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So this is 95% just employers being unwilling to raise wages which will fix most shortages pretty quickly. In the longer term there may indeed be worker shortag

So this is 95% just employers being unwilling to raise wages which will fix most shortages pretty quickly. In the longer term there may indeed be worker shortages as more countries face a demographic shift towards older people. In pretty much every developed economy the % of the population that's retired grows every year. Japan is now over 28% 65+, the US is 16% and growing, even China is facing the same issue. Long-term it's a smaller portion of the population supporting the economy. I'm sure it will stop at some point, but it isn't for now.

randomdata 5y ago
A shortage occurs when price cannot rise. When the answer is “just pay more”, the question is not about shortage, only unfulfilled dreams.
- runeks 5y ago
  > A shortage occurs when price cannot rise. Do you have an example of this?
  - saberdancer 5y ago
    Anywhere where the product can be imported from abroad. If you can buy product A from Mexico for 10 USD, but can't get workers to produce the same product for 10 USD in USA, you cannot realistically increase the price.
    - randomdata 5y ago
      In that case the price could rise, but does not need to as the market is sufficiently supplied at a lower price point. A shortage occurs when buyers want to pay more, and need to pay more for the market to clear, but cannot do so for some reason (the law, for example). A decent indicator of there being a shortage is if the recipient of a product or service is determined by a non-price based mechanism, such as a lottery or a needs-based determination, as the usual 'highest bidder wins' method is not possible.
  - randomdata 5y ago
    Price gouging laws are a good example of a mechanism that can prevent price from rising. One some of us got to experience at the onset of the pandemic last year.
carom 5y ago
I was talking with the head of HR at a medium sized company. We were talking about worker shortages and she said they had raised their wages and still had vacancies. I offered to just raise them more and her response was you can only pay someone so much to manufacture a 100 dollar product. It kinda opened my eyes that there was a cap and that we will likely see prices of goods rise in response to this. Wage growth is well overdue but it will come with inflation.
- ptmcc 5y ago
  Prices may possibly rise, very true. We as a society/economy have gotten hooked on cheap goods. Perhaps too cheap in some cases. It's also possible that certain businesses and products we've grown accustomed to, at the prices we are used to, are simply not viable anymore as the market changes. The market giveth and the market taketh away. A lot of business owners complaining about a "labor shortage" love being pro free market when it works in their favor, but whine when it turns around on them.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Also the labor share of income has fallen in recent decades, so there is plenty of slack overall for wages to go up without raising prices.
  - bodge5000 5y ago
    > A lot of business owners complaining about a "labor shortage" love being pro free market when it works in their favor, but whine when it turns around on them. Nail on the head, right here. "Burger flippers" are entitled if they expect to live off their work, but when no "Burger flippers" will come work for them, oh woe is me. They'll preach about survival of the fittest until they figure out they're not the fittest, and then suddenly its not such a good idea
    - jackson1442 5y ago
      Exactly. Another comment on this submission (on a completely different thread) put it very well- businesses have no intrinsic right to exist. If you or me decided we didn't want to pay for the rising cost of food, rent, etc., we could be out on the streets and it's their fault. If businesses decide they don't want to pay for the rising cost of labor, a bunch of armchair economists come out and defend them. Why we feel the need to treat businesses better than we treat other people is beyond me.
dehrmann 5y ago
It's trailing off, but remember that employers are competing with government unemployment benefits. There's something called the backward bending supply curve of labor. At some point, people work fewer hours because they make enough money that more money won't affect their quality of life. Various closures, and, interestingly, labor shortages, have given people fewer ways to spend their money, lowering the inflection point of the curve.
- SamuelAdams 5y ago
  Also remember about 620,000 people in the US have died from Covid [1]. That's a lot of people no longer in the workforce. [1]: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totaldeaths https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totaldeaths
  - mmaurizi 5y ago
    Yes, but the majority of deaths has been older people, most likely not in the workforce. 30% of deaths are from 85+, 27% for ages 75-84, 21% for ages 65-74 Source: same site as you https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics
  - bb611 5y ago
    80% of those deaths are of people retirement age and older[1], only ~130,000 working age Americans have died of COVID. That's significant, but definitely doesn't explain the extent of worker shortages we're seeing. There are a lot of things going on, but some of them might be there are many people who are now simply willing and able to not work, because that's what they had to figure out during COVID lockdowns. 1 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > 80% of those deaths are of people retirement age and older No, 80% of them were 65 and older. For people who are 65 this year, full retirement age (as defined by Social Security) is 66 years, 4 months. And lots of people aren't able, financially, to retire ar “full" retirement age.
mywittyname 5y ago
> So this is 95% just employers being unwilling to raise wages which will fix most shortages pretty quickly. Don't be so quick to think this. Society can't just poof into existence more qualified skilled workers. It takes years to train nurses and a decade or more to do so with M.Ds/O.Ds. Right now, traveling nurses are being offered pretty insane salaries, up to and including low five figures a week. It hasn't helped bring more people in, or fixed the burnout. People are just traveling to work for the highest bidder. I suspect most are planning to leave the game after they've saved up enough money.
- guyzero 5y ago
  Sure, these reports tend to lump nurses and fast food workers together, which is of course nonsensical. Indeed shortages of skilled workers in the US have to do with the unaffordability of higher education in the US. That said, in theory the US could raise wages enough to attract skilled professionals in from other countries. Except that the US also has extremely restrictive immigration laws and a housing shortage making it extremely difficult to pay people enough to live where they're needed.

