The Great Labor Shortage Crisis | Economics Explained 

Be one of the first 1,000 fans to sign-up with our link and you can claim your free trial of Skillshare Premium! ➡️ skl.sh/economicsexplained05211 *UPDATE:* Huge announcement! 📣 Drum roll please … 🥁🥁🥁 EE’s new Skillshare course is now live! How Not To Suck At Speaking Aussie! 🐨🦘 Impress your mates at your next BBQ & master the Australian accent! 👇 www.skillshare.com/classes/How-Not-To-Suck-At-Speaking-Aussie-Part-1/1324222190

There is no labor shortage and never will be in America. It’s a “cheap labor shortage”.

“If you pay people too much they’ll pass on the cost to the consumer!” Yeah, they do that regardless. remmeber how much prices dropped at Walmart after they replaced thousands of jobs with self checkout and shelf scanning machines? Oh wait, prices didn’t drop, they just pocketed it and fired the employees while raising costs of goods

It feels like very few economists care when workers wages stagnate for decades, but then all of a sudden it's a huge crisis when employers have to sweat it out for a change.

People are being faced with a question: Work and be poor, or stay home and be poor? Given how crushingly miserable some jobs can be, it's no surprise that people might choose to stay home.

My former boss was annoyed no one was wanting to work $9 an hour for crappy work at a gas station. I got a job somewhere else at a much better wage

"We can't afford to pay you what you're worth!" *hands $100 million bonus check to CEO*

As an experiment I went around applying for jobs in the area around where I live. I am an educated and trained engineer and welder, though I did not restrict myself to those roles, I applied for basically everything I could find in my area with the caveat that I would not take less than 15-20 dollars an hour regardless of the field of work or type of job. Out of dozens of applications, I got two call backs and 0 interviews. The "Labor shortage" is bullshit, people over the last year have become fed up with low and stagnating wages and non existent benefits or benefits in name only. These same companies cannot fill roles at the old deflated wages and are claiming that there is a labor shortage or that people don't want to work, when what is actually going on looks more like a general strike for higher wages.

Remember that dude who paid everyone on his staff 70k per year? His company is still going strong. He also took a cut to 70k and he didn't lay off anyone during lock down. So yes you can run a smallish business and pay your staff well..

I can’t believe it took a global pandemic to wake everyone up to the fact that the service industry sucks

Magically all the decent places to work near me don’t seem to be having any labor issues. It’s all the shithole fast food places and grocery stores that can’t find anyone.

Job posting these days: Experience required: 40 years Must be a fresh graduate with a PHD before the age of 21. Pay: 2.50/hour plus tips, potential for bonus if you work free overtime Job: janitor 😑

Many places (in the US, at least) are only hiring on paper. In practice, they're only posting position openings to exploit a PPP loan loophole that will turn it into a grant after enough time.

I will believe in this mythological "employee shortage" when companies stop treating job applicants like garbage.

They are extremely finicky in who they hire. No criminal record or significant gap in employment history. Then they want a college degree for a job that can be learned on site within a day.

This reminds me of when some big company complained that part of their business might become unprofitable without chld labour and the other time some pharma company found that curing patients might not be profitable and therefore undesirable.

We're really not gonna mention that these vast companies responsible for employing a significant proportion of the population are perfectly capable of paying workers a higher wage and still being massively profitable, but just can't bare to be without their multi million dollar bonuses? This employment situation seems at least on the surface similar to that of the 50's and 60's, when living standards rose across the board, are we sure that the problem now isn't just vast corporate greed?

It's *A L M O S T* as if wage stagnation has been an ongoing problem for the past few decades!

Funny how the law of supply and demand is conveniently ignored when employers have to pay more. 🤔🤔🤔

I've read plenty of stories about small businesses paying their employees $25 hourly in areas where minimum wage is below $15. They didn't have to "close their doors because they couldn't afford it", in fact business was booming for them because their employees were more enthusiastic and had better attendance and performance; their labourers didn't think of their jobs as punishment, and weren't plagued with all the impeding obstacles that come with poverty, so not only could they more regularly go to work, they were happy to.

