Why Are "Labor Shortages" a Thing But Not "Pay Shortages?"
02/24/2017
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From a comment by JackOH responding to my post about David Brooks’ NYT column about labor shortages and how “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many Republicans prefer a dying white America to a place like, say, Houston.”
You got it, Buffalo Joe. My native disposition isn’t all that strongly “pro-laborist”, but I’m just astounded by the twaddle written about labor. I was in a hiring capacity, and the #1 reason we could not keep talented people was we could not pay them well. It’s no better than half-truth to say we were having “labor shortages”. The workers who left us were having “pay shortages”—they brought strong skills to the table, and we weren’t paying them enough for those skills.
It’s almost as if rich people and rich organizations have more power to influence which phrases colonize our minds.

[Comment at Unz.com]

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