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Dear John,
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, corporate America’s biggest lobbying group, claims there are over 10 million job openings right now in the U.S. for which employers can’t find workers.
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell says the U.S. is dealing with a “structural labor shortage” that won’t be resolved anytime soon.
Baloney. There is NO labor shortage.
As our latest video explains, the real problem is a shortage of jobs paying sufficient wages to attract workers to fill them.
For most Americans, real inflation-adjusted wages continue to drop. Any pay increases workers may have earned in the past few years have actually been pay cuts, because wages have lagged behind the rising costs of basic necessities -- like housing, food, childcare, and healthcare.
Of course Jerome Powell and his colleagues at the Fed don’t want to hear this. Neither does corporate America or their Republicans friends in Congress. Many in the GOP would rather blame “overly generous unemployment benefits.”
That argument holds water only if you don’t give a damn about workers, and ignore the fact that America has the least generous unemployment system of any rich nation.
How about instead of saying “no one wants to work anymore,” try “no one wants to be exploited anymore.”
Know the truth.
Thanks for watching -- and sharing -- today,
Robert Reich
Inequality Media
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