Sounds like the same argument being used for more H1B visas. We cant find enough (cheap) resources locally so we need to import some from elsewhere willing to work for a pittance.
The strength of the argument changes with market elasticity.
If a single company has trouble hiring, they can raise salaries. However, if the pool of workers remains finite, all you are really doing is switching which company has the hiring problem. If two people need an all day plumbing job done today, and there's only one plumber in time, one of them is not going to get it done, regardless of how much they pay.
So when we look industry-wide, what the salary increases do is make people change professions. If it takes the same effort to become a truck driver than a cab driver, but the truck driver makes 4 times as much, everything else being equal, we'll have more trouble finding people to be cabbies, as long as there's an opportunity trucking. People then decide which training they get to choose. But the real demand problem is not solved until the workers are trained.
We don't even need workers for this. Imagine that we suddenly need 60 million gallons of 25 year old scotch every day. It doesn't matter how much we want to pay: There isn't enough scotch to meet demand today. If we paid a million dollars a bottle, it'd not make a difference: We'd only get an increase in supply as time goes by, and people just put more scotch on casks, and don't open the casks at 15 years, because 25 makes more money: But nothing is going to make this demand shock get fixed earlier, no matter how much you pay.
So the harder it is to actually perform the job, and the longer it takes to train, the stronger the immigration argument gets.
You take an alternative. There may only be one plumber, but if he is bid up to a million I am going to spend a day doing it myself, buy an entirely new WHATEVER_WE_ARE_REPLACING or do without. If the price of scotchs go to 50 usd per centilitier I am going to buy rum. If programmers start charging 10000 usd/day I am going to continue doing my spreadsheets by hand.
Your analysis fails to take into account substitute goods. If a taxi gets too expensive I can rent a car (no driver cost), take public transportation (lot less driver cost) or stay the night and go home when I am sober.
> If programmers start charging 10000 usd/day I am going to continue doing my spreadsheets by hand.
This is funny for two reasons:
1. Programmers do earn $1000 USD/day—it's only $125/hour. My rate is $225 and has been for years.
2. Spreadsheets are a killer app precisely because you don't need to be a programmer to use them. Prior to spreadsheets, all computer-based accounting was done by hiring and paying programmers. Spreadsheets ended that which is why they are (and continue to be) so successful.
>If a single company has trouble hiring, they can raise salaries. However, if the pool of workers remains finite
You mean fixed, not finite.
Which it wouldn't, if you raised salaries. The pool of workers would increase in size because people like money.
We're not talking about a job that only a fixed number of people could do. Half the working population could probably be a trucker if they tried, and they would if you raised wages enough.
But for any job that requires training there is a delay between raising wages and the labor supply expanding. Granted, for truckers it's not very long, but for something like software developers it can be half a decade, in which time those who choose to pursue expensive training in hope of eschewing a high-demand job also risk graduating into another burst bubble.
Also, you're just moving unemployment from one category to another. There's unemployment in every field. The fundamental issue is, with automation we no longer need everyone to work. As robotics advances the problem will just get worse. We've never, ever needed as many engineers as we've needed laborers and assembly-line workers. Making them all into skilled labor is absurd for many reasons, not least of which is, we don't need that many engineers.
> Making them all into skilled labor is absurd for many reasons, not least of which is, we don't need that many engineers.
I'm not sure "we don't need that many engineers" is defensible. Who's to say how many are "needed" or not? I see no reason why the world couldn't have many more engineers (and scientists) working and still doing useful work.
Seriously. How do people look around at the world today and think: Yup, everything is peachy. Let's just sustain this, folks, we're good.
As long as there's a third world, we're nowhere close to having enough of anything, including engineers. There's still a shit ton of work to be done just to get the world to an acceptable level for all people.
Employment statistics say this. There is already unemployment in engineering. Maybe long-term in a socialist or planned society we could make use of scads of new engineers; but not in the society we have now.
