Abstract
In this book, authors Barnow, Trutko, and Piatak investigate labor shortages in four specific occupations in the contemporary United States: special education teachers, pharmacists, physical therapists, and home health and personal care aides. The study aims to “help the reader understand why shortages arise, identify a shortage when present, and assess strategies to alleviate the shortage” (p. 2), offering a detailed theoretical discussion and carefully examining each occupation in separate chapters. From the outset the authors make clear that they are interested in shortages that “sometimes develop and persist in specific occupations” (p. 1). They distance themselves from the aging thesis—that there will not be enough workers in the future due to the decline of the birth rate—and from the skill-mismatch thesis, which claims that there is a serious mismatch between the skills supplied by workers and those demanded by employers. In the authors’ view, occupational labor shortages are problematic because they cause “economic inefficiencies” and can be mitigated by appropriate training, immigration, and wage policies.
The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter, which is also available online, presents the theoretical framework and a comprehensive review of the literature. Different definitions of labor shortage are offered, providing an unusually rich description of its causes and a succinct account of its consequences. The authors follow to the letter the definition proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor, which states that a labor shortage is “a sustained market disequilibrium … in which the quantity of workers demanded exceeds the supply available and willing to work at a particular wage and working conditions at a particular place and point in time” (p. 3).
Each of the next four chapters is devoted to one of the four chosen occupations. These chapters are structured similarly, starting with a description of the occupation, the characteristics of its workers, and the training and recruitment processes, followed by an assessment of whether the occupation presents a labor shortage or not, and closing with conclusions and recommendations. The final chapter provides general conclusions, identifies limitations in the official data (echoing, without mentioning it, Gordon Lafer’s The Job Training Charade), proposes improvements to the data, and discusses how the improved data could be used in immigration policy.
After a rigorous and thorough analysis of the four occupations, the authors conclude, categorically, that “none of the occupations exhibited strong evidence of a shortage. … The labor market was fairly tight, but there was no consistent evidence that vacancies could not be filled within a reasonable amount of time” (p. 167). Even though the authors acknowledge that measuring occupational shortages is difficult, they feel confident that a method that incorporates qualitative data from case studies and quantitative indicators from existing surveys can help determine if an occupation is experiencing a shortage. The method, which is only mentioned in passing at the end of the book and certainly deserves to be elaborated at the beginning of the study, relies heavily on three indicators—employment change, unemployment, and wage change.
Rapid employment growth, low unemployment, and above-average wage growth are all consistent with a tight labor market and may signal the presence of a shortage. All studied occupations except for homecare workers show above-average employment growth and below-average unemployment rates during 2006-2010, but only pharmacists and physical therapists show above-average wage growth during the same period. The authors, however, decide to discard the presence of labor shortages in all occupations based on additional complementary data from surveys, interviews, and the specialized literature, arguing that the last recession had dampened or eliminated “any occupational shortage stemming from rapidly increasing demand” (p. 165). A revealing common thread throughout book is the stress on increased salaries and better working conditions as obvious means to reduce or eliminate potential labor shortages.
Occupational Labor Shortages is a timely book that cleverly challenges the widespread idea that the U.S. labor market is currently experiencing a shortage of skilled workers, or a “skills gap.” Assuming realistically that labor shortages may be observed in some occupations, and studying high-demand occupations in the recession-proof health sector, authors Barnow, Trutko, and Piatak offer an honest and well-researched refutation of the conventional “skills gap” story. This study will hopefully contribute to shifting the debate on jobs and skills into a more productive, rational setting.