http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/070822/aug2007db20070821451283.html?.v=1<snip>
David Rosenberg isn't buying it. A North American economist at Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER - News), he is one of a number of economists who say the concerns about too few workers are vastly overblown. Rosenberg recently studied the issue and put out a report entitled Is There a Labor Shortage? If employers are having trouble filling jobs, "perhaps they're not looking hard enough," he says.
The issue may not be the number of workers, but rather the level of pay. Economists like Rosenberg argue that in a market economy, there's really no such thing as a true shortage. If you want more of something, you can pay more and have it. When employers say that there's a worker shortage, what they really mean is they can't get enough workers at the price they want to pay, the argument goes. "While it makes for nice cocktail conversation, the data aren't saying there is an acute labor shortage in this country," Rosenberg says.
The truth may involve shades of gray. "There is not a general labor shortage in the U.S.," says David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's, which, like BusinessWeek, is a unit of The McGraw-Hill Cos. (NYSE:MHP - News). "There is a shortage of people willing to do grunt work for low wages -- the kind of shortage you want -- and a shortage in high-skilled jobs like scientists and engineers."
Interesting article that also talks about the 'true' unemployment rate when the 'discouraged' workers are added back into the unemployment numbers.