Oren Cass, the CEO of American Compass, argued in an article in The Atlantic that a “labor shortage” is not necessarily a bad thing because it gives employers an incentive to raise wages and improve working conditions for employees. Typically, immigration advocates cites labor shortages as justification for admitting foreign workers to do jobs in the U.S. In his article Cass noted that:
“Over the past 50 years, as both parties supported the entry of millions of unskilled immigrants and the offshoring of entire industries, America’s per capita gross domestic product more than doubled after adjusting for inflation. Productivity of labor rose by a similar amount, and corporate profits per capita nearly tripled. Yet over the same time period, the average inflation-adjusted hourly earnings of the typical worker rose by less than 1 percent.
“The notion of a ‘labor shortage’ in a market economy presents something of a puzzle. The basic principle of supply and demand suggests that, if employers can’t find enough workers, they’ll simply have to offer higher wages or better working conditions. . . . When employers say there isn’t enough labor, what they really mean is that they can’t find enough people willing to work under the terms that they want to offer—and that they’re doing a poor job increasing productivity with the workers they have.”
Read more at theatlantic.com