[donkeyd]

> leave for other countries, work for private entities or go into different industries.

So... Those people fill in jobs in businesses/countries where there's a shortage, causing a shortage somewhere else?

> political soundbite

Is exactly what you are doing. If there's no shortage in (skilled) labor, why is unemployment at the lowest rate in decades in much of the western world? Why are there not enough builders in much of the EU, while countries like Romania are suffering shortage due to skilled workers moving to EU countries to earn more? Why can't I find enough devs to do even half the work we could be doing? Why are so many companies looking at automation to solve the lack of labor?

[kungito]

How about this. Let's say historically 200 square meter houses costed 200k€ to build. But not enough people can afford that. Then you make a project where you count in the cost of materials but cut down cost of labor, price the house at 150k€ and say that there is a shortage of labor because you cannot find someone to build the house for the money you have available. You can even be realistic when saying that if you increased the price of the house you couldn't sell it. Maybe there just isn't enough people willing to pay for the house for the cost other people would be willing to build it for. Even if you managed to find people to work for the reduced pay you can just create a cheaper project and cut down on labor cost even more because now you sold to all the people who were willing to buy for 150k€. The "labor shortage" is basically guaranteed for any industry all the time. All it takes is for you to create a project fitting lower on the demand curve and cut down on labor since you can't really reduce price of materials.