It seems to me that the law of supply and demand stops working from time to time. But I think that is wrong, and pieces like this remind me that I am wrong: How Walmart has successfully recruited truck drivers amid a labor shortage crisis.
The reason I think it stops working is because I see wage growth stagnating in many places. But I also see productivity stagnating too, and I think there is a relationship between that. There is some elasticity there that allows wage growth to stagnate but in return productivity growth stagnates too.
In Walmart’s case, the elasticity is gone: if they can’t get truckers, they lose business. It’s simple. But for businesses without such hard and fast metrics, you might just continue to see slack productivity and slack wage growth.