randomdata 5y ago

A shortage occurs when price cannot rise. When the answer is “just pay more”, the question is not about shortage, only unfulfilled dreams.

runeks 5y ago
> A shortage occurs when price cannot rise. Do you have an example of this?
- saberdancer 5y ago
  Anywhere where the product can be imported from abroad. If you can buy product A from Mexico for 10 USD, but can't get workers to produce the same product for 10 USD in USA, you cannot realistically increase the price.
  - randomdata 5y ago
    In that case the price could rise, but does not need to as the market is sufficiently supplied at a lower price point. A shortage occurs when buyers want to pay more, and need to pay more for the market to clear, but cannot do so for some reason (the law, for example). A decent indicator of there being a shortage is if the recipient of a product or service is determined by a non-price based mechanism, such as a lottery or a needs-based determination, as the usual 'highest bidder wins' method is not possible.
- randomdata 5y ago
  Price gouging laws are a good example of a mechanism that can prevent price from rising. One some of us got to experience at the onset of the pandemic last year.

carom 5y ago

I was talking with the head of HR at a medium sized company. We were talking about worker shortages and she said they had raised their wages and still had vacancies. I offered to just raise them more and her response was you can only pay someone so much to manufacture a 100 dollar product. It kinda opened my eyes that there was a cap and that we will likely see prices of goods rise in response to this. Wage growth is well overdue but it will come with inflation.

ptmcc 5y ago
Prices may possibly rise, very true. We as a society/economy have gotten hooked on cheap goods. Perhaps too cheap in some cases. It's also possible that certain businesses and products we've grown accustomed to, at the prices we are used to, are simply not viable anymore as the market changes. The market giveth and the market taketh away. A lot of business owners complaining about a "labor shortage" love being pro free market when it works in their favor, but whine when it turns around on them.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Also the labor share of income has fallen in recent decades, so there is plenty of slack overall for wages to go up without raising prices.
- bodge5000 5y ago
  > A lot of business owners complaining about a "labor shortage" love being pro free market when it works in their favor, but whine when it turns around on them. Nail on the head, right here. "Burger flippers" are entitled if they expect to live off their work, but when no "Burger flippers" will come work for them, oh woe is me. They'll preach about survival of the fittest until they figure out they're not the fittest, and then suddenly its not such a good idea
  - jackson1442 5y ago
    Exactly. Another comment on this submission (on a completely different thread) put it very well- businesses have no intrinsic right to exist. If you or me decided we didn't want to pay for the rising cost of food, rent, etc., we could be out on the streets and it's their fault. If businesses decide they don't want to pay for the rising cost of labor, a bunch of armchair economists come out and defend them. Why we feel the need to treat businesses better than we treat other people is beyond me.

dehrmann 5y ago

It's trailing off, but remember that employers are competing with government unemployment benefits. There's something called the backward bending supply curve of labor. At some point, people work fewer hours because they make enough money that more money won't affect their quality of life. Various closures, and, interestingly, labor shortages, have given people fewer ways to spend their money, lowering the inflection point of the curve.

SamuelAdams 5y ago
Also remember about 620,000 people in the US have died from Covid [1]. That's a lot of people no longer in the workforce. [1]: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totaldeaths https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totaldeaths
- mmaurizi 5y ago
  Yes, but the majority of deaths has been older people, most likely not in the workforce. 30% of deaths are from 85+, 27% for ages 75-84, 21% for ages 65-74 Source: same site as you https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics
- bb611 5y ago
  80% of those deaths are of people retirement age and older[1], only ~130,000 working age Americans have died of COVID. That's significant, but definitely doesn't explain the extent of worker shortages we're seeing. There are a lot of things going on, but some of them might be there are many people who are now simply willing and able to not work, because that's what they had to figure out during COVID lockdowns. 1 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > 80% of those deaths are of people retirement age and older No, 80% of them were 65 and older. For people who are 65 this year, full retirement age (as defined by Social Security) is 66 years, 4 months. And lots of people aren't able, financially, to retire ar “full" retirement age.

mywittyname 5y ago

> So this is 95% just employers being unwilling to raise wages which will fix most shortages pretty quickly. Don't be so quick to think this. Society can't just poof into existence more qualified skilled workers. It takes years to train nurses and a decade or more to do so with M.Ds/O.Ds. Right now, traveling nurses are being offered pretty insane salaries, up to and including low five figures a week. It hasn't helped bring more people in, or fixed the burnout. People are just traveling to work for the highest bidder. I suspect most are planning to leave the game after they've saved up enough money.

guyzero 5y ago
Sure, these reports tend to lump nurses and fast food workers together, which is of course nonsensical. Indeed shortages of skilled workers in the US have to do with the unaffordability of higher education in the US. That said, in theory the US could raise wages enough to attract skilled professionals in from other countries. Except that the US also has extremely restrictive immigration laws and a housing shortage making it extremely difficult to pay people enough to live where they're needed.