Minimum Wage Labor Market Tightens

One of the most pressing issues small business owners face today and certainly going forward is not so much production, sales and quality control, traditional concerns of every small business, but the labor shortage that now exists and may only get worse. Small and medium business employers, those with under 50 employees in total, find themselves unable to expand and grow, not because there is no need for their product or service, but because they simply cannot find workers to fill the low-paying entry level jobs like cashiers, store clerks, dish washers, and maintenance workers. Also, an increase in demand from restaurants, auto parts dealers, and hotels have squeezed the labor markets even tighter.

There are many reasons why the pool of low-skilled labor is drying up in the US and one of the biggest reasons is probably the threats coming from Washington DC of locking up or deporting anyone whose visa paperwork is not in order. In addition, many immigrants fearing the consequences of staying in the country are “self-deporting” for fear of being round up and shipped off to prison, a practice perhaps of the police in their home country, not in America. USA Today reports that while illegal immigration arrests are up, deportations are down. The paper cites a backlog of deportations clogging the courts as well as the fact that millions of legal and undocumented immigrants have up and left the US voluntarily.

Increased demand and reduced supply can only mean one thing in a free market and it is only a matter of time before the market place forces employers to pay more for unskilled labor.