It’s an all-too common refrain among US corporations: we have jobs available, but simply can’t find qualified workers to fill them.
Economists, including top Federal Reserve officials, lend credibility to this dubious claim by arguing there is a "skills gap" among US workers that is preventing firms from finding employees with the right backgrounds.
However, ample research and basic common sense suggests that wage stagnation, which has dominated the US job landscape in recent decades, is a symptom of an anemic labor market, not a fully recovered one.
Credit to Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari for pointing that out during a speech to business leaders on Monday.
"If you're not raising wages, then it just sounds like whining," he told a group of business people at a Rotary Club meeting in Sioux Falls, S.D., according to the Washington Examiner.Business insider
Fed rebel warns businesses to stop 'whining' about a shortage of workers
Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
ht Brad DeLong at Grasping Reality
He won't be Fed president for long.
ReplyDeleteTrump wants higher wages...
ReplyDeleteIf we get some increase in wages it'll be interesting to see what the Fed will do...
ReplyDeleteTrump has been neutered wrt to both foreign and domestic policy. The establishment has re-asserted control. This is no longer the Trump presidency but a military junta and the former CEO of Exxon running foreign and military policy and Goldman Sachs alumni running domestic policy. It's over. All Trump can do now is through his base some red meat on occasion. But if he oversteps, then he risks being removed from office before the end of his term.
ReplyDeleteLOL...
ReplyDeleteIt's generally recognized that a president's political capital is strongest in the 100 days post-inauguration. The bulk of Trump's political capital was wasted on the unsuccessful attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare and if not repeal and replace at least repeal. Both failed.
ReplyDeletePassage was key to the tax cuts that were planned since the cuts had to be done through reconciliation that is budget neutral. Failure to accomplish the health care repeal was a blow to the strategy for passing tax cuts through reconciliation, where only 50 GOP votes are required with the VP breaking the tie.
The infrastructure plan faces the same up-hill battle since it would have to be deficit-neutral or be funded by cuts elsewhere.
However, Trump has prioritized funding the construction of The Wall, and he just announced that he is willing to shut down the government in the debt ceiling fight to get it. Fitch just threatened another downgrade of US debt, no big thing economically or financially, but a very big thing politically.
Freedom Caucus (Confederate libertarian ) want Obamacare to fail on its own.. trumps first preference was to repeal and replace before failure but now failure is a fallback position ... I still haven't seen anything where he's decided whether or not to give the mortgage payments to the health insurers yet ... if Trump doesn't give all of the mortgage payments over to the health insurers the whole industry could collapse and Obama care with it
ReplyDeleteThe Dev strategy was to pass any health care bill they could muster the votes for and fix it down the line. This assumed they would remain in power, which looked likely at the time.
ReplyDeleteHowever, they did not remain in power and the GOP had a strategy of repealing ACA. But they had no replacement strategy they could agree on.
So now the dominant strategy seems to be to just blow it up and let the "free market" sort it out.
We'll see how that works for them.
"Dev" should be "Dem."
ReplyDeleteI am picking up some sort of vindictive/libertarian vibe out of the freedom caucus to let Obamacare fail first...
ReplyDeleteYes, they are trying to create "evidence" that non-market solutions don't work.
ReplyDeleteI know Kashkari worked for Goldie's but I really like him anyway. He doesn't adhere to the academic economic models favored by the rest of the fomc crew.
ReplyDelete