The Labor Market Disconnect
The conclusion of a recent missive I read on the jobs situation – more openings than applicants, if you choose to read more interesting things – reminded me of the closing scene of the movie Office Space. The piece I read suggested folks uncomfortable working in bars, restaurants and retail shops, possibly seek employment in more accommodating sectors such as construction, manufacturing or retail trade. If you recall from Office Space, Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) opted out of a dead-end but comfy office job after a short-lived life as a white-collar criminal mastermind for the life as a construction worker with his next-door neighbor Lawrence (Deidrich Bader). The relative joy of moving dirt and debris around outside and being able to actually see the fruits of his labors seemingly trumped the disgust-riddled process of shuffling TPS reports from desk to desk in a cubicle-infested, yet air-conditioned climate.
Training and experience differentials be damned, another anomaly in this labor piece really gets at the root of the problem: “retail shops” versus “retail trade.” Not enough folks want to work in the shops anymore while trade apparently experiences more success filling openings. The primary difference: in the shop one must deal with people while, at least the way I understand it, trade involves putting things out for customers to purchase without any requirement to interface with the customer.
People, more specifically the way many of us choose to treat each other, define the essence of the labor market disconnect. That’s my conclusion. Just like Peter Gibbons no longer wanted to deal with his butthole of a boss Bill Lumberg (Gary Cole), almost to the point of blowing up his relationship with way-out-of-his league Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), no one wants to deal with anyone else anymore. For those choosing not to go back to tending bar, serving food, or finding that pair of jeans in the right size, COVID didn’t create their distaste for dealing with the rest of us. Instead, it significantly increased their assessments of the costs of dealing with the rest of us. For some an extra $300 per week might sufficiently compensate them in the form of an enhanced unemployment benefit. For many, however, I fear that they discovered – like Peter Gibbons – that the benefits of not dealing with buttholes and doing something else are far greater than they earlier estimated. Putting on my economists had really quickly, I forecast that the cost of dealing with us in the future will skyrocket far beyond $300 a week if we can’t quit being buttholes.
I experienced an interesting confluence of events yesterday. First, The Wall Street Journal ran an article on the smackdown SPACs received over the past few months: the 137 mergers closed as of mid-February lost 25% of their value. Then, yesterday evening at a high school football game, I ended up sitting in front of United Wholesale Mortgage CEO Mat Ishbia, who took his company public via a merger with a Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation, or SPAC. 
Detroit Free Press personal finance columnist Susan Tompor authored another thoughtful 