Fun fact: One of our competitors burns through receptionists at a rate of about two per year. They post their job ads on their Facebook page and they post it on Craigslist, and they offer $15 an hour. On the other hand, we talked to a local tech college that trains medical assistants and were told that graduates from their program are expecting $17-$18 an hour and we were assured that at $18.50 an hour they could give us plenty of candidates. Average for the county is $19 (not entry level, across all experience levels). Note that $15 an hour is for untrained receptionists, while $17 an hour is for candidates with a 2-year AS. A receptionist can answer the phone. A medical assistant can draw blood and do vitals. In taxes and overhead we pay about 50% more so the difference to us is $22.50/hr vs. $27.50. Our extra cost for someone happy with more skillz is about $40 a day or $10k a year on top of the ~50k it's already costing us. So. 20% premium on labor for quality, skilled labor. And for four years now, they've been hiring new receptionists every six months. Some recovery. Our most recent hire? With a master's degree and $150k in student loan debt? Yeah, before we hired her she was delivering food for Amazon.
My kid's nanny just quit graduate school in music therapy because she was like, "Fuck it, I love taking care of babies, and $15/hr is as good as I'll get out in the world anyway." Fucked up that I can get a college educated 20 something for $15/he because she doesn't have a lot of other prospects. Not sure if I should feel good employing someone, or feel bad about taking advantage of our perverted economy. I think I can feel both, but the one thing I can't do is pay her more. That's the difference between me and a big corporation: I'm spending what I can. I don't have a CFO ready to fire me if I don't jump at the chance to find a nanny who will work for $14.50 with a non compete clause.
Yesterday I did some quick math about the hourly rate to be considered middle class. I made $15/hr at a point and was shocked to know I was technically middle class for my area. It ranges from about $12/hr to ~$23/hr depending on which state you live in. Something is very wrong with wages in this country. And while I have limited sympathy for people whining about struggling while making upper middle class salaries, I can be brought to sympathize with a person making $150k based on the details of their story.
Some of my friends are rising towards upper class. Most of them are descending towards lower class. Nobody is sitting still. One of the things that allowed us to invest in building a birth center was moving out of LA. Our monthly expenses went down $1700 a month.