If workers need training, why don't companies train them? The majority of workers can't afford training, they barely afford home and food.
Why companies don't train workers? Because they don't want to pay, so they blame workers for not having enough training thus shifting the labor shortage cause to workers, not to themselves.
Do you recall when the pandemic started I think it was the state of Illinois blamed their inability to process employment checks on a lack of COBOL programmers?
It was a really interesting statement. As you say-- blaming people who don't exist for their failure to maintain their systems or create a training program/incentives to ensure that there's a supply of programmers.
I'm sure if it payed well, someone would learn COBOL.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-pr...
There's no labour shortage. There's a lack of currently available labour for the terms you're offering.
Edit: and perhaps some folks who should not be considered as on the labour market, but are labelled unemployed nevertheless.
Have you ever tried running a company? Let's say you have a band (which is a form of a company. They sell entertainment). You can't find a drummer. Would you train one? How many years are you going to able to wait before you start your band for real while your new drummer trains? In the mean time you aren't able to make any money because the band can't perform.
The average size of a company is 1-4 people. They aren't Walmart size etc.. They don't have the budget to train an employee
https://www.naics.com/business-lists/counts-by-company-size/
We're talking about the kind of training needed to work some garbage CRM that the employer uses, not a decade spent mastering a fine art...
The band U2 trained its singer, on-the-job style. Worked out pretty well for the business.
Would you also say that as long as there are more housing units than people, there's no housing shortage?
Of course there can be such a thing as a labor shortage, under many different scenarios (during sustained high rates of real economic expansion, specialized types of labor that are difficult to train enough of, fading-away segments that aren't being replenished with new labor due to lack of interest (yet still require active labor), not enough manual labor, not enough immigration, not enough population growth, and so on).
Low wages can make a labor shortage worse, is the actual context.