A Tight Labor Market!
Ah. The tight labor market of the Bush boom!
Calculated Risk writes:
Calculated Risk: More on Labor Slack: Ken Melvin directs us to some comments in an article in the SF Gate:
Want a Wal-Mart job? Join the crowd 11,000 apply for 400 openings at retailer's new Oakland store. "It's not about Wal-Mart -- it's about the rest of the labor market," [Stephen Levy, an economist for the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy] said. "If the rest of the labor market was strong, you wouldn't have 11, 000 people applying for 400 jobs." During the dot-com boom, Levy said, businesses like Starbucks bumped up wages to recruit employees in the middle of a hot job market. But now the situation has reversed, and more people are willing to take whatever they can get.
That sure sounds like slack in the labor market.
