[Mercer at Townhall] Adroitly, President Trump has optimized outcomes for the American Worker. His is a labor market like no other. Long overdue in the U.S., a labor market is one in which firms compete for workers, rather than workers competing for jobs.
"For the first time since data began to be collected in 2000, there are more job openings than there are unemployed workers." By the Economist’s telling (Jul 12th 2018), "Fully 5.8 million more Americans are in work than in December of 2015."
Best of all, workers are happier than they’ve been for a long time. Not so business. For American business, it’s never enough. Big or small, business is focused on elephantine-like expansion.
Big and small, business is nattering about labor shortages: "Ninety percent of small businesses which are hiring or trying to hire workers report that there are few or no qualified applicants, according to the National Federation of Independent Business."
With blaring headlines, the megaphones in the financial press are amplifying a message of dissatisfaction:
"The shortage is reaching a ’critical point’ ... A lack of applicants for blue-collar jobs such as trucking and construction has received particular scrutiny, as have states like Iowa where the unemployment rate is especially low (it is just 2.7 percent in the Hawkeye state)."