There Is No Labor Shortage

[jamesbond]

You keep hearing the media talk about a "labor shortage" in America. There is no labor shortage, people are simply refusing to work a low paying job and companies are refusing to increase their pay to an acceptable level. This is a good article going into details about this topic.

It is true that there are currently millions of jobs going unfilled. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released statistics showing that there were 9.3 million job openings in April and that the percentage of layoffs decreased while resignations increased. Taking these statistics at face value, one could conclude this means there is a labor shortage.

But, as economist Heidi Shierholz explained in a New York Times op-ed, there is only a labor shortage if employers raise wages to match worker demands and subsequently still face a shortage of workers. Shierholz wrote, “When those measures [of raising wages] don’t result in a substantial increase in workers, that’s a labor shortage. Absent that dynamic, you can rest easy.”

Remember the subprime mortgage housing crisis of 2008 when economists and pundits blamed low-income homeowners for wanting to purchase homes they could not afford? Perhaps this is the labor market’s way of saying, if you can’t afford higher salaries, you shouldn’t expect to fill jobs.

Corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling—not because of a real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce insists that “[t]he worker shortage is real,” and that it has risen to the level of a “national economic emergency” that “poses an imminent threat to our fragile recovery and America’s great resurgence.” In the Chamber’s worldview, workers, not corporate employers who refuse to pay better, are the main obstacle to the U.S.’s economic recovery.

Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can’t find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet.

At the same time as headlines are screaming about a catastrophic worker shortage that could undermine the economy, stories abound of how American billionaires paid peanuts in taxes according to newly released documents, even as their wealth multiplied to extraordinary levels.

The claim that businesses would no longer be profitable if they are forced to increase wages is undermined by one multibillion-dollar fact: corporations are raking in record-high profits and doling them out to shareholders and executives. They can indeed afford to offer greater pay, and when they do, it turns out there is no labor shortage.

https://www.newsclick.in/there-no-labor ... ploitation

[IraqVet2003]

You keep hearing the media talk about a "labor shortage" in America. There is no labor shortage, people are simply refusing to work a low paying job and companies are refusing to increase their pay to an acceptable level. This is a good article going into details about this topic.

It is true that there are currently millions of jobs going unfilled. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released statistics showing that there were 9.3 million job openings in April and that the percentage of layoffs decreased while resignations increased. Taking these statistics at face value, one could conclude this means there is a labor shortage.

But, as economist Heidi Shierholz explained in a New York Times op-ed, there is only a labor shortage if employers raise wages to match worker demands and subsequently still face a shortage of workers. Shierholz wrote, “When those measures [of raising wages] don’t result in a substantial increase in workers, that’s a labor shortage. Absent that dynamic, you can rest easy.”

Remember the subprime mortgage housing crisis of 2008 when economists and pundits blamed low-income homeowners for wanting to purchase homes they could not afford? Perhaps this is the labor market’s way of saying, if you can’t afford higher salaries, you shouldn’t expect to fill jobs.

Corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling—not because of a real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce insists that “[t]he worker shortage is real,” and that it has risen to the level of a “national economic emergency” that “poses an imminent threat to our fragile recovery and America’s great resurgence.” In the Chamber’s worldview, workers, not corporate employers who refuse to pay better, are the main obstacle to the U.S.’s economic recovery.

Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can’t find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet.

At the same time as headlines are screaming about a catastrophic worker shortage that could undermine the economy, stories abound of how American billionaires paid peanuts in taxes according to newly released documents, even as their wealth multiplied to extraordinary levels.

The claim that businesses would no longer be profitable if they are forced to increase wages is undermined by one multibillion-dollar fact: corporations are raking in record-high profits and doling them out to shareholders and executives. They can indeed afford to offer greater pay, and when they do, it turns out there is no labor shortage.

https://www.newsclick.in/there-no-labor ... ploitation

Hey Jamesbond, this is an excellent post!!! Jamesbond I think the only true labor shortage that these multi-billion companies are having right now are those of both the foreign J-1 Visa workers (coming from China, Eastern Europe, etc.) and the illegal aliens coming up mainly from Mexico and other Central American countries they could exploit. This is due to the travel bans placed on some of these countries and the revamping of the U.S. visa system after the Covid-19 scare.

[jamesbond]

Here is more evidence that there is no labor shortage.

The idea that the United States suffers from a labor shortage is fast becoming conventional wisdom. But before you accept the idea, it’s worth taking a few minutes to think it through. Once you do, you may realize that the labor shortage is more myth than reality.

Let’s start with some basic economics. The U.S. is a capitalist country, and one of the beauties of capitalism is its mechanism for dealing with shortages. In a communist system, people must wait in long lines when there is more demand than supply for an item. That’s an actual shortage. In a capitalist economy, however, there is a ready solution.

The company or person providing the item raises its price. Doing so causes other providers to see an opportunity for profit and enter the market, increasing supply. To take a hypothetical example, a shortage of baguettes in a town will lead to higher prices, which will in turn cause more local bakeries to begin making their own baguettes (and also cause some families to choose other forms of starch). Suddenly, the baguette shortage is no more.

Human labor is not the same thing as a baguette, but the fundamental idea is similar: In a market economy, both labor and baguettes are products with fluctuating prices.

When a company is struggling to find enough labor, it can solve the problem by offering to pay a higher price for that labor — also known as higher wages. More workers will then enter the labor market. Suddenly, the labor shortage will be no more.

