What Business Week’s Commentary didn’t mention
The job market may finally, after only a dozen or so false starts over the past three years, look up for U.S. workers. The magazine’s Michael Mandel writes in the latest issue (”Now Workers Can Flex Some Muscle,” March 21, 2005):
Once the balance tips [of labor demand vs. supply] towards workers, corporate hiring behavior can change almost overnight. If employers find themselves with positions they need to fill, says Barry Gerhart, a human resources expert at the University of Wisconsin Business School, “all of a sudden they have to shift back to recruitment-retention mode.”
Well, let’s hope that turns out to be the case. Interestingly, Mandel doesn’t mention that Business Week consistently - as in always - supports ever higher levels of immigration, specifically to increase the nation’s pool of workers. So perhaps the magazine is just setting up a coming “labor-shortage crisis” cover story (”millions of unfilled jobs, rampaging through the streets, catastrophically driving up wages and salaries…”).
