People pursuing or having a college degree in many non-technical/non-STEM area are a large part of the reason there isn't a worse "server shortage" than there is in the US.

Given how fast and more extensively young men -- primarily those men from the three largest ethnic backgrounds in the US -- are falling behind women in higher education in the US, I think that the claims that "everyone should go to college and get a degree (from college)" has really not resonated as much as of late as the above seems to suggest.

Most of the developed world is in desperate need of tradespeople, but that really is nothing new -- it's been an issue well before even the 1990s. Even in the developing world, finding competent, trained tradespeople is not a walk in the park -- actually, given my own experiences with housing in Asia and Latin America, I would say a shortage of competent, trained tradespeople is even more of an issue in developing countries than what I encounter in the US and in the higher income parts of Europe.

I still find it surprising how much less expensive and better 69+ year-old locksmiths are in the rural parts of the (US) Upper Midwest than the whippersnappers and others playing locksmiths nowadays in urban areas of the US, Canada and middle and high income parts of Europe.

Server shortage vs. tradespeople shortage? The labor pool has to draw from somewhere, whether it's to serve the F&B market or something else. As prices rise for F&B service and for getting tradespeople's service done, people will substitute increasingly to do do-it-yourself approaches. Probably better for the health of the public if fast food in particular faces a huge rise in prices due to a server shortage, but that's only if it doesn't drive an increase in unemployment/underemployment and all the negative health consequences of poverty (absolute poverty and even relative poverty). :eek:

Server shortage or not, low unemployment or not, employers are increasingly going toward automation and self-service approaches as a means of cost-cutting and being less subject to staffing issues than is already inherent in the F&B marketplace.

I agree. Restaurants will solve this issue one way or another. Automation is going to be a big part of the solution at fast food and fast casual for sure. And somewhat at the casual places too - such as ordering from an ipad mounted on the table.

The whole server shortage remains a complicated issue. As I've said all along in this thread, there are a lot of different variables. And they keep changing. I don't think any one of them is responsible for the majority of the labor shortage, it's that each of the dozen variables contribute to a small percentage of the shortage. The labor force participation rate is at it's lowest point in a while in the US. As you point out, every industry will start to find solutions to reduce their demand for labor, if people aren't willing to go back to work. We'll see the participation rate stay low, while unemployment goes down. But when the next generation entering the workforce wants jobs, will they be there? And to the other discussion point, the jobs that MAY be available are the trades. It's much harder to replace a plumber or electrician with a robot.

I think as a little bit of a counter to the idea that people have just spent the time to better themselves and are now working better jobs rather than serving jobs (although I'd agree there's an element of that): I work at a major university. This university relies very heavily on hiring students part time to work in the dining halls. I think the number I saw was they have around 400 full time staff, and during the normal year hire about 4000 part time staff. Last I heard they've had problems hiring more part time staff than they have full time. They've had to close some of the dining halls down, and limit hours at others. Just a day or two ago, they put out a request asking faculty and staff to consider volunteering their time to work a shift or two at the dining halls. (Which just made me laugh, I'd pay money to see some of our faculty do that). The thing is, I'm not convinced that these students that normally would be working these jobs are working elsewhere. They're just not working at all these days.

Bingo.

Did the ratio for students on an education visa decrease? The visa allows for on campus work but not off campus work. A professor friend explained his worker shortage since the university ratios changed at a university with wealthy students.

For all that under-25s have a reputation for poor impulse control, a non-zero number of them probably did hang onto their stimulus payments so they’d have a decent amount of beer money on hand when they made it back to campus.

I don't think this runs counter to the "better themselves" hypothesis at all. It supplements it. There's no single answer. Labor participation rate is very low - 61.4% last I saw. This means that some people who stopped working aren't looking for work, which is why unemployment has still gone down from it's pandemic peak, these people aren't counted. High school and college students likely make up part of this category. I've also heard that (formerly) working mothers make up a segment.

The workers who "bettered themselves" are the ones that were transitional entry-level employees anyway. They always planned to move on, but when their restaurant or store was shut down by the government, their plan was accelerated. Some of them spent the last year living on unemployment + $1200/month extra, while figuring out what that new better job would be. Some immediately found that better job.

Thanks for sharing your example, it helps explain the big picture.

Robot servers where I am, sushi restaurant in Newfoundland, taco joints in Texas, outfits in Florida.
https://www.westerninvestor.com/brit...diners-4461529

I disagree. I believe it has resonated very strongly. Middle and high school students have been actively discouraged from entering the trades for 20+ years, and as I said, the per-requisite courses (shop classes, etc), have been largely eliminated. It's already been a generation without father to teach kid, or at least motivate him/her.
Those men who are falling behind women in higher education are not generally going into the trades, OR the hospitality business. By and large they aren't doing anything. Anything legal anyway.

