Living Fair

No Country for Young Men? Silver-haired and Service-Oriented

February has a unique attribution as Spunky Old Broads Month.  Ah, the Spunky Old Broads -- those wise, strong, active women we all know and love. At 64, my mother is very spunky (although she's a class act so I'm not sure the word "broad" applies).  She's athletic and opinionated. Over the Christmas holiday, out mountain biking together amidst the splendor of Virginia's Allegheny mountains, she made it absolutely clear that I was never to place her in "a home".  Her preference is to leave this life like the Eskimos/Inuit do out on the edge of a snow mound or something similar, on her own property . The Inuit custom in their society is for elderly people who became too sick or debilitated to care for themselves or contribute to society to voluntarily walk off into the night to die. While there's a nobility in that kind of selfless demise, for my mother and yours I would think, that's unlikely to happen. My siblings and I are absolutely committed to helping her stay in her own home as long as possible.

This month, the Atlantic Monthly, has a superb feature on what the US will look like by 2030,No Country for Young Men. Writer, Megan McCardle, (despite her blatant reference to Cormac McCarthy) gives an amazingly candid and well-researched look at the consequences of the aging of our nation. She shows in vivid detail what the face of America will look like as the Baby Boomer generation takes hold--not only addressing the much-discussed and frankly frightening economicsfrom an accounting perspective but rather digging down into how this changes our economy from production-focused (i.e. making the better mousetrap quicker) to service-oriented (how many gerontologists and senior care workers we're going to need to address this sea-change in our population demographics).  She writes:

"As the Boomers age, they will consume fewer of the things that we produce efficiently, and more of the things that we provide relatively inefficiently. Productivity is notoriously difficult to pro­ject, but many forces will be pushing it downward as the Baby Boomers age.

Since services are labor-intensive, and the number of service-consuming seniors will grow rapidly, we’ll need a lot more workers (that’s bad news for those who favor restrictive immigration policies, particularly the kind that keep low-skilled workers out). And, of course, the mix of service workers that we’ll need will be different from what it is today. In effect, the next 20 years will require a massive transfer of resources and people away from the care of children, who will decline in relative number, and toward the care of old people."

Wooieeeeeeeeeeeeee, it's time to get with the program and start instituting national policies that will address this incoming tsunami of a domestic issue. How are dual income families and working women, married or single, going to afford this kind of care? Where are they going to find it in the quantity of providers we're going to need?   

For my mom, when she's really old and incapable of caring for herself properly, we'll need to find an excellent and affordable nurse, home health aide, hospice worker...you name it. At Laborfair, we're thinking of these challenges now. We're here to help you prepare for this by matching you with great people you can hire direct for your aging parents. Go the FAIR!

Video interview with Jenna Raby, founder & CEO of Laborfair.com

Watch this interview with Jenna Raby, founder and CEO of Laborfair.com. Jenna talks about Laborfair with Steven Tse of eBay during the 2008 San Francisco Home Show. Learn about what Laborfair.com is, its free service to consumers, the range of service providers Laborfair.com offers and how it differentiates from other online marketplaces like Craigslist.

Laborfair sister site in India, different worlds, same message

Today, I was thrilled to see a feature article appear in the Technology section of the New York Times about a former Microsoft employee and internet entrepreneur that is using the power of social networks to bring more jobs to India's masses making less than $3 a day. The title of the article is: "In India, Poverty inspires Technology Workers to Altruism." Check it out at:

Check it out here:

New York Times article about Babajob

He's beginning in Bangalore where there is an endless flood of expatriates with a need for local services and the money to purchase them. It's a great idea--one that I’m proud to say we had first in the US ;-) and have worked on for the better part of two years. I feel well-qualified to comment then on this subject.

The people Babajob aims to help are those service sector personnel, e.g. painters, cooks, childcare workers, handymen and chauffeurs (yes, you definitely do not want to drive yourself in India), who lack a viable social network and the ability to connect with potential employers. The company has identified low (if any) computer literacy and limited access to a computer as the primary roadblocks to that connection. Oddly enough, the problem in India and its growing economy, is the same one here: how to connect independent, qualified service providers with those looking to hire them in order to increase their opportunities and simultaneously redistribute a bit of wealth back into the economy. Laborfair tackles that head-on here in the US by making the hiring process for those same types of services far more efficient – resulting in cost savings for consumers, more consistent job opportunities, and a resulting higher wage for independent service providers.

In India, without social networks and the connections they foster, these service providers are relegated to a life of poverty. In America, there is less overall poverty, but our challenges are of a strikingly similar nature--access to living wage employment, health care, affordable childcare, etc. Laborfair and Babajob share the same ideological genetics. We both believe in using business to create social change, and in supporting the entrepreneurial drive of the world's people to have better paying and more consistent work opportunities. We're proud that Laborfair began by helping non-profit worker centers throughout the Bay Area find more employment opportunities for their in-need clients (and continues to do so).

But there are also differences in our approaches necessitated by the unique cultural differences. Where Babajob charges the employer to contact providers and pays intermediaries to interview computer illiterate workers and post their profiles on the web, Laborfair sells a highly efficient and affordable marketing and communication platform to the provider in order to keep the service free for the consumer. We believe that in order to help service providers build their businesses, they must make the barriers to entry as low as possible for potential employers. There is also much greater computer access in the US, meaning that we do not have to carry the overhead of intermediaries to interview and post worker profiles. And like Babajob, we’ve made it much easier than previously possible for consumers who need quality, trustworthy personal help to find it at a fair price. With Laborfair, you can forget the hassle and expense of contacting an overpriced housecleaning service or mining the yellow pages for service professionals without a review or ratings. Instead, there's a great independent local service provider waiting to do your job.

I find this article incredibly encouraging. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a giant corporation or a small startup approaching the issues of poverty alleviation and the growing income divide, whether they’re focused globally or domestically, or even if they treat it as a business opportunity or a philanthropic effort. The point is that there's room for everyone to be the catalyst for change. Your consumer choices and the conscious capitalism you display in your daily hiring decisions are the real and genuine power here. Businesses like Laborfair and Babajob demonstrate how innovative businesses concepts, both in the US and abroad, can create social change --the main ideology behind our mission here at Laborfair.com. Kudos to them. Perhaps there's a partnership in the making.

Green inspiration - the kind you eat

I read an article on poverty in America today, how Walmart and 7-11 are increasing inventory around cheaper food items as Americans get poorer--as a result there's more malnutrition and people eat far less fruits and vegetables. It really got me thinking--I'm happy I finally have time to write a blog. Absent of moral posturing, when I started Laborfair, I entered heart first, business pragmatism second. Ben Picard, my partner, and I designed Laborfair to be a profitable business that delivers positive social change. We looked around and noticed that the household service sector was inefficient--agencies charged an outlandish fee for their services while individual service providers made only a portion of the proceeds from their hard work. We conceived of Laborfair as a trusted and valuable communication service that delivers concrete social and economic value to our entire community of users: consumers, service providers, and the wonderful organizations throughout the Bay Area, that dedicate themselves to helping qualified people find gainful employment. I have a big list of why I love this company (after two years straight of singing praises, fighting for viability on a shoestring, and being passionate about our success). The takeaway? Fair prices for homeowners while individuals get far closer to living wage employment and some greens in the fridge. I'm proud of that.