> If someone can't afford to pay employees market rate, they need to rethink viability of the business not say that they can't find someone.
Your statement is pretty much what I'm saying, with the added "in certain markets" clause. That a market can't support such jobs doesn't preclude it from being a labor shortage.
Think of it this way: A given business has a certain job that was economically viable, and they could find the labor to do it. Then over a few years the economy changes significantly (feds raise rates, cost of living changes, etc), and slowly that job no longer is viable in that market. The change will not be sudden, so there will be a period of a few years where businesses still find people to do the work, but the pool of such employees keeps shrinking before it hits zero. It's fair to call that a labor shortage in the transition period.
> It's fair to call that a labor shortage in the transition period.
I don't know about fair, but I find it misleading. When I hear "labor shortage", my intuition is that just having more people around (Advertise job offers better? Give more work permits?) would solve it, not that the market is such that this type of work doesn't make financial sense anymore.
"Labor shortage" sounds like some macroeconomic temporary situation to which businesses shouldn't need to adapt to beyond temporary measures, while what you're describing seems like a failure from a business to adapt to a new stable situation.
Your statement is pretty much what I'm saying, with the added "in certain markets" clause. That a market can't support such jobs doesn't preclude it from being a labor shortage.
Think of it this way: A given business has a certain job that was economically viable, and they could find the labor to do it. Then over a few years the economy changes significantly (feds raise rates, cost of living changes, etc), and slowly that job no longer is viable in that market. The change will not be sudden, so there will be a period of a few years where businesses still find people to do the work, but the pool of such employees keeps shrinking before it hits zero. It's fair to call that a labor shortage in the transition period.