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> least in the US there has been a shortage of elderly care workers

Well yeah, because it's difficult, taxing, often traumatic work that pays the same as any other nursing job with a higher QoL and social status. And even then they're pushing out all the actual nursing staff that pays well in favor of MAs/CNAs who get paid like shit.

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But at current unemployment rates, raising pay to get more workers into elderly care is just poaching them creating shortages in other places. I always say that the demographic challenges ahead of us are not about a shortage of dollars but about a shortage of humans.

I don’t ever expect everything to be perfectly efficient or even close to it, but how many jobs are there that really truly matter? A job “mattering” is binary either, a doctor is probably essential, and an artist isn’t, but it still matters.

I personally don’t think wages always correspond to how essential a job is, but for the sake of the argument let’s pretend that wages match the necessity of a job, its difficulty, educational requirements, etc.. In this case, I’d expect that we would see people move to jobs that are more essential than their prior job. I think this is more complex that just “poaching”.

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