Grapes of Wrath 2.0

 Click here for an article by Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997, entitled "What to do about America's 'labor shortage'? Easy. Pay people more."

Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, says the United States has a “structural labor shortage” that’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims there are over 10 million job openings in the U.S. for which employers can’t find workers.

Here’s the truth: There is no labor shortage.

There is, however, a shortage of jobs paying sufficient wages to attract workers to fill job openings.

He goes on to say:

For most Americans, real (inflation-adjusted) wages continue to drop. Wages have increased about 5 percent over the past year while prices have increased about 7 percent, a net loss for most workers of about 2 percentage points.

Those price increases include the costs of childcare, eldercare, and transportation (cars, used cars, and gas), which are big expenses for many working people.

Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage continues to plummet. It hasn’t been raised in thirteen years – the longest period without a raise in its history. Adjusted for inflation, its real value is the lowest it's been in 66 years.

And:

Economists offered similar warnings of a “labor shortage” after the financial crisis and recession of 2008-09. But when the economy strengthened and wages rose, the so-called “labor shortage” magically disappeared.

So what should be done about the difficulty employers are having finding workers?Simple. If employers want more workers, they should pay them more.

Jerome Powell and the Fed don’t want to hear this. They’re aiming to deal with the “labor shortage” by slowing the economy so much that employers can find all the workers they need without raising wages.

Here's where Reich says Jerome Powell and the Fed are taking the U.S. economy into "Grapes of Wrath" territory:

 But this is cruel. Slowing the economy will cause millions of people to lose their jobs — disproportionately low-wage workers, women, and people of color.

Republicans and some corporate economists, meanwhile, are blaming the “labor shortage” on overly-generous jobless benefits. They say the way to get more people into jobs is to make their lives outside jobs less tolerable.

A recent “study” by Casey Mulligan and E.J. Antoni claims that “it pays not to work in Biden’s America,” because unemployment and Affordable Care Act benefits are so generous that “many businesses can’t get workers back on the job almost three years after COVID-19 hit these shores.”

Baloney. Apart from the non-working wealthy and their heirs, most unemployed people are hard up.

 Reich concludes:

Taken to its logical extreme, the corporate Republican argument might be correct. Eliminate all safety nets and at some point people without jobs will hurt so much they’ll have to take any available job, at any wage, whatever the job demands.

But do this, and we end up with an economy that’s even crueler than today’s.

The reason people aren’t working is that work doesn’t pay them enough, given declining wages and the increasing costs of childcare, eldercare, and transportation.

Both the Fed’s solution (slow the economy so employers can find the workers they need without raising wages) and the Republican corporate solution (slash safety nets so people are so desperate they have to take any job available) are cruel. They would impose huge burdens on many of the most vulnerable people in our society.

If we want more people to take jobs and we wish to live in a decent society, the answer is to pay people more.