. . Driver Shortage Or is it a surplus?
Need a Job? Truck Drivers Wanted. Trucking Industry Sees Shortage - ABC News
"If the jobs go unfilled or if there is a need to raise wages in order to attract workers into those occupations, I think either thing would have a tendency to raise the cost of goods," said Eric Thompson, professor of economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
If either scenario is going to produce the same result wouldn't it make more sense to pursue the pay raise and insure the job gets done?
Is it any wonder why they made this guy a professor? A mere neophyte, such as myself, would have to read the WHOLE article WITHOUT his quote in order to arrive at his conclusion. He nailed it on the first page! Genius!
Professor . .
FIRST
Take yourself and your five most talented aspiring economists to a sit down with the man from Crete (CCC) and perform the following analysis: Compare the number of hours away from home for Over the Road (OTR) drivers to wages earned to determine real pay per hour. Don't count regional or dedicated fleets unless it's to provide a separate analysis. Don't count just lines 3 and 4 . . a driver away from home is not free to pursue recreation away from the truck, has little to no consortium with family and a driver away from home cannot pursue part time work to supplement his/her income. A driver away from home is either under dispatch or in a state of readiness to accept a dispatch. Then compare the real pay per hour to those in the railroad, airline and merchant marine segments of transportation workers. Then ask yourselves if there is any great mystery behind driver attrition and shortages.
SECOND
Take yourself, your five most talented aspiring economists and the guy from Crete (CCC) out to the cat food plant just west of Crete (town) and figure out what the new price of a can of cat food would be, broken out "farm to market", after a 10 or 15 or 20% (or whatever the number may be to approximate parity with transportation wages) increase over the current Crete (CCC) pay scale. Then come back and tell the world what the real cost will be, in terms of cat food, to fill the jobs and eliminate the driver shortage.