I love how "the economy" is only the responsibility of the worker. When corporations crash the economy they aren't ever asked to take responsibility for the overall effect. Any move a corporation would make should only consider their profit, we've made it law. Any move workers make should take the economy as a whole into consideration. 🙄

I was furloughed last year as a flight attendant, I went back to school to finish my degree. The airline called me back and offered me a 15 month voluntary leave of absence with benefits if I wanted it. Since I was back in school I took the leave so I could concentrate on that. Last moth they called me and said my leave was cancel because demand for upcoming summer travel was higher than expected. I chose not to return to work because I'd rather finish my studies and get a more reliable job than be locked into my previous one.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the large number of older workers who decided to just simply up and retire last year

It's a little annoying that when I was forced to work service jobs I couldn't even afford groceries, I just ate the food I received from work, did the job of 4 people, and left with a permanent back injury. I consider myself lucky.

Reminder: the fact that all of these companies are offering bonuses, pay increases, more flexible hours/remote work, etc means that they were able to all this time but chose not to. I can imagine this will create a huge economic shift as the majority of people won't return to the same quality of jobs as they had before

When employers hold all the cards that is "just how it is". When workers hold all the cards, it's a "crisis". Great system.

"But we're a big corporation and we don't want to pay our employees more than minimum wage" These companies don't deserve to survive.

There is no labour shortage, not in America and not anywhere else. If an employer can't attract or retain employees, they need to look at what they are doing wrong instead of whining that "nobody wants to work". The sheer entitlement of these companies has to end

Just remember that if the minimum wage matched productivity it would be $26 an hour rn. And that the 1% received 45% of new wage growth in the past 20 years

I went to a Burger King today. The drive through was closed because of lack of employees. I decided to apply and the manager offered me 9 bucks an hour....not with a straight face though. I laughed and told him I made that over 30 years ago and wished him luck finding workers.

Workers: *get better treatment Economists: *this is gonna be bad for the economy*

I was a nurse two years ago, I gave it up because painting houses pays better, let that sink in... There is no labor shortage, there is a monetary shortage.

The glaring elephant in the room for me is that apparently the choice is pay a living wage or shut down, and not pay a living wage and make the executives take a pay cut to keep the business open. If the executives have to go from day 500k/year to 450k/year then boo hoo I won't shed any tears.

It pisses me off that some of these companies & stores have the gall to say no one wants to work anymore while at the same time my wife has been submitting application after application trying to get a job at some of these companies yet not one place called her back for an interview or a follow up.

My workplace is constantly understaffed despite having literally hundreds of applicants at any given time and requiring no special skills. Corporate is so strict on the background requirements that the only people who ever get hired are 19 year olds who don't care enough to keep coming back after a few weeks.

I just love how things like layoffs and other terminations by a company is treated as "just the economy going bad, nothing we can do." Then, when there's suddenly a "labor shortage," it's not the economy, it's "people don't want to work." Then, when you look at half these jobs, they are crazy stuff like "no more than 30 hours a week so we don't have to give you benefits, but you will need to keep your week entirely open, the job is almost guaranteed to end up with you drinking sewage at some point, and you will get paid just slightly above minimum wage."

This is ignoring a few things: 1. Survival has a minimum cost, below which most workers don't see much subjective value (if your reason for working is to avoid starving, it doesn't make sense to work and still be starving). 2. This survival cost has been increasing, for reasons ranging from the pandemic, to house-hoarding investment firms, to simple inflation. 3. Working isn't free. Even barring the simple time cost, work costs effort. This effort takes food for energy, and it stresses health (physical and mental). For particularly unhealthy jobs (e.x. heavy wages, abusive customers or bosses), the health cost can be high. In order to break even, workers have to cover these implicit costs. And that's before considering the survival cost. 4. Workplaces often aren't working as hard hiring people, as they claim to be. Application processes place the clerical burden of effort onto the applicant, with long, complex application forms that have a high chance of getting discarded by automated systems without ever reaching human eyes. 5. Many jobs have overstated requirements (with many fields completely devoid of zero-experience jobs), making it outright impossible for many prospective workers to find work at any price. 6. Companies aren't as fragile as you claim, especially in today's economy where markets tend towards oligopolies or outright monopolies. These places tend to have massive profit margins, meaning that if their operating cost rises, plenty of these companies will survive. They just ... won't be able to pay non-working rich people quite as much. 7. Wealth inequity is at an all-time high. For Bezos, another billion dollars doesn't affect quality of life. Meanwhile, for the average working Janet, a single cent can be the difference between eating and starving. The resources for everyone to have a safe and survivable quality of life exist, they just aren't available to the people who actually need them because of an over-reliance on markets.

The fact that unemployment pays you more than an actual job. People call these people lazy but they’re just tired of being overworked while others live in actual houses and/or private apartments smh.