The other thing is, in many places (places without large universities nearby) the average restaurant/bar worker is not a college kid. Everywhere I've lived it has been a diverse mix of all ages, including single moms, guys needing a second job, and even college graduates with degrees who chose to remain bartenders or servers because the money and flexibility was so good. Right now, in my city, there are unfilled openings for bartenders/servers in popular spots who could make $400+ in tips per shift. Instead, the places reduce their days and hours open.

Disagree with what, with the facts that major groups of males are falling further behind females in American educational achievement? It's been in large part because young adult males -- more so European-American males -- are on average joining the full-time workforce earlier than females of an otherwise similar demographic background. The seduction of early and easier money from non-college-going males working full-time has gained in recent decades, all while the fruits of delayed gratification are not as widely appreciated as before.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college...ol-11630948233

It wasn't all that long ago that "shop classes" were very much part of what middle/junior high school students would be exposed to in those US schools where I had a community interest. Woodwork, graphic arts, electricity, plumbing/waterworks were all part of what the students got exposed to whether the students liked it or not -- and the school teachers in those subjects would even help kids to get part-time work in those fields for apprenticeships/summer jobs (or, post-school work, if failing out of school but showing some interest/competency in such areas). But due to other financial concerns, many of the very teachers for those classes wouldn't even want their own kids to stay on those tracks because it wasn't a recipe for as much long-term financial security (and even perhaps health/well-being) as other opportunities on the scene.

The mix of students and their backgrounds who are on campus is not all the same that it was in 2019 at this time, and so it has an impact on who is available for part-time work on and off campus. And as part of what led to some aspects of that change, I'm betting that some people phased out of part-time work on and around campuses and went to full-time work elsewhere while dropping out or taking a leave of absence.

But as indicated in an earlier post, the server shortage is neither due to just any one factor nor largely accounted for by any single factor -- it's a confluence of circumstances that have led to the situation as it is.

If they are that busy, they should get a second (or third) pizza oven to be able to handle more pies. When I was a young pup, I worked for a Mom & Pop place called Taratoni's as a driver. The demand was so big, they got a second oven put in on top of the first. When they did, the wait time was reduced and the business grew to almost double the volume. The problem why they couldn't expand further was the size of the storefront. I have never seen 3 stacked on top of each other, and this may be because the area would be too hot to work in.

It takes 3-5 minutes to throw a pie together, the problem becomes available space in the oven(s). You don't want to undercook a pizza as the crust would be soggy, and overcooked will burn the edges as well as the crust.

Anyone with Hulu may be interested in a new six part series “The Next Thing You Eat”.

According to Kevin McDonough’s syndicated column, it explores the ways that technology has already changed and is in the process of revolutionizing the food industry. It “contemplates the future of dining, which includes robot and drone deliveries, automated burger flippers, computer run fish farms, synthetic meats …”

I expect it will discuss the eventual elimination of most restaurant jobs.

Honestly not sure. I know there's fewer foreign students on campus right now than there normally are. That said, I'm not sure that the foreign student population is enough to have the major impact they're having with the dining halls.

I know other areas of campus have similar issues. Heck, we're trying to hire a general IT support student. I don't think we've gotten a single application for it. Normally we'd at least get some, even if some of them are laughably unqualified to do the work. (Course, for that position, it might fall more into my general observation that the current generation of undergraduate students have lost any and all technical abilities to use anything other than an ipad for anything. That's a completely different conversation though.)

Not so easy. The place advertises wood-fuelled oven(s) (kind of appropriate as the property borders an old clearcut) but the thing is the place is in the middle of nowhere, or at least feels that way when you drive through, which is why one is surprised it is so busy (or even had enough legitimate business to keep going in the first place). I'd suspect they'd have difficulty hiring as the young population lives quite a ways away and it'd be a long drive out (and transit goes nowhere near).

What's "recent"? This has been said for decades (heard about it when I was an undergrad 40+ years ago) up north. Maybe the difference was young men (without resources to pay for tuition - as cheap as it was at the time - & expenses worked for a few years (usually in the industry they intended to work as educated professionals) to fund their studies (many were the first in their family to go to university). In the past 2+ decades, what's interesting is that traditionally male-dominated fields (e.g., engineering) of tertiary education has become female-dominated.

Though lawyers can be replaced. Reviews of legal stuff was farmed out to the Philippines and India due to lower legal costs. Now that's even been replaced by computers.

The legendary PhD taxi driver, aspiring actor starving artist......

It happened in my field (accounting) earlier than that.