This is so true. In fact we've seen this happen already. Once big-tech started paying market salaries, their applicant:position ratio has exploded to 100:1. In a prior era, those same workers might have gone to Wall St or Strategy Consulting.

The Market works. Pay fair wages and your personnel problems go away.

And you just cut services that customers want but aren't willing to pay for. Which will likely happen with a lot of the gig economy as-a-service things currently being subsidized.

Or stay more pedestrian. Grocery baggers in the US basically went away for a while. I assuume they came back based in part on what grocery stores had to pay for them to work.

If you're not willing to pay the service provider a living wage you don't really want the service.

Are you suggesting that the many people using Uber or arguably eat at McDonalds don’t want that service at some level?

I'm not the commenter, but I'd argue that people who want a service but don't want to pay the cost are irrational and perhaps we should not worry about pleasing them?

Suppose I want a new BMW and I want to pay no more than $300 for it. This doesn't mean that we should force BMW workers to work for free -- it means that my expectations are not rational.

Similiar, if I want a 10km Uber ride for $1, which costs less than even gas, the desire is irrational. Why should workers have to work for free to satisfy this consumer's irrational desire?

Same thing for grocery baggers "disappearing" -- of course they disappeared, there was a pandemic. They werent being paid for the risks of bagging groceries.

>Same thing for grocery baggers "disappearing"

I'm talking about in the 80s or so when a lot of things started switching to more self-service. My local supermarkets have baggers today and you're literally not allowed to bag yourself.

I don't see there being anything irrational about not wanting to pay the price for certain services. And I don't expect either individuals or companies to sell me things on terms that aren't attractive to them. But that doesn't mean I don't want those things even if I accept that I can't have them on terms acceptable to both myself and the person providing them.

> I can't afford to wait 4 years for someone to train as a nurse to be available for me to hire

From my comment. Nurses require training. I did not assume a finite number of nurses. If I am sick and need a nurse, I need one _right now_. There not being enough of them is a shortage. It may not be a shortage in the future, but right now, it is.

It looks like you're assuming there's no salary elasticity in the job market, which is probably not accurate. There are always trained nurses that maybe decided to retire early, considered the stress not worth the pay and switched jobs, or something else like that. Higher pay can get them back on deck.

Demand for nurses doesn't change abruptly and before importing people became a fad it was largely followed by supply.

What profession doesn't require training or experience to do well? I wouldn't hire someone who had never built a house before even if I wanted one built right now.

You're right, you would look outside of your country's talent pool to try to find someone qualified to do it for you.

Or are you suggesting that you would wait around and be homeless for 4 years until someone local built up enough training and experience in order to build your house? If you're going to suggest that you would wait and "live somewhere else", I would point out that people who are trying to hire, for example, nurses, often don't have that luxury. If they wait 4 years, they'll be dead.

No one is suggesting that high skill work status are used for people with no training or experience; they explicitly require training and/or experience in order to qualify. If think you're proving my point; if you need to hire someone right now, and there is no one available locally to do it right now, then there is a shortage, and you need to look outside of your local market.

Is my "local market" the entire rest of the United States? Or just my state/county/city? This still doesn't seem like you're describing a real problem.

It doesn't matter. You can define your market as whatever you want.

The point is that if someone you need to hire is not available, you're going to try to find them elsewhere. You're not going to wait 4 (or whatever number of) years for someone to go to school, train, gain experience, and be available for you to hire.

H1B is not going to get you someone quickly either.

This!

And when you reach 80k (or whatever the number was), you'll also be able to get H1B nurses.

Nurses require licensure in the state that they are employed in. To hire a nurse in... say Illinois, you need to have someone licensed as a nurse in Illinois first.

How hard is it to get a licence in Illionois, if you have a licence in some other state already?

Submit an application to take the next state licensing examination.

There are some states that have a compact and getting a multi-state license for those compact states will let you switch practice in multiple states - https://www.ncsbn.org/nurse-licensure-compact.htm

However, Illinois isn't part of that compact so its a new exam for anyone licensed elsewhere.

Aside from all of this... (as related to H1Bs) - nursing isn't a specialized occupation and doesn't qualify for the H1B. A specialist nurse, however, may. https://www.immi-usa.com/h1b-visa/h-1b-nurses/ ... and that is a different license (in addition to) the RN.