I honestly don't know what's fair for the jobs the company is hiring for. Maybe they're woefully underpaying! But at first blush it does not appear terrible.
A totally not in-depth look at machinist hourly rates (in Seattle) looks fairly similar to what they're offering.
Something I left out in the interests of brevity is that there was no mention of taking people off the street and paying for their training. That is the indicator of staff shortages.
In other words, if you only get this job for a year or two and then lose it, it's not worth the risk. You'd have to be paid enough to retire on, like football players or anyone else whose career is expected to be a few years long.
We use the market rate instead (not that that makes it a "fair" rate, it's just what we use for pragmatic reasons). If they're unable to hire, they're not paying/offering market rate pretty much by definition.
So?
Why is it that capitalists can't seem to understand supply/demand curves when it comes to wages?
> Why is it that capitalists can't seem to understand supply/demand curves when it comes to wages?
If they were 'capitalists' they would use the same supply/demand curve logic to labor costs as everything else.