How is it that we have 8 billion people on Earth, and yet it seems like almost all businesses and services are short-staffed?
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Lot of “anti-work” type of responses to this question so far. While “greed” and “corporate tyranny” contribute to the problem a little, that is not one of the big problems.
Step 1: People’s perspectives changed.
Covid was a shock to many people’s lives. For some it was simply a protracted period where their routine was drastically different; for others it was a highly traumatic time. Both of those led to a similar outcome: people reevaluated their lives, their choices, their values. After that, a large portion of working people changed what they wanted for an occupation. Some decided their labor was worth more, and now have a higher “take” price when accepting employment offers. Some decided to go to work in a different field. Some simply left the work force.
Step 2: Labor market friction
With all these changes in what people _want_, it is now harder to balance employment and needed labor across the entire economy. Need data entrists, but a bunch of people who used to do that job want to go into landscaping now. Landscapers are overrun with newbie employees but don’t have enough experienced managers, because all the shift managers want to go back to grad school and the procurement specialists all want to become union welders.
This is a silly example, but it should demonstrate how there can be ENOUGH workers, but still too much _friction_ in finding the RIGHT workers.
A more boring but realistic example:
Visuallize a services supply chain. Customer reps, managers, IT department, janitors, everything is set up to work as one giant machine. Now suddenly a huge portion of your workforce quits, silent quits, or won’t return to work until you pay them enough to afford a decent, healthy life. How do you afford to increase benefits? Can you take a short-term profit loss? Can you cut costs elsewhere? Will your service-receiving clients tolerate a price hike? Maybe you try completely re-vamping your business model or even try doing the same work with less people?
You can imagine how a wide spread change in perspective leads to rippling effects on employment markets.
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