Room For One More

Some job market clichés:

“Just work at Starbucks.”
“McDonald’s is always hiring.”
“You can always get a job at Walmart.”

These come around a lot during difficult economic times, mainly because they are lobbed by the securely employed at those people unfortunate enough to be in need (sometimes dire) of work. I tend have a question for people who make these statements, that I ask with the false innocence of someone who understands that they're being provocative.

"Just what business are Starbucks, McDonald's or Wal-mart in that they have an infinite need for labor?"

Because that's really the implication of these statements, when made to job seekers. That these low-wage service roles need literally any and everyone with a pulse that they can get their hands on. Along with the bottomless revenue needed to pay a salary to literally anyone who walks in the door wanting one.

There has not been a business yet, of any size, that has mastered the fine art of taking human labor and unerringly converting it into profits. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as an unemployment rate, because everyone who wanted a workable job would have one. It's something of a truism, but labor does not, in and of itself, produce demand for the output of that labor. It is a side effect of efficiency. A lot has been said recently about the "Jevons Paradox," which posits that gains in efficiency don't always reduce the overall demand for a resource. But it's important to note that in order for the paradox to kick in, demand has to rise. And the more efficient use of labor hasn't always created greater demand for labor.

And so, there isn't an infinite demand for baristas or shelf stockers that would make coffee houses and national retail chains sure-fire employers of last resort. And that allows, or maybe even requires them to be more selective than casual advice would indicate. A McDonald's manager has an idea of what a good hire or a bad hire looks like; and they're often inclined to see displaced technology, or other high-skill, workers as bad hires. In part because people who do hiring for fast-food restaurants understand (and maybe even share) the impression that these jobs are low-status. And they definitely understand that the jobs are considered low-skill; there's a reason why they tend to be effectively reserved for the less-educated. They're unlikely to be convinced that someone who, some months before, was pulling down a salary decently into the six figures, is going to stay in a (near) minimum wage role a moment longer than they have to. And the world might not take much time to learn, but training new people is still a task that makes the work less efficient than it already is, and so is to be avoided.

But I think that most people understand that. I know in my own experience, I have yet to meet anyone who said the unemployed could always find low-wage retail work who had actually every taken such work as a survival job. Like a lot of platitudes, "Just work at Starbucks" is a way of believing that the individual is in control of everything around them. The things that people say to comfort themselves need not be true as stated.