooling off”
–https://finance.yahoo.com/news/walmart-trimming-starting-wage-employees-121131137.html
Yeah. Does this sound like the GOAT of all job markets to you? 😒
Retail giant Walmart is cutting its starting wages for some new hires as competition among employers looking to tap into the red-hot labor market starts to subside.
Under the new system—which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday—most of Walmart’s new hourly workers now earn the lowest hourly pay rate available in their store when they join the company.
-Yahoo Finance, Ibid. emphasis mine
So this means even in a space like retail, which typically has a higher turnover rate than other industries, Walmart is lookin’ around and saying, “Naw. That’s OK. We’re gonna do a wage trim.” What does that tell you? What it tells me is this: Walmart ain’t out here listening to hot air & hopium from nincompoops on social media. Clearly they must know that the labor market is not churnin’ and burnin’ and doin’ great and even in an industry with high turnover, they aren’t worried about filling jobs. In Walmart’s own Q1 FY24 Earnings statement, we learn: “Total revenue was $152.3 billion, up 7.6%, or 7.7% in constant currency.” (https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/05/18/walmart-releases-q1-and-fy24-earnings) So it’s not like the company is hurting for money. Let’s be real.
But is the labor market still tight? Again, not in my opinion and not in my experience. If we’re talking about highly specialized niche roles and/or cleared personnel at the highest levels, then yes, they have options that other job seekers do not. This is reality. If I can find 500 mechanical engineers with Solidworks experience versus only five qualified candidates for a military role that calls for a FS Poly clearance, you do the math. When we’re talking about the broader labor market, no, I do not believe the job market is still tight and all these employers are struggling to find people. When I go in the bank and the grocery store these days, it’s fully staffed. We needed to buy food on Labor Day weekend and the grocery store was fully staffed and there was a newly hired young person at the butcher’s counter who was getting apprenticed. But hey: labor shortage, no one wants to work, there’s no staff anywhere. 😒
Bill Adams, chief economist at Dallas-based Comerica Bank, said in a note after the August jobs report was released last week that the latest data showed “a big slowdown in hiring reflecting cooler labor demand.”
That could mean employers have to do less to compete for new staff.
“After huge disruptions in the last few years, the labor market is settling into a more normal state,” Adams said. “While most Americans who want a job have one, it is not as easy to find new work as a year ago. Hires and quits are back to their pre-pandemic levels, and job openings are falling rapidly. At the same time, employers are having a slightly easier time attracting and retaining workers.”
-Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
Settling into a normal state, LOL. Yeah, the state where Corpo America holds all the damn cards and workers hold almost none. I mean, hello, hi, how are you; this is EXACTLY what they wanted:
–https://theintercept.com/2022/07/29/bank-of-america-worker-conditions-worse/
I’ll say all of this again for the people in the back:
+ I warned you about this many times. The Great Resignation was not gonna last forever and Corpo America was not gonna tolerate the peons getting too uppity. 🤷🏻♀️
+ By the time you hear something in the MSM, it’s too late to meaningfully prepare, IMO. So when you’re hearing these stories of a cooling labor market and less demand for workers, you damn well better know the situation is more dire than what they are reporting.
+Who are you listening to and for what reason? If you’re still tuned in to the toxic positivity crowd on social media, why? Just why?
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