What Is the Hot Waitress Economic Index?

The hot wait🍷ress economic index is an offensive and dubious economic indic🃏ator that counts the number of attractive people working as servers. 

According to what we will refer to as the attractive server index, the higher the number of good-looking servers, the weaker the state of the economy. The questionable assumption is that attractive individuals don't have trouble finding higher-paying jobs during good times in the economy.

According to the indicator, high-paying jobs are more difficult to get𝕴 during tough economic times. A higher number of attractive people will therefore be forced to work in service-industry jobs. The theory would seem to disregard employee skills, qualifications, or experience.

The attractive server index was first articulated by Hugo Lindgren in an article for New York Magazine. Lindgren was an American magazine and♏ newspaper writer and editor at the time. He has gone into Hollywood production, not💧 economics or academia.

How the Hot Waitress Economic Index Works

Lindgren wrote about finding what he considered to be more attractive people serving tables at a Lower East Side establishment in New York City in at the onset of the Great Recession. These servers were replacements for people who had been laid off. The manager in charge reportedly surmised that good-looking waitresses would drive more sales for✱ the establishment.

The attractive server index hasn't been vetted by economists and it's not known if this strategy by the management of one establishment was successful. A traditional economic theory contends that employment tends to be a 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:lagging indicator for economic recovery, but Lindgrenꦆ contended there was "good reason to believe" that his index was a leading indicator.

"As a commodity that’s fairly cheap, historically effective as a marketing tool, and available on a freelance basis, hotness will likely be back in demand long before your average Michigan autoworker is," he wrote.

There is minimal research in support of this indicator. Scientists have found that attractive people tend to be considered more capable and they're more confident and this combines to get them better jobs and higher wages. This is often called "lookism," or beauty bias. It could suggest that there's a lack of better jobs out there when attractive people are waiting tables, a job that some consider requires 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:lesser skill and/or result in lower pay.

Indicators and Factors of the Index

The pay scale for servers varies considerably based on a restaurant's location, clientele, food quality, and the competency of the servers themselves. To assume that the service industry is low-skill is to discount the highly competitive nature of the market. Yelp reviews calling out uneducated, unskilled, or poor servers can quickly get a server fired.

"There can be a pop culture mythos around some economic indicators," says Erika Rasure, Ph.D., assistant professor of business and financial services at Maryville University and a member of the 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Inv💧estopedia Financial Review Board. "These🌄 can be very superstitious. People tryꦏ to make correlations between observable phenomena but it doesn't make it true. In this case, it is misogynistic and sexist."

Rasure recommends doing your homework to judge the accuracy of an indicator. "How well has an indicator been studied? Don't do anything until you have the facts and don't believe everything you see and hear on TV or the Internet."

Hot Waitress Index vs. Other𝓡 Strange Indicators 

The accuracy and reliability of the attractive server index is questionable but it's far from alone in the finance realm of weird indicators that people have used. If you can dream it up, someone may have beat you to that theory. "Some people think the full moon has an influence on the economy. I think of these indicators as pop culture finance reads," says Rasure.

Various insulting and suspect theories have surfaced over the years to tout the predictive power of marine advertisements, sales of 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:men's underwear, and even lipstick sales. The idea behind these id𒈔eas is similar.

You can expect to see tougher marine recruitment ads on TV in a difficult economy because they meet recruitment goals quickly in down economies. They don't have to worry about scaring people away. Men's underwear sales will dip (that pair might last a little longer) and lipstick sales will go up because it's a relatively inexpensive personal luxury that no one needs in a masked pandemic.

The Bottom Line

The hot waitress economic index counts the number of attractive people who work as servers. The theory behind the index is that more attractive indiviꦯduals work as servers at times when the economy is weak. They could presumably work in a better-paying position in a stronger economy, thanks in part to their looks.

The index doesn't consider qualifications such as skills, experience, or education. It shouldn't be used to measure the likelihood that you can land a job in a different field based on factors other than your appearance.