US unemployment rate is incredibly low right now, at 3.6%, which were essentially pre-Covid rates (3.5%). See here:
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm#
There are also twice as many jobs as there are working-aged people. The May 2022 worker to job ratio is 0.5:
https://www.bls.gov/charts/job-openings-and-labor-turnover/unemp-per-job-opening.htm
(The “why?” is interesting, but I don’t know enough about that to comment.)
Lately the counter-argument to, “No one wants to work,” has been, “Nobody wants to work for YOUR company!” But this starts an irrelevant argument about what types of jobs are “worth it”, what employees deserve, how hard you should work, etc., which can too easily turn into a value-based argument, which goes nowhere.
Instead, respond with “There aren’t enough working-aged people. That’s why you can’t find workers. Lazy people is not the issue.” There is basically no argument that can be made back to that.
Given that, and at the risk of this entire subreddit downvoting me into submission, this also shows that it’s not necessarily the fault of the company if it is short-staffed. There literally are not enough employees to go around. So if you are working on a short-staffed team, do not immediately hate on the company and blame them for not hiring more people. If they are a terrible company who treats employees like shit, or pay minimum or near-minimum wage, then absolutely. Fuck them. But for the good companies, it is a little unfair.
Posted because I thought the discord here was lacking some nuance.
Thoughts?
(Obviously, I am NOT an economist, so feel free to tell me how dumb I am below lol)