KCRag Forum

I'm not surprised that the restaurant industry is having trouble finding help. The minimum wage for people receiving tips is much lower than the regular minimum wage. in Missouri, tipped workers are paid $3.925 an hour. Even in good times, it's either feast or famine for tipped employees. The best tips usually are on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The other days of the week many tipped workers barely make enough to make showing up worth it. Of course, it depends on the restaurant or bar. But that's true for many places. During the pandemic, even places that stayed open had a huge reduction in customers. Even on the "good days' for tips, it might be half the normal customer volume. On the bad tip days, it really wasn't worth showing up. Combined, they might not have made enough to survive. This all goes back to the issue that restaurants will have to pay much higher wages to attract employees whether they be fast food counter service or using tipped wait staff. They can go on TV and complain, but this is the capitalist system.

It's been decades since I worked for tips, but even when I did, I felt it was among the most exploitive situations that existed in our country. I've always thought we should do away with it. It's not only because I was once a tipped employee. I've watched too many friends and family members stiff servers with insulting tips. It wasn't because of bad service. It was simply because they were cheap people, arrogant, classist types who looked down on anyone in the service industry. I don't know how many times I've had to sit back until they get up so that I could augment THEIR tips because I didn't want the wait staff to suffer. It's for this reason I think tipping should be done away with. Pay the same minimum wage as everyone else, and THEN if people want to give a tip on top of that, fine.

Ideal to stop all exploitation. Acknowledging where it happens is the challenge on both sides of fence.

Exploitation happens everywhere all the time, it is not very challenging to acknowledge unless you are nominally against it but actually profiting from it yourself, in which case, yeah, I guess you are in a little bit of a pickle

KC August Labor Force and Employment as reported by workers, including day labor, self-employed, etc.

KC metro Aug only for last 10 years. Almost as if pandemic didn't happen...


KC showing each month within each year, not much drop after summer seasonal...

https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.mo_kansascity_msa.htm

US August for comparison. National improving but no where near caught up to pre-pandemic...

August employment: Indy, STL, Columbus, Cincy for comparison. None have surpassed 2019 employment as KC has. Nashville and Austin have generally recovered but not surpassing its own 2019 as much as KC has.

Take with grain of salt. BLS often makes revisions and January data tends to be most accurate.

Employment by county level. These are employed residents, not where jobs are located.

All metro countries doing quite well above US avg, including Jackson County...


WyCo also doing better than might be expected, relatively better than metro. JoCo chugging along as expected. Clay and Platte doing well too. There's still many in metro unemployed more than normal but the labor force also growing more than US avg.

STL City and STL County have a ways to go for full recovery.

This shows net job flows to/from KC for just Q2/2020...
https://stacker.com/stories/19598/metro ... g-new-jobs

KC net gained from region as might be expected... STL, Omaha, Wichita, etc but also from Denver and LA.
KC net lost to Dallas, Phoenix, ATL, Houston... not surprising the South.

Sept KC Metro employment data as reported by employers/companies...
https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.mo_kansascity_msa.htm

Doing worse than last month when considering current employment vs month in 2019.

Leisure/Hospitality dipping back down a bit, as well as Manufacturing/Construction and Info/Financial. Slower that month than US avg but overall still ahead of US in recovery.

The KS side of metro improved and MO side declined in Sept for a change. MO side still closer to full recovery despite a harder dip.

Other regions kept growing. interesting.....

A record 4.3 million workers walked off the job in August

The number of job openings in August took a breather from the record highs it had been notching in recent months, but a record 4.3 million workers walked off the job, according to the federal Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary.

Job openings fell from a record 10.9 million to 10.4 million — an unexpected drop that experts say could be attributable to contractions in commercial activity due to the delta variant of the coronavirus, falling economic expectations, companies' taking late-summer breathers from hiring, statistical noise or some combination of the above.
...
But with more than 10 million unfilled job openings, it is clear that more workers are seeking greener pastures. The rate of people quitting their jobs reached a record 2.9 percent, leading with increases among people leaving hotel, dining and wholesale trade jobs.
...

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/econom ... t-n1281377

Oct employment as reported by employers. As usual take with grain of salt as they can be adjusted and they are based on surveys, not hard counts.

KC metro inching closer to full recovery toward 2019...


US recovery picking up steam but a bit behind KC on path to 2019..


STL metro recovery stuttering out and flattening, hopefully not stuck but they have a ways to go to return to 2019. Could take years if pace doesn't pick up.


Can post more markets if interested.
https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.mo_kansascity_msa.htm

MO side of KC metro Oct employment. Where the jobs are located, not the employment of residents....


KS side of KC metro...

BLS Oct employment as reported by labor force/workers (the above is as reported by companies/employers).

Even though labor force drops after summer peak, KC's labor force continues to rise compared to previous Octobers. And while unemployment rate doesn't mean much for markets when labor force drops, KC's 3% unemployment is about same as 2019 even though labor force has increased, the employment pace is keeping up.

Comparing to STL, their labor force is dropping, employment is dropping (Octs). The 3.2% unemployment rate sounds good but has little meaning when labor force drops.



US labor force/employment improving but well below KC relative to 2019...

earthling wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 10:30 am Comparing to STL, their labor force is dropping, employment is dropping (Octs). The 3.2% unemployment rate sounds good but has little meaning when labor force drops.

How does this compare to Nashville? What the website to look this up again

^Nashville labor force still below 2019. Their employment not quite up to 2019 level compared to KC above 2019.

Indy, Columbus notably trailing behind KC relative to 2019.

Source to other markets