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It's not a labor shortage: It's a good jobs shortage
Editorial from Grace Heffernan and Maureen ConwayHeffernan, who lives in Cleveland, is a member of the Northeast Ohio Worker Center. Conway is vice president and executive director of the economic opportunities program at the Aspen Institute.
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Excerpts
At the first whisper from business that they are having difficulties filling jobs, we fall back into familiar tropes. We demonize individual workers — they are greedy, they are lazy, they are selfish — instead of making good on our early pandemic promises to never again take them for granted.
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To put it bluntly: We are not in a labor shortage. We are in a wage shortage. We are not in a labor shortage. We are in a good jobs shortage — jobs where workers can expect livable wages, affordable benefits, paid time off and predictable scheduling.
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The solution for our economic recovery cannot be to make people feel so poor and desperate that they are willing to accept any job regardless of its quality. That has been the policy approach for far too long and we should not go back to it. Requiring poor people to find employment in order to qualify for public safety net programs — from SNAP benefits to the earned income tax credit to child care subsidies — built a system in which millions of working people remain poor and reliant on public benefits to get by. We need to build a system in which people who are working for a living are more likely to find that their work, in fact, provides a living.
...
To put it bluntly: We are not in a labor shortage. We are in a wage shortage. We are not in a labor shortage. We are in a good jobs shortage — jobs where workers can expect livable wages, affordable benefits, paid time off and predictable scheduling.
...
The solution for our economic recovery cannot be to make people feel so poor and desperate that they are willing to accept any job regardless of its quality. That has been the policy approach for far too long and we should not go back to it. Requiring poor people to find employment in order to qualify for public safety net programs — from SNAP benefits to the earned income tax credit to child care subsidies — built a system in which millions of working people remain poor and reliant on public benefits to get by. We need to build a system in which people who are working for a living are more likely to find that their work, in fact, provides a living.
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https://www.crainscleveland.com/opinion/personal-view-its-not-labor-shortage-its-good-jobs-shortage
13 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Meanwhile, prices continue to sky rocket.
I recall very well when high school.kids with part-time jobs could buy brand new cars -Mustangs etc., and still have $ to function.
