There is no US labor shortage. That’s a myth | Robert Reich | The Guardian

Robert Reich, author and a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, writes:

"When a public problem is wrongly described, the solutions posed often turn out to be irrelevant or inhumane.

A current example: America’s so-called “labor shortage”.

Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, says the United States has a “structural labor shortage” that’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

The US Chamber of Commerce claims there are over 10 million job openings in the US for which employers can’t find workers.

Here’s the truth: there is no labor shortage.

There is, however, a shortage of jobs paying sufficient wages to attract workers to fill job openings."

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/15/there-is-no-us-labor-shortage-thats-a-my

‘If we want more people to take jobs and we wish to live in a decent society, the answer is to pay people more.’ Photograph: Claudio Bresciani/TT News Agency/AFP/Getty Images