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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This is a very broad question, with not a definite ‘simple’ answer.
Some parts of the answer:
*Demographics*
The richer a country gets, the less children are born in general. Meaning there are less people to fill jobs.
In poorer countries there are more people, but also higher rates of unemployment. Many of those people don’t have the skills (language, schooling) to fill jobs in ‘rich’ countries, plus migration is a tricky subject, integrating many migrants from poor areas into rich areas is difficult, so people are not spread across the world evenly to fill all gaps in the job market.
Another part of demographics in the developed world is the population is ageing, so there are more old people who are unable to work, but still require services and consume goods, yet there are relatively less young people to create all those goods and services.
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*Cost of living vs. Pay*
The richer a country becomes, the higher the cost of living. That means you need a very good job in order to be able to afford to live there. That’s why you see a lot of shortages in areas of work that traditionally do not pay very well.
If you’re an elementary school teacher and you can either take a job in a big city where you have to pay $2000 in rent for a small apartment, or you can take a job in a small town where you can rent a whole house with a yard for $1000, and both jobs pay about the same, then what would you choose?
Food service and hospitality are another example, since they experience most shortages currently.
If you work as a cook or a hotel receptionist, generally you don’t earn a lot. So if that means you can’t afford to live in a place, you will either learn skills to find a higher paying job, or you find work in an area that you can actually afford to live in.
In order to lure workers, business need to raise the wages, which means they will have to raise prices or make less profits, and that’s generally not what businesses want.
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