The grill that we bought from Walmart came with assembly and we later hired the brothers who put it together for $55 per hour to put together a ton of IKEA shelves. Their new rate for July 2022? $80 per hour, a 45-percent increase due to “general inflation.”
23 thoughts on “Bidenflation for furniture assembly”
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Each or for both? I am paying a college kid 15 an hour to build financial models using a beta SAAS product. Guess I am getting a deal. Closest IKEA is a few hours away.
$80 for the team of two. We are more than an hour away from the IKEA just north of Miami so we have them deliver (also better to order online because nothing we want is ever in stock).
Due to college graduates over-production and unskilled labor shortage, one has to pay $15 for financial modeling and $40 to assemble a grill. The phenomenon is called demand-supply 101.
How much has the price of beer gone up during that time?
I am not man enough to drink beer, so I am the wrong person to ask!
As they used to say on Mythbusters™ (RIP Grant Imahara): “Well, there’s ‘yer problem!”
Lions wish they could afford to pay someone to put together a shelf. Does the shelf require an A&P rated mechanic?
fyi, referring to your dumb user name in every post makes you look like you are retarded.
Pay whatever they ask. I decided I’ll never touch furniture again after it took 5 hours of cryptic instructions + mismatched parts + missing fasteners + wrong tools + swearing to assemble a large office desk.
I just moved into a new townhouse here in Olney, MD (Mostly driven by the fact that it is 15 minutes to GAI and 7 minutes to Blue Mash Golf course) and could use some shelves as well. Would you be interested in sharing what you purchased?
JJD – Lookin’ for ideas
Mostly Kallax shelves.
Thanks!
JJD – Off to College Park
IKEA for Florida Mediterranean or Modern Coastal style mac-mansion? It is like serving pork rinds with a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac. You can take MIT techie from Cambridge, MA but you can not take Cambridge, MA from from MIT techie.
Anon; it would have been great to unpack the kids’ LEGO boxes into designer-chosen American-made all-hardwood shelving. However, the interior designers we talked to said that the minimum project cost $300,000, wouldn’t begin for 6-12 months (too busy with other clients), and would then result in furniture selections with a 6-12-month lead time. Some of our neighbors have houses that are fully decorated and they are indeed beautiful inside, but I had a goal of everything unpacked and very room usable within three months. IKEA was the answer!
Don’t be hating on IKEA! We are aging out with some heirloom furniture nobody will want. If it was IKEA they could just put it on the curb.
You can burn heirloom furniture in a fireplace. IKEA staff would give toxic fumes.
Do they have a fix for the Ikea shelves falling over or do you nail all your Ikea shelves to the wall? I recall a big news a few years ago when accidents happened.
With younger kids, anchoring to the wall makes sense. If you put heavy books on the bottom row, however, I don’t think there is a big risk of tipping over.
Don’t whine about the 45% increase, this is a one time project and you can afford it! 🙂
The real shocker to me and the middle class American (the “poor” is safe, they will get more food stamp and all other kind of “entitled” benefits) is the cost of everyday necessities from gas to food — things that you simply cannot cut back on or save.
Just one example. Some potato chip makers have kept the price and bag size the same, but cut the amount of chips in the bag. For bags that you can see through, hold it in front of you and you will see 2/3 of it is air. Those you cannot see through, open the bag and immediately you have enough of the bag to roll and be able to clip it with a holding clipper.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/422407
@George A.: “The real shocker to me and the middle class American… is the cost of everyday necessities from gas to food — things that you simply cannot cut back on or save.”
I can manage the inflation on gas and food. The real shocker to me is the price increases for health, property, and auto insurance, and property taxes!
Thirty years ago, I hired a couple of day laborers (standing around outside of Home Depot) to help me move. They were very satisfied w/ $20 each for two hours of work.
More recently, I’ve been mostly unsuccessful hiring neighborhood kids for help w/ home repair and painting projects.
This past week, I unsuccessfully called over half a dozen tree trimmers to get two 25-foot palm trees trimmed. I used to pay my long-time tree-trimmer $40 for the job, but he’s (early) retired. I’m willing to pay $50 for the job (a 25% increase), and the trimmer can use my ladder, and I’ll do all the cleanup.
Of course independent contractors are raising their prices to whatever the market will bear, and with the general inflation they are smart enough to realize they can blame the increase on inflation. The only ones dumb enough to believe that individual sellers would never do this are economists like Alan Cole and “economists” like Megan McArdle.
Why then there is no competition is jumping to bight off a bundle of $$$$$$?