If anything, wages today are historically low. They have been growing slowly for decades for every income group other than the affluent. As a share of gross domestic product, worker compensation is lower than at any point in the second half of the 20th century. Two main causes are corporate consolidation and shrinking labor unions, which together have given employers more workplace power and employees less of it.

Just as telling as the wage data, the share of working-age Americans who are in fact working has declined in recent decades. The country now has the equivalent of a large group of bakeries that are not making baguettes but would do so if it were more lucrative — a pool of would-be workers, sitting on the sidelines of the labor market.

Corporate profits, on the other hand, have been rising rapidly and now make up a larger share of G.D.P. than in previous decades. As a result, most companies can afford to respond to a growing economy by raising wages and continuing to make profits, albeit perhaps not the unusually generous profits they have been enjoying.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/brie ... wages.html

[jamesbond]

Good video by Richard Wolf regarding this so called, "labor shortage."

[jamesbond]

Another good video by Richard Wolf explaining what is really happening with the current job market.

[jamesbond]

4 million people quit their jobs in April alone this year. Millions more have started quitting their jobs this year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. A lot of these people are changing careers, starting their own business and some are retiring.

[jamesbond]

There really is no labor shortage in the United States.

[jamesbond]

This man applied to 60 entry level jobs and only got one interview!

[IraqVet2003]

This man applied to 60 entry level jobs and only got one interview!

Hey Jamesbond, that's a very interesting video. It pokes holes in the "labor shortage" narrative the media is telling. However, I suspect there are two other possible reasons why these job hunters aren't getting hired. In the case of the guy, it could be that he is facing age discrimination from some of the employers he applied to. As for the young lady she could be having a hard time due to being considered "overqualified". This is possibly due to the fact she stated she had a bachelor's degree, thus potential employers fear she may leave them once the economy or job market picks up.

[Cornfed]

Hey Jamesbond, that's a very interesting video. It pokes holes in the "labor shortage" narrative the media is telling. However, I suspect there are two other possible reasons why these job hunters aren't getting hired. In the case of the guy, it could be that he is facing age discrimination from some of the employers he applied to. As for the young lady she could be having a hard time due to being considered "overqualified". This is possibly due to the fact she stated she had a bachelor's degree, thus potential employers fear she may leave them once the economy or job market picks up.

The thing is that if there really were a labor shortage then employers would not have the luxury of making those sorts of decisions.

In general, talk of a labor shortage should be treated with extreme suspicion. The thing is that the market has been in employers' favor for so long that they have become psychopathic about it and think that workers in whatever numbers they want with whatever skills they want willing to work for whatever money they want will just magically appear like toads after a rainstorm whenever they want them to and then disappear when they don't want them any more. If the situation falls short of that then clearly there is a critical labor shortage, no-one wants to earn an honest living any more, the government has failed them, there outta be a law etc.

[MrMan]

This man applied to 60 entry level jobs and only got one interview!

Hey Jamesbond, that's a very interesting video. It pokes holes in the "labor shortage" narrative the media is telling. However, I suspect there are two other possible reasons why these job hunters aren't getting hired. In the case of the guy, it could be that he is facing age discrimination from some of the employers he applied to. As for the young lady she could be having a hard time due to being considered "overqualified". This is possibly due to the fact she stated she had a bachelor's degree, thus potential employers fear she may leave them once the economy or job market picks up.

Submitting 60 applications and getting 1 interview? That sounds pretty good to me based on some of my previous job searches. One to three percent seemed typical in my field, compared to my searches and someone else I talked to. But in my field, they would typically fly me in, even though, before COVID-19, I had some first interviews that were done online.

Maybe there is a shortage of HR people or hiring managers.

I was thinking of it before I got to the part of the video about the screening software. Maybe they had the software set to screen people out too stringently back when it was easy to hire people, and they haven't fixed it and can't hire anyone because of their stupid software.

I saw someone on YouTube suggesting you put an invisible text box in a word resume with all the key words that could possibly get you hired. An HR person called that 'unethical' in the comments. I don't think so since it is not a claim made in the text of the resume, but just a way to get around the annoying software and accomplish the purpose of uploading the thing in the first place. Why waste my time having me fill out an application if they aren't going to read it, and why complain if I do something to make them read it? But they may have software to filter out key words in a text box. HR makes it hard for me. If they make me fill out all those stupid boxes on an application online instead of letting me just upload a resume, they shouldn't complain if I do something to my file to make them actually have to read it. If they waste my time, they shouldn't complain if my resume wastes theirs. My objective when looking for a job was a noble one in that I wanted to provide for my family.

In my field, there was a site where I could build a whole resume and upload it to other sites, just some of them, but that stopped working. So many sites would use brass ring or some similar application and give you the same stupid application you filled out 100 times before, with no way to upload it. So you had to fill that junk in manually. I loved it when employers said to send them a CV and a cover letter.

I also had cover letters for different subspecializations that were close to mine, stock letters that I could edit up easily to send out to a new potential employer, and differently slight variations of the same resume. Chinese and some other foreign employers want a picture, so I had a CV with a photo attached done up in Chinese style back when I was searching.

[MrMan]

There really is no labor shortage in the United States.

COVID shutdowns have stopped companies from making more money, so of course they want to hire at a lower rate. Prices are going up for them, too. This whole scenario doesn't make sense. People still need to pay bills, so where is the money coming from? Do people get enough from Uncle Sam to actually live on?