Currently we are are experiencing a rare period when employers are finding it hard to fill positions, especially in the lower-wage service sector. But it is telling how differently the media covers this to how they cover the times when unemployment levels are high. The common thread is that in each case, they present the point of view of the employers, not the workers.
Cartoonist Ted Rall accurately captures the differences in the way that the media and the pundit class cover a labor surplus versus a labor shortage.
When jobs are scarce, workers are told to make big changes in their lives to adjust to reality. Now that workers are scarce, however, whiny employers are offered sympathy rather than given advice to change their obsolete business models.
I vividly remember starting a chemical engineering degree in 1988, when jobs were plentiful and pay was high.
I vividly remember finishing a chemical engineering degree in 1992, when out of a graduating class of 50, only 2 had managed to secure any employment at all… and those two “coincidentally” had fathers who worked in the industry.
I vividly remember in about 1995 there being articles in the professional press about the big employers (the petrochem, pharma and bulk chemical sectors) struggling (poor babies) to find good chemical engineers with the requisite two to five years’ experience necessary to move into the sorts of jobs where we’re useful. And I remember thinking “oh you’re having a hard time? Good.” There were literally complaining about the results of the fact that two to five years earlier, they weren’t hiring, as though those consequences were somehow someone else’s fault -- presumably all the inconsiderate chemical engineering graduates who’d fucked off into accountancy or teaching or whatever else it is people do when their skills aren’t valued by the people who came to their school to talk up the profession. Arseholes.
(Bitter? Me?
…
Yes, obviously.)
When S&P 500 goes up by 20% noboy complains, but if wages increase by 5% everybody talks about the dreaded inflation.