There’s no such thing as a labour shortage in most industries. They don’t have skill requirements high enough to be a barrier. You can solve most of it by reducing the cost of education in specific sectors for a couple of years.

If a company puts up a job ad for a wage that’s well below what someone will accept, have they actually created a job?

The problem with companies not being able to hire has nothing to do with a lack of people, and everything to do with a lack of interest from people at the wage they are offering.

If a coffee shop, who’s having trouble hiring right now, were to offer $75/hr, would there still be a shortage of people? Clearly the answer is no.

What’s supposed to happen is that companies raise wages until they can fill the positions they need, and some businesses will become non-viable at the new rate and be forced to shut down. The people that had jobs at these non-viable companies are then freed up to work for a new company that is still viable paying higher wages.

Does that mean that some companies won’t exist anymore? Yes. That’s a feature, not a bug. Companies are not all supposed to succeed. Failure is an intended outcome in competition.

Now, the problem with this article is that importing workers to fill “vacant” positions simply means importing workers to keep wages lower. I’m all for immigration with a purpose, but this is the WRONG purpose.

Many of these industries listed are very low skill, like Paramedics for example, and I respect the hell out of the profession, but the educational requirement to become a paramedic is only 6 months. If you bump the wages up, there are plenty of youth willing to take that job.

Early childhood education is 2 years at a college.

We need the minimum wage to be $21 dollars and public transit to be increasingly funded for the workers please

Or you could pay people more.

Glaringly missing doctors and nurses.