Correcting misinformation on WAN show

[poochyena]

1:30:00 Linus claims the median income for truckers is $48k, and implied that was the wage the company, schneider, is offering drivers. This is not true. They offer an average of $50k for the first year, and up to $110k after that ¹. The average pay is around $57k. The median wage in the US is $45.7k³.

"There is no worker shortage, they just aren't paying enough" is such a stupid argument, I'm so tired of having to debunk it all the time.

 

¹https://schneiderjobs.com/truck-driving-jobs/inexperienced/first-year-truck-driver-pay

²https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Schneider/salaries/Truck-Driver

³https://usafacts.org/data/topics/economy/jobs-and-income/jobs-and-wages/median-annual-wage/

[starsmine]

Your right, its 37k (USA FACTS)

 

Schnder literally says its 45k (Schneider)

• $45,260 – The average industry-wide driver wage for all experience levels (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics).

They are literally just claiming that they pay better then average on their site

that 110k is the same as MLM saying that you can make millions, yes, a dozen of the people in an MLM do. its not realistic for the median. 

Median based off of indeed

 

There is no worker shortage.


Indeed does have mean


Which is higher, but also misleading as those are from owner-operators who are getting that as REVENUE, not income, and are not W2 workers and thus pay their own employer taxes 

 

[Avocado Diaboli]

14 minutes ago, poochyena said:

"There is no worker shortage, they just aren't paying enough"

I'm by no means a top earner, but I wouldn't get out of bed for $50k, which is less than what I earned back when I was 19 and got out of my apprenticeship. So yeah, companies aren't paying enough.

[aisle9]

Sure, they "pay" you an average of $50K. Then from that $50K, they take out payments for "tuition" to cover the "trucking school" they told you about after hiring you. They also love to fine you for any reason they can come up with.

 

Then they pay you shitty by-the-mile rates that would equal out to $50K, except that the per-mile rate is such that you'd have to drive more hours than you're legally allowed to to get it. All of this while you get to sleep in your truck in isolated loading docks behind sketchy buildings in the shittiest parts of town, where you get no sleep because you never know when the next crackhead is going to bust through your truck's door.

 

They fine you for "damage to the truck" in the form of that busted door, by the way.

 

And that loading dock crew will never be on time, and they will never work quickly enough to hit the deadlines your company has given you, so you get fewer miles because you're "unreliable". Oh, and if the company fucks up your paperwork and you get a ticket as a result, guess who pays it? Not the company, that's for sure. And literally every little ding on that truck and trailer is your fault, especially the dings that happen when you're parked. And they'll cut your miles again because not only are you "unreliable", but now you're "unsafe".

 

Trucking is a shit job. It gets sort of glamorized by the idea of getting paid to tour the country, and to some extent by movies like Smokey and the Bandit. I've never done it myself, and I never would. I have a family member who did for several years, and he tired of the bullshit quickly, realized that there was no way he could afford a rig to go solo, and promptly quit to become a mechanic at a major national chain. He makes more, he doesn't have to worry about getting four-figure fines because his company wrote in the wrong weight or didn't get the right permit for his load, his paycheck isn't nickel and dimed down to minimum wage, and he is making more than he ever would have for that POS trucking company.

 

Your argument does hold up in a lot of industries, where there are decent jobs that pay reasonably well and just need people to fill them. Hell, you've just described basically every skilled trade in America. We're going to run out of welders in 20 years when all of the current ones have retired, because no one wants to go to trade school to replace them. Everyone wants to go to college or just go get knocked up by the star QB after high school. Trucking is just not the industry to use as your example.

 

As an aside, bear in mind that the minimum wage is up to $15/hr in a lot of the country. Between that and inflation, $50K today ain't nearly what $50K was even 10 years ago.

[poochyena]

30 minutes ago, starsmine said:

They are literally just claiming that they pay better then average on their site

yes.. thats the point. Linus implied they paid the average wage, but they pay above it.

[starsmine]

24 minutes ago, poochyena said:

yes.. thats the point. Linus implied they paid the average wage, but they pay above it.

Im confused to your point

Linus talked about why no one wants to be a truck driver anymore, which a driving factor is that the average pay in relation to inflation has one of the worst trend lines of ANY industry.
Sure there are a lot of jobs that have not kept up with inflation, but truck driver pay as an industry has literally been stagnant, in large part do to the restructuring of the system that the job functions under changing under the driver's feet. 


