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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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When people move long distances in the US, their primary consideration seems to be "jobs". But what does that actually operationalize to for people who aren't professionals or otherwise in some extremely niche industry? Let's say you don't hope for much more than working at Costco or maybe as an administrative assistant at some small business, or as some random entry-level lab technician. What sort of metrics are you even supposed to look at when deciding on a destination?

  • Something like income per capita or unemployment rate seem too crude to be useful. Perhaps Region A has higher income per capita than Region B because of a thriving industry (e.g., diesel engine manufacturing) that has no relevance to your skills.

  • A random snapshot of job listings on indeed.com seems too unrepresentative. Job openings come and go all the time, and it seems unwise to write off a whole area because the current job openings don't suit you.

  • A region's level of educational attainment seems meaningless, except perhaps for some highly skilled professions, because a less-educated region has fewer workers who might compete for the white collar job you want. And it doesn't seem obvious to me that less-education regions would have fewer white collar jobs relative to the population of qualified candidates.

  • A region's rate of growth seems irrelevant. What's the difference between a region that has grown 30% in the last decade from 100,000 to 130,000 to a region that has grown only 10% in the last decade from 118,000 to 130,000? If it's because there's something more desirable or economically healthy about the former, then look at that metric and skip the middleman. (And what is that metric, and why does it matter for the prospective mover?)

Crude unemployment rate and income per capita are relevant to all non-specialized blue collar skills. You might not be a diesel engine manufacturing specialist, but if the diesel engine factory employs men who would otherwise be carpenters or hang drywall then there will be job openings in construction.

My work takes me across my state, and my state has a huge quantity of enormous warehousing/distribution facilities due to its central location with highway access for trucking across the BosWash megalopolis. These warehousing facilities have massively driven up the price/value of semi skilled blue collar workers locally.

If I go to Home Depot in a town with multiple 1,000,000sqft Amazon warehouses; it is impossible to get help with anything. Anyone who wants to work carrying boxes and running a forklift can make more at Amazon, which can afford to pay more because they are more productive; the only people left are the feeble in mind or body, the unreliable, and a few old codgers who just want to chat about how paint was better before they took the lead out of it. Everything is disorganized, if I need something down from a higher shelf it takes ages to find someone who can run the forklift.

If I go to home Depot two towns over, where there are no Amazon warehouses, it feels like a different country! The sales clerks are bright eyed and bushy tailed, the aisles are crawling with young men who are actively eager to play with the forklift.

This goes for all unskilled and semi skilled labor. Dunkin donuts franchises aroundv warehouses are in shambles for lack of workers, even low paid government jobs like parole officer are tough to fill when Amazon pay is higher.

When I was a kid, before e commerce, those towns were effectively identical; socially they mostly still are. But today there is a huge difference in labor cost. So if you, who I presume to be bright and talented as befits a mottizen, move there to take a random job you will be head and shoulders above the dregs they are typically able to hire.

If I understand you correctly, are you basically saying that a huge source of labor in a city (like an Amazon warehouse) has cascading effects on the local economy in a way that's very favorable to a prospective worker moving in? That seems intuitive, but how far do you think that extends? Would you expect low-paying entry-level white collar work, like an administrative assistant, to benefit from an Amazon warehouse in town?