Have a different auction for different worker skill classifications.

A disadvantage in what way? Unless I'm missing something this just sounds like markets being markets. As a worker, why would I accept a job that pays less and requires me to live in Alabama if I can do better?

Because chemistry and IT/swe are not the same jobs. And America also needs chemists

America HAS chemists.

If there is more demand for chemists, the wages will go up which in turn will incentivize more Americans to pursue being chemist as a career.

To a point, they will. However, the amount they can rise is capped by other economic factors. e.g. If wage pressure goes beyond a businesses ability to pay, they can't hire. This then leads to businesses ceasing operations and hiring nobody.

> wages will go up

The issue is that tech can pay exorbitant salaries compared to physical-world companies as the product they're producing has infinite reach and is often 'evergreen'

It's the same issue as investment banking; when you can almost literally print the money you're paying salaries with you can hire everyone at any price.

The issue is, that leads to the smartest people in the country all ending up at 'virtual' industries and you discover eventually you don't have an economy, you just have a giant video game.

You just have to turn off the money printer and watch the tech money dry up

(What we’re seeing now)

you love to see it

No, they try to rebrand as “quantitative bioscientists” or “molecular engineers” and cross their fingers and hope for postbac students who weren’t chemists because they don’t believe in their own curriculum anymore.

Based on pay, I would guess chemists aren't in demand.

That’s not how the market works. It doesn’t go “oh we need chemists let’s increase their pay and they’ll flock here”. It goes “oh I guess we let our science skills rot for 20 years it seems really hard to do chemistry now let’s pivot the business into a glorified real estate holding and invest in those ad companies that seem to have good ROI”.

Ex-chemist, can confirm.

>I guess we let our science skills rot for 20 years.

Americans are world leaders among chemists, so I don't think you're correct in this case [1].

It looks much more like saturation, with only 7200 openings per year [2]. And over 13000 annual graduates [3].

We have an excess of chemists in the US, as best I can tell, and we should expect pay to reflect that.

[1] https://research.com/news-events/world-ranking-of-top-chemis...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/che...

[3] https://cen.acs.org/education/graduate-education/numbers-s-c...

Based on pay, you'd think childcare is in low demand and astronomers are in high demand. But that would be wrong.

Based on pay I wouldn't think that astronomers are in high demand, and neither does the Bureau of Labor [1].

Child care labor is in fact in low demand [2].

I think child care is expensive because insurance is expensive.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Life-Physical-and-Social-Science/Phy...

[2]: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/childcare-...

The data at those links indicate the demand for child care workers is more than 40x the demand for physicists and astronomers combined. Yet, childcare workers make only slightly more than 1/5th the wage.

This is because skilled labor is not fungible and different jobs are on different demand curves.

Maybe I misunderstand your argument. I thought your main point was that pay may be high despite demand being low, and vice versa. I'm sure there are exceptional cases where this is true, but the examples you provided illustrate something very much counter to your point.

In your examples, pay and demand are low for all three professions, chemists, child care workers, and astronomers, according to the BoL.

My point is that each profession has its own independent supply and demand equilibrium, and not every market even operates at equilibrium. The relative wages of two entirely independent markets for labor don't indicate relative demand.

Okay. I didn't make that comparison. I see why you might though. For clarity, my point isn't that they make less than any comparable. It's that taking into consideration the cost of acquiring the degree, it's unusual that the pay would be about median in keeping with uneducated laborers. An explanation like unusually low demand (or market saturation) is likely to be the cause of that pay deficit. In this case, it appears to be in fact.