[Chathamization]

The wage issue isn’t that people are choosing unemployment over pay cuts. It’s that companies will generally opt for a hiring freeze over a pay cut. Most places aren’t going to cut the salary of every team member by $10k so they can hire a new person, they’re going to put off hiring a new person and try to make do with what they have.

[rondon2]

That is only a temporary problem. Eventually employees will quit or die. And when that happens you will hire a replacement at current market rates.

[Chathamization]

Depending on your definition of temporary - as Keynes said “in the long run we’re all dead.” Eventually things will work themselves out, but how many years of self-imposed pain will it take? Employees are going to be much less likely to quit in a tight job market, especially if they’d be paid less at their new job (since, per your example, new hires would be paid less). If you’re waiting for employees to die (or retire, and they’re more likely to retire late in a tight job market), you’re talking about a price correction that happens once every several decades.