4 ms·
There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There are just insufficient wages.
by vikingerik 4y ago
There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There are just insufficient wages.
- politician 4y agoThis statement is missing qualifiers. Consider the extreme counter-example: A small village of a dozen individuals sitting a top a mountain of gold is unlikely to be able to operate an industrial scale gold mining operation. There can be too few people to do certain work. Nuclear plant operators. Ordinance disposal experts. Electricians in my area...
- pksebben 4y agobut hold on. "not having people" and "not having people with the skills you need" are different in this regard. Offering more money won't make more people, but it will motivate people to learn skills.
- lesuorac 4y agoSure but in the interim (while they're learning skills) you don't have as many as you want of nuclear reactor operators AKA a labor shortage. Whether or not the real world has a true labor shortage or just a shortage for the current market price is not shown. i.e. if you offered more wages would some stay at home parents meet the demand?
- ProAm 4y agoThere is a shortage of qualified and decent labor. Bodies <> Labor
- refurb 4y agoThat isnt true. If the demand for brain surgeons doubled overnight, no amount of wage hike is going to magically double the supply of brain surgeons.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoSure it won't double it overnight, but if we give people enough time to train (4-8 years?) then I think it would have a significant effect. Though this example is poor because the quantity of new brain surgeons is restricted by various regulations and agreements (so we'd also have to assume those went away). If you look at an unregulated field like software I think it's pretty clear that the huge increase in demand from ~2008-2020 did result in a huge increase in supply.
- refurb 4y agoRight, so shortages can exist for any skillset that requires more than a few months to acquire.