A lot of this is because nobody wants to be honest. A huge portion of "vacant" jobs are companies that maintain listings for 10 year fully stack veterans while

A lot of this is because nobody wants to be honest. A huge portion of "vacant" jobs are companies that maintain listings for 10 year fully stack veterans while offering $60k a year salary. Unreasonable to anyone, but the point is to dangle the carrot in case you can get super lucky and nab talent at well below market rate. It doesn't cost you anything to keep the offer on the market. They are a great excuse to complain about vacancies, though. If there were real demand, truly authentic honest demand for work, that wasn't a known fleeting thing, humans adapt. Human history is nothing if not the demonstration that people migrate towards opportunity. It might be considered on the order of days or generations, but people will do it. So don't sit around complaining about nobody wanting to move somewhere where the salary is "competitive" but you have rigged the externalities like taxes and property ownership so far against civilians your bafflement that nobody wants to go where the "jobs" are is dastardly.