> Outside of the moral implication, this doesn't even logically make sense.

If I'm reading his point correctly ... He's saying there _was_ an employment crunch, and companies were competing with each other for employees by raising wages. He supposes that an increase in gas prices means that people need more money, so there are more employee hours "to go around". Therefore, companies don't need to compete as much with each other to attract employees, so they can go back to not paying as much.