>So it sounds to me like, they can't hire people because they're stingy assholes. Am I missing something? I don't think you're missing anything. I think that

>So it sounds to me like, they can't hire people because they're stingy assholes. Am I missing something? I don't think you're missing anything. I think that almost 40 years of nigh-state-enforced labor glut have made employers very, very entitled about hiring. Now that demographics are running the other way (as the article notes), with the total workforce actually shrinking slightly, they're being bitten on the ass by that sense of entitlement. A trained, punctual, polite, healthy, functional labor force does not spring from nowhere! It springs from years to decades of cooperation between employers, communities, and organized labor. Or from sufficient graft to hire prison labor... which is still only mostly going to work in the "slave states" and only for extremely low-skilled labor. You can't have a shrinking total labor force, degradation of workers' communities, and easy hiring.