You see that grey line transportaion and warhousing is the second shortest on the chart, and in terms of % gain, its the LOWEST. 
This sight puts to many jobs into the same bucket for my liking. lets dig deeper.

I dont recall him bringing up schnieder specifically, as the point was on industry, not on company.  


They get their stats from (well this and a bunch of other data points)
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533032.htm
So, 53k


The top 10% make 75k

2019 version

[Avocado Diaboli]

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

Im confused to your point

Their point is that the numbers Linus mentioned aren't 100% accurate. It's mere pedantry that tries to justify the idea that this is a labor shortage issue and not a wage issue, because hey, the average income in the US is apparently 45k, which means anything above that has no reason to complain. Because everybody knows, this average is totally enough to live a comfortable life. That's why they're so intent on "debunking" it.

[divito]

29 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Their point is that the numbers Linus mentioned aren't 100% accurate. 

It's almost like people don't realize it's a live show, and he's reading from a document that he didn't prepare. They probably want him to search around the internet and find multiple sources while people listen/watch to make sure he gets the exact dollar figure to the penny. 

 

Not to mention, people have already shown multiple different sources showing differing things in this very topic.

[starsmine]

23 minutes ago, divito said:

It's almost like people don't realize it's a live show, and he's reading from a document that he didn't prepare. They probably want him to search around the internet and find multiple sources while people listen/watch to make sure he gets the exact dollar figure to the penny. 

 

Not to mention, people have already shown multiple different sources showing differing things in this very topic.

To be fair to Schnider they got their info from 2019 and then just... not updated the website in 3 years. (2023 data is not out yet)

[Arika]

this is so pedantic

[Mihle]

If trucker salary was high enough, it would wouldn't be a trucker shortage. That's how it works.

It might lead to a bigger shortage in some other field, but it would help with shortage on the trucker field, that is just fact of economics.

 

I don't think truckers, or lorry drivers here in Europe, is paid enough for the work that they do. They work odd hours.

[Polderviking]

Quote

"There is no worker shortage, they just aren't paying enough" is such a stupid argument, I'm so tired of having to debunk it all the time.

A higher then median wage doesn't automatically mean it's enough or "good", the median income is just a statistic based on an agregate.
That means your neighbour's mom that cleans houses 5 hours a week in rural Utah factors into this, and so does Jeff Bezos.
Considering money has been shifting in the general direction of the "elite" as of late you can imagine this affects the value of this statistic.

 

Median income is an agregate of the way things are, not what they should be.

Median income used to mean you'd have a good life and are short on nothing but that time has long since passed.
Median income is way too low for any kind of decent living in 2023 and therefore paying people above median isn't especially noteworthy.

As more companies pay more, the median will shift, maybe even back to some sort of normality.

[poochyena]

9 hours ago, Mihle said:

If trucker salary was high enough, it would wouldn't be a trucker shortage. That's how it works.

Who told you this lie? And why do you believe it? Its completely made up, not based on anything. People don't magically appear out of thin air if the salary increases.

 

14 hours ago, starsmine said:

Im confused to your point

Linus said if they paid more, then they wouldn't have a worker shortage. Guess what? Turns out they DO pay more, and they even pay above median wages! But they still have a shortage. Linus was wrong in every single possible way.

[seanondemand]

Man’s doing a live podcast, not writing an article for the Globe & Mail.

 

His general point was correct and if someone were really interested in the topic they could look deeper into it. 

[starsmine]

53 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Who told you this lie? And why do you believe it? Its completely made up, not based on anything. People don't magically appear out of thin air if the salary increases.

 

Linus said if they paid more, then they wouldn't have a worker shortage. Guess what? Turns out they DO pay more, and they even pay above median wages! But they still have a shortage. Linus was wrong in every single possible way.

People do magically appear when the salary goes up. 

Again, your point is falling on deaf ears here. Im not understanding it. How does an industry have a median pay over its industry median pay? That makes no sense. A company can have a median pay higher then industry, but its mathematically impossible for the same set to have two different medians. 

And I already said, the median income has not kept up inflation, and is one of the worst industries for that. That one company pays over the median today is still information missing context.

The median income in the 80s for truck drivers was in the mid-30k area; let me repeat that, mid 30k, in the 80s.
That your example of a "good" company is 57k in 2023 is a joke of an income, who only slightly beats out the median of the industry.

Inflation-adjusted, drivers would be making a bit over 100k.

I am not saying over 100k is viable under the current structure, as that is due to a race to the bottom competition in a post-deregulation world and burning collective bargaining powers to the ground. I am saying 57k for a job we used to value at twice that, will still lead to a worker shortage.

