If you see Chicken on sale, you better get some if you want it

T

The Sound Guy

Pursuit Driver
Both my son, who was talking with the Meat Market Manager at work and a friend of mine who sells chicken farming equipment have told me that Chicken prices are headed sky high.

My friend was talking to a processor manager who said that they are running short several thousand employees because they can't get anyone to work. Storage is filling up and they may have to start dumping the chicken because they can't process it and have no place to put it.

If they end up paying the $15.00 a hour that the democrats want them to pay, get ready for some expensive chicken in your local market. The Meat Manager told my son that futures have doubled for most chicken parts for delivery this summer.

Yikes!
 
The Sound Guy said:
Both my son, who was talking with the Meat Market Manager at work and a friend of mine who sells chicken farming equipment have told me that Chicken prices are headed sky high.

My friend was talking to a processor manager who said that they are running short several thousand employees because they can't get anyone to work. Storage is filling up and they may have to start dumping the chicken because they can't process it and have no place to put it.

If they end up paying the $15.00 a hour that the democrats want them to pay, get ready for some expensive chicken in your local market. The Meat Manager told my son that futures have doubled for most chicken parts for delivery this summer.

Yikes!
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I know a couple of people who worked at a chicken plant in Gainesville. They said the working conditions sucked because the environment had to remain cold. You are required to take a shower when arriving to work and then take another before you can leave for home. This is a safety requirement because they don't want workers bringing things into the work area that could contaminate the chicken and they don't want to risk employees taking salmonella home with them.

If the chicken plants can't meet their production goals because they are so short-staffed, then they need to look at what they have to do to attract more candidates to fill those positions. The unemployment rate in Hall County is 2.8% and that's why they and every other business in that area is having a hard time filling positions. The big problem with the chicken plants is the majority of the workers were Hispanics. A large percentage of them were most likely illegals and when the plants were effected by the shutdown last year; those illegals most likely left the area.

This is an Econ 101 principle: when the demand for labor is much higher than the available supply of labor; you must increase wages to get candidates. Here you cannot say people are making out better on unemployment benefits right now because the unemployment rate is so low. Besides that, the governor cancelled unemployed Georgians from the federal unemployment benefit. Prices of chicken will go up whether the government increases the minimum wage or employers start making significant increases in their wages. One thing for sure is they will be much higher if government increases the minimum wage to $15/hr.

When we went through this with the high tech boom in the mid-90s. Every business was having staffing issues because the unemployment rate across the country was so low and the demand for labor was so high. Fast-food restaurants were advertising $10/hr to come work for them. The vast majority of employers were having to increase their wages to meet their staffing needs. Prices didn't go up much at all.
 
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