Companies With Too Few Workers May Do Nothing About It

[marmar]

from 24/7WallStreet:




Companies With Too Few Workers May Do Nothing About It
Posted: October 9, 2010 at 8:14 am


One of the recurring nightmares that the Administration and many economists have is the that fear of the recession and a drive for profit will keep American companies from hiring new workers, even if they need them. The theory goes that firms will live on the edge of productivity which means that they will squeeze every last ounce of work out of every last employee.

About 38% of those who do have a job say their company is understaffed according to a new Gallup poll. Workers may exaggerate the need for new colleagues because they believe they have to labor themselves to fill the void.

Another 52% of those polled say that their companies have the right numbers of people.

The data show that the job market still faces the obvious challenge that companies will not add to payrolls which could keep unemployment above 9.5%, a level where it has been for 14 months–a period of time which has not been matched since The Great Depression.

The more insidious and less obvious issue is the government will have to pay to assist those without jobs or allow them to become indigent in greater number. Estimates are that the number of people who have been out of work for over 99 weeks and have no unemployment financial support at all could reach 3 million by the end of the year. That number will grow rapidly if there is not significant job creation within the private sector. The government has begun to layoff workers as the unemployment data from the last four months show. That adds even more people to the group of millions who look for work to replace jobs they have lost.

Company by company the chances of a jobs recovery has been destroyed and it appears that is likely to continue.

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Aug. 5-8, 2010, with a random sample of 499 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S. who are employed full or part time, selected using random-digit-dial sampling.

-- Douglas A. McIntyre


http://247wallst.com/2010/10/09/companies-with-too-few-workers-may-do-nothing-about-it/#ixzz11sDAMjkh

[blue sky at night]

1. if the dems survive the coming Halocaust in November....

with a majority they are going to have to start government work programs because obviously the "free enterprise" system is no longer working in what is left of this country. we don't have much to look forward to do we?

[rucky]

5. If they had done that in the first place...

on the scale it needed to be done, there wouldn't be a coming holocaust. I blame Republican obstructionism working exactly as planned, and the noise machine for duping gullible people into going along with it.

[RagAss]

2. It's cheaper to kill us and they know it.

[Starry Messenger]

3. Who didn't see that coming?

"Do more with less" has been the motto of the decade from business. They will squeeze out productivity because nothing is being done to stop them.

[rrneck]

4. Unions. nt

[SoCalDem]

6. Why wouldn't they?

If you ran a company with 50 employees who were busting their asses for not-quite-enough pay, and they were producing enough for you to make a hefty earning, why would you hire more people just to lessen the load of your employees?

Hiring more people to make more product would not guarantee more profit..just more costs to you .

Until there are jobs for your employees to "escape" to, you have NO business incentive to hire more people, or to give your current employees extra compensation for their extra effort.

75 employees making 1000 widgets = $x profit for you
50 employees making 1000 widgets = $xx profit for you

until someone out there wants more widgets than you can coerce those 50 people to make, there's no financial gain for you to hire more people..

of course you could always hire 100 employees in China to make your widgets for you at 1/3 the pay of your current 50 employees here, and get $xxxxx for yourself.:(

[femrap]

7. 1 person doing the job of 3....

with no health benefits nor company match in the 401K. The New American Nightmare.

ETA: I fucking hate Corporations.

[Recursion]

8. Here's the bad news nobody likes to hear

The < 5% unemployment rates we got used to in the 1990s and early 2000s were financed entirely by overleveraged consumer spending and overleveraged corporate spending. Those days aren't returning.

[maryf]

9. My husband worked 86 hours in one week, 17 hours in one day

when a company refused to hire more...when he walked out, they said "you can't afford to quit", lucky for him he could due to my job...how many are enslaved to overwork due to practices like this and not enough to quit? It's the workers' nightmares more than anyone else's, time for a general strike anyone?