I'll try. A shortage is when supply is sufficiently low and inelastic that consumers cannot satisfy an (appropriately defined) base level of consumption. For e

I'll try. A shortage is when supply is sufficiently low and inelastic that consumers cannot satisfy an (appropriately defined) base level of consumption. For example, in 2008, the supply of food dropped in Haiti. Prices rose to clear the market, but there was literally not enough food for survival. Many people ate dirt instead, what might callously be called a "substitute good" in purely economic terms. Of course this was a very serious and tragic food shortage. What would a labor shortage look like? Specialized labor has an inelastic supply: you can only train workers so fast. In 2011, Georgia passed an anti-immigration law, and saw a huge drop in skilled agricultural workers that they could not hire enough. When $140 million worth of crops are left to rot in the fields, you've got a labor shortage. I'd call it a serious shortage if, say, there were not enough IT workers to maintain the Internet. We're nowhere near that point.