Trump Exacerbates Devastating Labor Shortage

Donald Trump has repeatedly remarked on his superior intelligence.

While other Presidents struggled to find time to process all the written material they needed to review, Donald Trump seems to have abundant time to watch television and send out tweets.  If he took even a few minutes to educate himself on the economic conditions of the country, he’d realize that there is an “epidemic”.  It’s called a “labor shortage” and it is already having devastating repercussions on the economy.

It was July of 2018 that it was reported that “America’s labor shortage is approaching epidemic proportions, and it could be employers who end up paying.“

A report Thursday from ADP and Moody’s Analytics cast an even brighter light on what is becoming one of the most important economic stories of 2018: the difficulty employers are having in finding qualified employees to fill a record 6.7 million job openings.

At first glance the cost of rising competition for jobs might be thought to be a good thing.  Perhaps wages for the American worker would increase.  However rising labor costs will inevitably cause an increase in the price of goods and services.

The U.S. labor shortage

is reaching a critical point.

• Private payrolls grew less than expected in June, likely due not just to a slowdown in hiring but also a decline in the labor pool.
• For the first time, there are more job openings than there are eligible workers to fill them.
• Economists expect wage pressures to continue building as part of increasing inflation.

Instead of addressing this critical labor shortage,  Trump now threatens to push the government into shutdown once again if we don’t fund his border wall and change the nation’s immigration laws.

“I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!” Trump tweeted Sunday.

As America is more desperate than ever to increase our labor pool, Trump seems to be more desperate than ever to restrict our labor force.

In Texas, undocumented workers are critical and there is a critical shortage of construction workers.  TEXAS NEEDS THE WORKERS!  The estimated number of undocumented workers in Texas today is approximately twice as large as the total number of unemployed persons in the workforce. Even if all currently unemployed persons filled jobs now held by undocumented workers (which is impossible for myriad reasons), the state would be left with a glaring gap of hundreds of thousands of workers if the undocumented workforce were no longer available. In a recent study, The Perryman Group took a balanced view of the economic benefits and costs of the undocumented workforce to Texas. The results indicate gains of millions of jobs and billions of dollars to taxing entities.  

Subtracting the costs from the total fiscal benefits yields an estimate of the net fiscal effect of the undocumented population. The total net fiscal effect of the Texas undocumented population includes benefits of $32.9 billion each year, including:

20.1 billion to the federal government, 

$11.8 billion to the State of Texas, and

$0.9 billion to local governments within Texas.34,000 homes.  

“We are 20,000 construction workers short in D-FW despite wages rising 35 percent for most needed trades,” said Phil Crone, head of the Dallas Builders Association. “I only see the shortage easing if the demand eases, I don’t see that occurring in an impactful way.  

“More than 92 percent of our members cite the lack of labor as having a significant impact on their business,” Crone said. “In most cases that’s adding a month and more than $5,000 to every home built in our area.

• Texas claims the top spot in CNBC’s 2018 America’s Top States for Business rankings.
• The energy sector is helping to turbocharge the $1.6 trillion Texas economy.
• Texas has added more than 350,000 jobs in the past year.
• Texas is home to some of America’s most important public and private companies, including giants like AT&T, ExxonMobil and Dell.

 

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Forget Trump’s racist attitudes about immigration and the importance of the civil rights of illegal immigrants.  Forget the cost of building a border wall and the studies that show it would be ineffective.  Forget the cost to America of another government shut down.  Simply consider the overwhelming need of America to increase its labor pool, and the absurdity of Trump’s wall becomes obvious.