[maxerickson]

Economists consider unemployment around 5% as "full employment".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment

Hitting that is one way of measuring whether there is a labor shortage. At the moment it does happen to coincide with wage growth (which should be higher when it is more difficult to hire people).

[randomdata]

But economists define shortage as a situation where an external mechanism (like government intervention) prevents price from rising. The fact that we are seeing wage growth says that there is not a shortage.