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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

> There is no such thing as labor shortage.

Of course there can be such a thing as a labor shortage, under many different scenarios (during sustained high rates of real economic expansion, specialized types of labor that are difficult to train enough of, fading-away segments that aren't being replenished with new labor due to lack of interest (yet still require active labor), not enough manual labor, not enough immigration, not enough population growth, and so on).

Low wages can make a labor shortage worse, is the actual context.

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As long as you have people unemployed, there will be no labor shortage, everything else is just an excuse.

If workers need training, why don't companies train them? The majority of workers can't afford training, they barely afford home and food.

Why companies don't train workers? Because they don't want to pay, so they blame workers for not having enough training thus shifting the labor shortage cause to workers, not to themselves.

> As long as you have people unemployed, there will be no labor shortage, everything else is just an excuse.

Would you also say that as long as there are more housing units than people, there's no housing shortage?

It doesn't take much imagination to see that this won't work.

Have you ever tried running a company? Let's say you have a band (which is a form of a company. They sell entertainment). You can't find a drummer. Would you train one? How many years are you going to able to wait before you start your band for real while your new drummer trains? In the mean time you aren't able to make any money because the band can't perform.

The average size of a company is 1-4 people. They aren't Walmart size etc.. They don't have the budget to train an employee

https://www.naics.com/business-lists/counts-by-company-size/

You can't be serious.

We're talking about the kind of training needed to work some garbage CRM that the employer uses, not a decade spent mastering a fine art...

Never mind that plenty of successful bands have flourished with drummers with little more than a few months "training". I mean, you know, it depends on whether you're a prog-rock band or garage/art band, ha ha.

the point you want to make seems intuitive but looking closer it’s a bad comparison. A band is a one and done setup and the startup pain you are referencing while someone gets trained is happening now anyway. Even despite current events the pain to start that training pipeline is O(LOG N) which airlines are doing for pilots now or more now because of the shortage. I think the nvidia build pipeline referenced in good strategy bad strategy about chaining 3 teams of 18 month developments together to continuously release every 6 months even though each team needs about 18 months to go from r&d to production. Yes the first time ever there was 18 months without a release. They have the time and money to invest and they will have to wake up and stop being selfish and start making sure we can coexist.

> Let's say you have a band

The band U2 trained its singer, on-the-job style. Worked out pretty well for the business.

Sorry my example prevented you from understanding. 3 guys getting together to wing it until they make it is not the same as 2 guys needing a third to make a living and not being able to wait years until that 3rd person gets up to speed.

> so they blame workers for not having enough training thus shifting the labor shortage cause to workers, not to themselves.

Do you recall when the pandemic started I think it was the state of Illinois blamed their inability to process employment checks on a lack of COBOL programmers?

It was a really interesting statement. As you say-- blaming people who don't exist for their failure to maintain their systems or create a training program/incentives to ensure that there's a supply of programmers.

I'm sure if it payed well, someone would learn COBOL.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-pr...

Indeed. Whenever i hear of "labour shortage", I'm immediately reminded of the "show! Me! The money!" clip of Jerry Maguire.

There's no labour shortage. There's a lack of currently available labour for the terms you're offering.

Edit: and perhaps some folks who should not be considered as on the labour market, but are labelled unemployed nevertheless.

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