Unpopular opinion: There are too many restaurants and people should cook their own food more often

I'm starting to see there might be an issue with hiring in general, at least where I live. These jobs say they're hiring, but are they? I've applied to hundreds of jobs and haven't got one. Always get the "We went with a more qualified candidate" response. I have a Bachelor's and nearly 10 years of office/secretary experience, but I can't get anything -- labor or in an office/work-at-home. Can't even get a customer service job answering a phone. But I think it's where I live - obviously I've only had secretary jobs, there's nothing decent-paying here. Now there's truly nothing. Feels like I'm stuck in purgatory.

If you believe there is a labor shortage, you are silly. Companies learned that if you act like your short handed you can get away with staying short handed. Covid helped them realize they can stay open with 50 to 75% staffing, less overtime, and more profit. Just as long as they are hiring all the time.

When leadership in corporations and business give themselves billions of dollars in bonuses and pay raises, that's just business. Yet somehow when minimum wage workers want a pay raise to 15 USD an hour suddenly it's a crisis.

Everything has increased in price because of the pandemic yet the wages stay the same. People are right to not work for peanuts.

Worked for a major co. Where they said, "we pay our workers just enough to live on, but not enough to where they can move on".

Funny how these kinds of videos never mention corporate greed, as though it’s not a real major part of the problem.

“They’ll pass this cost of higher salaries on to you” As if these same companies haven’t been charging more for less or smaller products over the last few years and paying their CEOs billions of dollars.

"Government wants to keep unemployment low because it's politically popular" is the most economist-y way I can think of to say "voters need jobs to get money to get food."

my boss was telling me when he was younger, it was actually normal for businesses to pay you to turn up to a job interview.

"I'm the type of guy who values a solid day work". NO, you are the type of guy that is unsatisfied when the government pays a decent living wage (stimulus checks) but is never bothered by the enormous bailouts given to big corporations. The country is very rich but the people are poor. why?

Economists often forgot a simple detail: people have to survive decently somehow. Here in Italy there's the same problem, with lots of open jobs and few hiring, but the employers offer wages that are just a little more than half the minimum wage. Why should a person accept such conditions?

"If we increase wages they will just charge you more". Its worrying that this video never mentioned how they rich got incredibly much richer during the pandemic

McDonalds could pay all of their store employees a fair wage and still be one of the largest corporations in the world. It's just pure greed. Theres no justifying it.

I love how he didn't take into consideration corporate greed.. which is the real reason increased wages falls on the consumer. Major companies can afford the overhead to pay more and still make substantial revenue. But they don't like the idea of making thousands of bucks less in their millions.

2019: *Hard to find an entry level job due to lack of experience* 2020: *People leave their jobs due to COVID-19 but can't capitalize on it since I **_still_** "lack" enough experience* 2021: *Despite the new hiring surge, I'm still getting stonewalled and ghosted by companies despite having enough, relevant experience* From my perspective, nothing's really changed here.

Let's see, CEOs were getting pay raises as their companies were getting bailouts from the government and dumping their employees who were struggling. Now that they need those employees they're crying that no one wants to work for them. Sheesh. Obviously it's the fault of these employees who don't want to work for slave wages.

My husband who makes 40 an hour and looking for work as we speak has had job offers for people who literally think he's going to work for 20 or 25 an hour I mean it's literally laughable. They want project managers people with PMP certificates and expect to pay under $100,000. I'm pretty sure employers have just lost their minds.

One of the issues is prices have been going up but pay has not, a massive backlog was created and workers are just fed up working 45, 50, 55+ hours a week and still fail.

Entry level jobs now require experience 😂😂

When you break up from an abusive relationship, it's pretty easy to see how this would make the abuser upset.

Even at $16 an hour the KFC I worked at was paying below what they could pay without raising prices or anything. I know because my manager literally told me about it. It’s greed, not economics.

I got my first job in the early 1980's, and at that time employees had their choice of jobs. It worked in the employees favor, not the companies. Somehow they managed to change that and have been in control ever since. But the reality is that everything was fine when it worked in the employees favor and we had more control and choices. The economy was thriving. They just don't like us standing up for ourselves and taking back some power.

"We're very happy that you chose to join the Amazon family. We have never had as much need for qualified drivers, and we think you can fit the bill. Your wage should reflect just how happy we are to welcome you as our newest addition. Also, just one final question and this might sound silly. How do you handle defecating in a plastic bag?"

