The Claim That There Is a Labor Shortage Is a BIG, FAT LIE
A “Labor Shortage” is NOT when there are fewer people willing to work for crap wages than there are open jobs paying a crap wage
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
The Mind-Boggling Strategy Of Getting More Workers By Paying A Higher Wage!
A few years ago a large farming operation in Northern California complained that they “couldn’t hire any workers!” Finally, desperate to try anything, no matter how crazy, to get more workers they raised their pay from $11/hour to $13/hour.
Suddenly, they found that they could hire all the workers they needed. What a shocking, crazy strategy! Who would have ever thought that offering higher pay would attract more job applicants?
For two dollars per hour more, their “labor shortage” disappeared overnight. Gee, it must have seemed like magic!
A Real Labor Shortage Is Where The Number Of Jobs Exceeds The Number Of People Without Jobs
So, let’s get real! A real labor shortage is when there are not enough unemployed people to fill the available jobs.
There Is No Labor Shortage In The United States
In the United States there ARE enough unemployed people to fill all the available jobs. There just aren’t enough unemployed people to fill all the available crap jobs at the starvation wages those employers are willing to pay.
What those businesses are actually complaining about is not that there are no available workers. It’s that they can’t find enough people who will work for the food-stamp wages they want to pay.
That’s not a labor shortage. That’s a wage shortage.
Now “The Market” Is On The Other Foot
These are the same employers who for years liked to make ridiculous claims that food-stamp wages were proper because “that’s how the market is supposed to work.”
The market was great when it provided enough employees who were so desperate that they would work for their crap wages.
But now that the quantity of workers versus the pool of jobs is such that they can’t find enough people willing to fill their crap jobs at starvation wages, suddenly “the market” is no good anymore.
Suddenly, their having to pay a living wage in order to get all the workers they need TO THEM means that there’s a shortage of workers.
Their False Definition Of A Labor Shortage
Their definition of “Labor Shortage” is:
There are not enough workers who are willing to work for starvation wages to fill all the jobs for which employers want to pay a starvation wage.
The people babbling about a labor shortage are really saying that the “right” number of workers is a large enough pool of unemployed people who are so desperate that they will fill all the available garbage-wage jobs, and that if the pool of workers who are willing to accept garbage wages declines below the number of garbage-wage jobs offered then there is a labor shortage.
These labor-shortage whiners are really, really saying that there is a labor shortage when there aren’t enough people who are so desperate that they will accept any job no matter how horrible for any wage no matter how low.
It’s the right wing’s position that “the market” is wonderful when it lets employers get away with paying starvation wages for horrible jobs, but that there is a labor shortage and the market is terrible when the supply of workers willing to accept starvation wages for horrible jobs is so low that the market increases the wage rate for horrible jobs up toward the level of a living wage.
More Right-Wing Employer Hypocrisy About Immigrants
And if you want a double dose of employer hypocrisy, many of these complainers are the same people who were Trump’s biggest supporters in his campaign to “Build the wall” to keep “those terrible Mexicans out of our wonderful country.”
Yes, “build the wall” was their mantra so long as there were more than enough of those terrible, undocumented Mexicans in the job market who were willing to take their crap jobs at crap wages.
Now, suddenly, in order to solve this so-called “labor shortage,” these same Trump-loving employers are no longer so interested in getting rid of those desperate, undocumented immigrants who were willing to work their food-stamp-wage jobs.
Suddenly, they’re not so anxious to “send them back to Mexico” anymore.
For these hypocrites
- The market was great when it let them get away with paying starvation wages, but the market is terrible when it makes them pay a living wage.
- Those immigrants were terrible when employers were able to get all the workers they wanted at crap wages, but suddenly the immigrants are not so bad when the employers are struggling to find enough starvation-wage employees to run their businesses on the cheap.
Right-Wing Employers Have Zero Respect For How Hard Hourly Employees Work
The real error here is the idea that salaried employees deserve to be paid hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars per year and that hourly workers deserve to be paid less than it costs them to survive without welfare.
There is no labor shortage. There is only a willing-to-work-for-starvation-wages shortage.
The complainers about a labor shortage only need to offer a living wage and they will have all the workers they need.
It will seem like magic!
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