[FrozenIpaq]

15 hours ago, poochyena said:

1:30:00 Linus claims the median income for truckers is $48k, and implied that was the wage the company, schneider, is offering drivers. This is not true. They offer an average of $50k for the first year, and up to $110k after that ¹. The average pay is around $57k. The median wage in the US is $45.7k³.

"There is no worker shortage, they just aren't paying enough" is such a stupid argument, I'm so tired of having to debunk it all the time.

 

¹https://schneiderjobs.com/truck-driving-jobs/inexperienced/first-year-truck-driver-pay

²https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Schneider/salaries/Truck-Driver

³https://usafacts.org/data/topics/economy/jobs-and-income/jobs-and-wages/median-annual-wage/

Linus did not specifically say that Schneider's pay was 48k - he just alluded to that being the median wage for truck drivers in general. He might have been referencing a source that had it listed at 48k for Canadian truck drivers. Regardless of what the value is, the story is still the same. The amount of pay that truck drivers get is relatively small compared to other jobs out there right now. Sure there are a lot of low paying jobs, but truck driving is a bit on the extreme end I would say myself. Long hours on the road (yes they have regulations on how long you can be on the road though), long time away from family, and driving a very large vehicle that could cause massive damage or loss of life/property if not handled properly, only to be paid a small salary.

 

The "up to 110k" after the first year - would need to unpack that a lot more since that is highly unlikely and a very large pay scale change just after one year. Schneider actually says that "110k" is for their top drivers. That's very selective - so it's likely that most are actually well below that point if their top drivers average 110k. 

 

Regardless of what Schneider pays (again Linus did not specifically say that it was Schneider's pay scale he referenced), the story is that truckers are not being paid enough to entice new drivers to join up. If someone can get a job elsewhere, outside of trucking, that pays more for a less stressful job, they will do that. If trucking paid more, people will be more apt to apply and join up compared to other jobs available to them. I know of a company that pays fairly well compared to the "median" but isn't able to get applicants because they don't pay enough compared to other industries or other opportunities out there. So it's not just looking at what your industry is but also what other industries or opportunities around are.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

Who told you this lie? And why do you believe it? Its completely made up, not based on anything. People don't magically appear out of thin air if the salary increases.

It's not really a lie.

If the pay for truck drivers were let's say six figures then I am sure a lot more people would be willing to work as truck drivers.

 

But economics is a complex subject and I don't think it is a good idea to listen to Linus, who lacks education in the subject and is an out-of-touch, 1%, multi-millionaire. Especially not when he himself struggled to find people to employ for his customer service jobs. He had a job listing up for like 6 months and didn't employ anyone for that position as far as I know (and the forum was overwhelmed by complaints of super slow response times, to the point where they started moving all posts about it to a single thread). Meanwhile, he was posting pictures on Twitter showing how like 3 of his ~50 or so employees could afford Tesla's to show how much he pays his employees. 

[Mihle]

5 hours ago, poochyena said:

Who told you this lie? And why do you believe it? Its completely made up, not based on anything. People don't magically appear out of thin air if the salary increases.

Ofc it doesnt happen over night or a few months, but over time it does, so no, its not a lie, people would switch from worse paying jobs. That might create shortage in the roles they come from, but that wasnt the point.

5 hours ago, poochyena said:

Linus said if they paid more, then they wouldn't have a worker shortage. Guess what? Turns out they DO pay more, and they even pay above median wages! But they still have a shortage. Linus was wrong in every single possible way.

People wont switch jobs because little extra pay if it comes with lots of inconveniences or worse working conditions/times, but if the gap becomes large enough, some people will.

 

If more pay compared to other job didn't attract people to join the field/job, as you try to argue, why do any job pay more than others?

Why would any programmer work on Google with lots of hours of hours per week if they didnt get paid more than jobs with better work life balance?

(Well, you have some weird people but the average person)

[crazzp]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Especially not when he himself struggled to find people to employ for his customer service jobs. He had a job listing up for like 6 months and didn't employ anyone for that position as far as I know

lol I'm amazed you can agree with Linus and yet find something to talk crap about him at the same time. HR is a balancing act. You cannot just hire a bunch of temp when there's a high in demand and then sack them when they're no longer needed. They also just released the backpack and screwdriver within weeks of each other. You need to monitor the sitatuion and access whether you need to hire. Then the hiring, then training, then re access again whether it's enough to address the problem. 6 months is about the right amount of time to hire a few people. 