Don't forget these places dropped their employees like a rock a year ago. My restaurant closed down with zero notice and laid us off. When they were in the clear to reopen their incentive for us to return wasn't temp higher wages or benefits, it was a threat to get our unemployment cut. This relationship is abusive. Been back since day one and all the company has done was demand us work harder and harder, doing the same job as 2-3 people prepandemic. Customers, missing the chance to get out, have been more and more impatient with us. Any time we complain we get told that we have bad attitudes and don't work hard enough. They struggle to find competent employees, yet have no issue pushing their experienced employees away. Sure, are there people staying home for the dole? Yes. But most of us have been ground down by the selfishness of the industry and just want out.

I feel like this labor shortage is one of the coolest things that’s happened in America in my lifetime. I love seeing people stand up to the system. I waited tables for a decade and it was terrible then, I cannot imagine getting paid $3.50 to wait tables now during a pandemic. I know I wouldn’t want to go back to that! Especially in my rural area…people refuse to get vaccinated and wear masks and look down on you if you do. I certainly wouldn’t risk getting COVID for anything under a living wage.

This entire video is an elaborate, long form of "I got mine, my ivory tower is nice, and you peasants need to work for peanuts" High labor demand is always good. If a company can't exist without paying sub living wage, they deserve to go out of business.

After spending several months being unemployed, I don't understand the "labor shortage" only jobs I saw in any number were manufacturing or sales jobs. Even then they pay terribly and they hardly ever contact you for a interview

Weird how economists only care about poor/unemployed people when the working class is gaining power. Where was all this energy during corporate bailouts?

I think all companies should do what Ben and Jerry's used to do. The 5 to 1 limiting rule for the CEOs salary. Therefore the CEO can only get a raise if everyone else does too

What happens when you treat your workers like a replaceable expense? They remember that and they know the jobs that do that. The businesses. The companies. The chains. The corporations.

"But if wages go up, they'll pass on the cost to consumers in the form of higher prices!" Curiously, when the prices go up anyway, that doesn't get passed on to the workers. Unionize your workplaces. Fight for a higher minimum wage. Job hop when you can.

Y'all remember in the 50's when one job could support a whole family? Yeah, me neither.

I used to live in a Michigan town of about 20,000 people that had the longest nurse strike in US history. It lasted for over 2 and a half years. They weren't striking over wages, mostly benefits. The Hospital refused to negotiate, even though it had a massive construction project, and payed "Scab Nurses" (replacement nurses) twice what the striking nurses were getting payed. This caused over 40 local businesses to permintly close. The job market was already very seasonal, as the seasonal economy relied very heavily on tourism. Unfortunately the seasonal employers started to hire the Mexicans to do the landscaping work and the Jamaicans to work in the hotels and restaurants. There were no jobs left for the locals. At job interviews they didn't want to know if you had work experience or not, they just wanted to know WHO you knew, Not WHAT you knew. This was and is very frustrating. I did get a job one time, because I knew the right person, but most of the time I didn't. There were and still are, lots of houses that sat empty most of the year. About half of those owned by rich people as second vacation homes, and the other half were people affected by the Nurse strike who just moved away. The Michigan economy was already bad, but things like the Nurse strike just made things a lot worse there. I'm very glad I moved away. Thanks.

Labor costs and worker satisfaction should imho be one of the focus points of every company. Your employees are the ones doing the actual work and you should be nice to them for that reason (also because that's what decent human beings should do). I am still surprised how that is apparently such a strange concept to many businesses.

I remember when I was a teenager and lived in New Jersey, and I lived in what was often called a "bedroom community" because most people in our town worked in New York City and Philadelphia. It was also very expensive to live there. This caused a shortage of labor for fast food and retail jobs since you could not afford to live there on minimum wage. The retail and restaurant labor force basically consisted of high school and college students and older people, for the most part. This created an interesting local market. First, every store had to pay more than minimum wage just to attract and keep employees. Second, many people started their own businesses instead of worked for someone else. You had a lot of family-owned restaurants and smaller stores. That way, instead of getting paid minimum wage to make a pizza, they get their profits from the business, which is typically much better than making minimum wage for the same work. No profits siphoned off to corporations, it stayed with the owners of the small businesses. So, in practice, a labor shortage is bad for corporations that depend on cheap labor, but great for people running an owner-operator small business.

As someone who's been constantly looking for a new job during this pandemic, I can say with out a doubt 80% of people I've interviewed with were not being truthful with how badly they needed people. It's like before it's not that they are hiring because they need it, it's they are hiring because they want to hire cheaper labor.

