Trying to leave my job right now.
Every company is short staffed but doesn't want to actually hire people for what they will be willing to work for. This is in almost every job I see, although lower wage jobs seem to be pushing up gradually (like the unionized Starbucks), office jobs have been in stasis for 5 years at this point, and these are the jobs people are looking at to pay off their 5 figure student debt.
I'm trying to leave my company because they're so short staffed but keep playing with “hiring interns” and “internal promotions” so that everyone's wages get driven down. It doesn't work, so they just end up not hiring everyone and allowing the quality of the business to fall further and further. The whole company is short staffed, from the work shop to the office. Our partners are short staffed, the truckers and steel people, our IT company.
I'm trying to get out because, logically, I am in high demand, if I leave my company they will literally have an entire department of their company not functioning until they hire a replacement. This is a position which acts as a hinge for a large workshop and several designers.
But I'm leaving because they can't afford me after all the inflation increases, and keep putting me off and telling me to wait. So I'm leaving, and they'll go under, but it's hard to leave because everyone is hiring but every company just wants to keep playing chicken, hopeful that people will eventually get desperate enough that they'll get their 30000/year Omni workers doing everything from flipping burgers to designing your sewer systems and cleaning them out. Everyone is hiring but no one wants to actually pay up in this race to the bottom.