LABOR SHORTAGE OR GOOD JOB SHORTAGE?
In recent weeks, you may have read news stories about a “labor shortage,” or you may have witnessed a wave of “now hiring” signs outside restaurants, bars, gyms, and other businesses. This has led some to the conclusion that generous stimulus checks and COVID relief measures have encouraged workers to stay home at taxpayers’ expense, even as the post-vaccination economy grows.
We at Orange County Living Wage believe that this isn’t a labor shortage, but rather a shortage of stable, dignified, living wage employment. As this piece puts it, the solution should involve employers “reimagin[ing] their business models and mak[ing] the choice to design high-quality jobs.”
Our conversation with Colin Starnes, owner and lead craftsman of Chapel Hill-based Grey Star Woodworks & Design, helped reveal some of the complexities of the so-called “labor shortage.” A few months ago, Grey Star joined our living wage roster to ensure that their employees could “learn and re-invest into their future, family, and back into our local economy." Since then, their business has boomed: Starnes’ voicemail fills up daily with up to twenty requests. In fact, working from home has inspired a nationwide surge of home renovations to the point of contributing to a lumber shortage. During this incredibly busy time, Starnes has struggled to find a qualified and stable workforce. He attributes this perpetual “labor desert” not to low wages, but rather to the “push toward four-year colleges instead of trade schools throughout the Southeast.” Said differently, this hypothesis about trends in education complicates the mainstream “labor shortage” narrative.
As the world opens up again, we have a chance to reject the “normal” economy and instead reenvision it so that it empowers us all. As Sonya Renee Taylor puts it, “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was never normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, My friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”
Join Orange County Living Wage in helping to stitch the new garment by making a donation here.
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