Seeing as this video is from May, I'm going to assume the person voicing over in the video, missed the multiple people that did experiments where they applied to over 60 jobs in their areas, and got maybe 1 or 2 interviews. These businesses don't want to hire more workers, because they want to keep a skeleton crew, so they can keep being greedy and making bonuses that won't go to the actual workers.

Every time I watch a video from this channel, the only conclusion I come to is: rich people out of touch with society are the biggest to blame, but also have the power to make it better

When someone complains about labor shortage I tell him: "Fire your HR and hire a competent one. If it does not help, then fire yourself". There are a lot of people who are looking for a job now, but hiring process is so ridiculous, that modern companies would suffer from labor shortage even if Great Depression returns.

We're still dealing with the effects from the 2008 recession. The 2020 pandemic just exposed those cracks that people wanted to ignore.

It’s more than hourly wage. It’s the 29.5 hour work week to avoid paying benefits. It’s the constantly changing schedule that makes it impossible to make plans. I made my daughter get a job at the beginning of the pandemic to “be part of the solution”, but her employer (and the customers) treated her so badly she quit.

As someone who has been applying it’s more than that over the last month I’ve applied for 38 “entry level” or similar type jobs and I’ve only been called for 2 interviews both offered less money than they were advertising and I’d doesn’t matter because despite multiple calls they refused to give me an answer so 🤷🏻‍♂️

"There isn't a labor shortage, there is a shortage of business owners willing to pay a living wage,"

The average American's wages have been stagnant for decades.

i love that stock footage of the guy waking up on his couch from "the bender," wakes up looking at a drink like "wha- what have i done?" lol

Salary expenses is only one of the many expenses. If the salary expense goes up 15%, it may mean a 5% increase in prices, not 15%.

People got a taste of what life is like when you have some leisure time and can pay your bills. Now they know how much better life can be and they don't want to give that up. I don't blame them. Haven't the CEOs been doing the same thing for their entire lives? Our economy is dependent on people having such a low sense of self worth that they don't believe the deserve any better, and that their "work ethic" is a measure of their moral ethic. This is manipulative and unethical. I'm glad people are starting to reject this.

I gotta say, I have always disagreed with the idea that servers get paid $3 an hour and have to hope that tips off set it. It's a fucked up system

Recently in the US, there was never a lack of work problem. Well before the virus, there were major staffing problems at retail stores, trucking companies, and restaurants. All the virus did was make the problem worse as many of the people who work in those terrible industries finally had the opportunity to walk away and get some unemployment pay. Now, many of those people who walked away are trying everything they can to avoid going back until employers make a significant change to the way they treat their employees.

I feel so inspired by the comment section. No shortages where I leave. But at least some of us start to realize what life is really about. It`s like nobody regrets at the older age that they didn`t work hard enough. People only regret that they missed human moments(birthdays, parties, vacations, friends, traveling, etc.)

Lol u should release more on the weekends, this got recommended immediately

My 30+ denied applications, despite 10+ years of experience and higher education, says otherwise 😑

Problem I'm running into is because costs in food and other things keep going up, if my current work place does not start paying us more, I am eventually going to be forced to leave that job and find one that does pay more. My college loans have not gone anywhere, despite having gotten it down I still have electricity to pay, and having gotten rid of any subs I don't need, just being able to get to and from work, buy regular groceries and even trying to feed myself on a budget at work is getting to expensive anymore. That's also with having greatly cut down on going out to do anything. Food, necissary bills, college loans and rent are just too much.

"... it means that people don't have to work 80 hours a week in a coal mine or deal with environments that will impact their long term health." *cries in Ironworker*

5 years in my field. A degree. A portfolio. hundreds of my apps have been ignored, overqualified, underqualified, or over hundreds of applicants for 1 job opening. 3 design jobs through the pandemic. these companies should have been mandated to hire BACK employees they laid off. Lots of jobs in retail and fast food, doesn't help us with rent, car payments, and student loans.

The economy right now is not taking into account underemployment. People have to take jobs that are under their skill set which hurts everyone.

This needs a part 2 seeing that we're still observing issues as unemployment is falling along with shady position to interview incongruity.

Ok. Now its November 2021 and the stimulus payments and unemployment expansions have stopped and we still have a labor shortage. What's the excuse now?

"Oh no the cost of labor increases past starvation, cut the unemployment"

The companies that cannot afford to pay their employees a higher wage, and may have to shut down due to a labor shortage, deserve to shut down. That is precisely how the "invisible hand" is supposed to work under capitalism. No company has the right to continue to exist.

As a wise man once said "If a company can't afford to pay there employees a living wage the company shouldn't exist all!" Looking at you Olive Garden