 

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

He had a job listing up for like 6 months and didn't employ anyone for that position as far as I know

But you don't know... You're just making things up. 

[Neroon]

Can we do a poll? Who would be a trucker for 1 mill per month?

 

Every job requires different salaries to make it attractive. Plenty of people don't want to be a trucker, so if salary isn't high enough, people won't take it.

[Donut417]

On 6/20/2023 at 9:54 PM, poochyena said:

They offer an average of $50k for the first year, and up to $110k after that ¹.

That depends on what company you work for. A lot of companies have pushed drivers in to owner operators and you dont make any money doing that. 

 

On 6/20/2023 at 9:54 PM, poochyena said:

There is no worker shortage, they just aren't paying enough"

I mean he's kinda right. Firstly good wages do draw more people in to a profession. BUT on the other hand there is a shortage of people. At least in the US our population is aging. The boomers are retiring, there are not as many young people, so there eventually will be more jobs than there are people. This is a problem for many first world countries. 

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, crazzp said:

lol I'm amazed you can agree with Linus and yet find something to talk crap about him at the same time.

I don't know what he said this time, but the whole "there is no employee shortage, just a wage shortage" is a very naive and simplistic view of a complex issue. I might agree with some part of what he said, but my guess is that I disagree with pretty much everything else including the conclusions he drew. I base that on other comments he has made and the general idea people have about "there is no worker shortage".

 

Raising wages is not a silver bullet that fixes isues because it causes other issues.

 

7 hours ago, crazzp said:

HR is a balancing act. You cannot just hire a bunch of temp when there's a high in demand and then sack them when they're no longer needed. They also just released the backpack and screwdriver within weeks of each other. You need to monitor the sitatuion and access whether you need to hire. Then the hiring, then training, then re access again whether it's enough to address the problem. 6 months is about the right amount of time to hire a few people. 

I agree with what you say, but that does not apply to this situation.

They had already decided that they needed to hire more people because the situation was unsustainable, and then they couldn't find anyone for 6 months or so.

They had a job listing up and they couldn't fill the role. 

 

 

7 hours ago, crazzp said:

But you don't know... You're just making things up. 

Dude, I looked at their job listings and then used the waybackmachine to check when things were posted, when the shitstorm of bad customer service happened, and also correlated that with their employee listings as well as Tweets from Nick.

I am not making things up.

[crazzp]

32 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

They had already decided that they needed to hire more people because the situation was unsustainable, and then they couldn't find anyone for 6 months or so.

They had a job listing up and they couldn't fill the role. 

Having the job posting up for 6 months doesnt mean they couldn't find anyone for 6 months lol. It might be due to a variety of reasons, e.g. still looking for more, or better suited candidates. 

[Erioch]

2 hours ago, Neroon said:

Who would be a trucker for 1 mill per month?

I think most people would fail the drug test.

[divito]

10 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't know what he said this time, but the whole "there is no employee shortage, just a wage shortage" is a very naive and simplistic view of a complex issue. I might agree with some part of what he said, but my guess is that I disagree with pretty much everything else including the conclusions he drew. I base that on other comments he has made and the general idea people have about "there is no worker shortage".

While in broad strokes, you could argue it's simplistic, but it's also very location-specific. In my management role, in my area, there is definitely not a shortage of workers as resumes are consistently coming in. But their wage expectations and availability for specific roles and prior commitments continue to keep staffing levels lower than desired. If ownership changed their wage offers, or applicants changed their wage expectations, this would effectively be a non-issue. Does that alter other things? Of course.
 

10 hours ago, LAwLz said:

They had already decided that they needed to hire more people because the situation was unsustainable, and then they couldn't find anyone for 6 months or so.

They had a job listing up and they couldn't fill the role. 

Having a job posted, or the length it is visible, doesn't indicate anything about filling roles. At current and previous jobs, postings are left up or re-posted often. This is done for a variety of reasons: 

- to appear fresh, and/or to line up with influx of applicants (ie. graduations, end of finals, co-op placements ending, etc...)

- allow time for bigger pool of applicants to sift through

- depending on the role, a larger pool may lead to multiple hires, since most utilize their probationary period to proper effect

- some companies always have a posting to ensure they don't miss out on someone

- likewise, always having a posting is generally useful in roles that have high turnover, since you'll always be needing people

- depending on the company, HR might just forget about the posting even if they hired someone months ago and they are no longer on probation