A shortage, as it pertains to other "goods", is defined as a situation where an external mechanism prevents price from rising. A common example of a shortage is where price gouging laws are in effect. When a shortage occurs, a non-price based mechanism must be used to distribute "goods" instead, such as first-come, first served, a lottery, needs-based selection, etc.
Only labour gets the special shortage definition seen here. Seemingly because shortage was originally used with respect to healthcare practitioners, where true shortages are possible with price ceilings often imposed by government in order to allow equal healthcare access to all citizens regardless of how much they can afford to spend, and then misconstrued onto other fields.
>Only labour gets the special shortage definition seen here.
Isn't this backwards? This is the colloquial plain-language use of "shortage" (though intentionally misleadingly and wrongly used by employers), you're talking about a technical economics-only definition.
Since physical limitarions exist, including time, shortages exist.
We can't simply pay more money to get a personal chef, doctor, and pilot for everyone, even if there was a magical infinite source of compensation to pay them.
> We can't simply pay more money to get a personal chef, doctor, and pilot for everyone, even if there was a magical infinite source of compensation to pay them.
Remember, money is debt – an IOU, a promise to deliver something later. It says "You do this for me now and I will give you this token (money) that you can redeem for what you want from me in the future.". 'Compensation' is just the other side of the transaction – you offering the same in kind. If there was a magical infinite source of compensation then there would necessarily be an infinite ability to provide chef, medical, etc. services.
In the real world, you only have so much to offer others, which limits how much you can receive from them. As before, transactions must be balanced. That is what it means 'to compensate'. In the real world, you have a pick what you want from the limited amount of value you can offer in kind. There is no such thing as an insatiable demand for chefs or doctors. People will stop considering those services when they become too expensive. The more expensive, the fewer people needed.
This only becomes a problem when price is prevented from rising (e.g. due to government intervention) – and that is when you can encounter a shortage.
Buy you could have all that for yourself - if you are a billionaire. Everybody cannot have that, but somebody could. Economics is about managing limited resources. I end up being my own personal chef. I share my neurosurgeon with 100,000 people (most of whom never need one). Because I can share my neurosurgeon there is no shortage.
Can we not simply say a shortage is when there's not enough of something. In this case, available drivers willing to work for the compensation they're willing to pay?
> Can we not simply say a shortage is when there's not enough of something.
More or less, but "how much is needed" is dependent on price. You need an infinite number of truck drivers if they are driving for free. And you need no truck drivers if they are driving for $100,000,000,000 per day.
In a functioning market, price will rise until you have exactly the right number of truck drivers. Remember that the dreamers not willing to pay the price are simply not in the market. You don't have a shortage of Ferraris when 10 year old boys with Ferrari posters on their walls can't have the real thing.
However, if something stops the price from rising – such the government stepping in and saying: "It is now illegal to pay truck drivers more than $30,000 per year" – then you have a disconnect. The market wants more drivers and are willing to pay more to get them, but are not allowed to pay them more. That disconnect is what the shortage defines.
Yeah, but that's not why there's a "shortage" of drivers.
There is absolutely no upper limit to driver pay and no nameless bureaucrat filling out some permissible wage table but only "what the market will bear".
From experience I can tell you the main two culprits are it's kind of a shitty job and it's kind of a shitty job that can turn into a really shitty job (or no job) really, really fast.
No serious solutions ever treat it like the quality-of-life problem that it really is -- parking is a major problem, shippers/receivers suck up large quantities of unpaid time and living in a truck/being away from home for weeks at a time is not for everyone are probably the top 3 complaints I would hear. Well, and all the crazy shit the "4-wheelers" get up to but that's usually entertaining.
> Yeah, but that's not why there's a "shortage" of drivers.
Right, because there isn't a shortage of drivers. There isn't even a lack of drivers. We have the right number of drivers – along with a whole lot of metaphorical 10 year olds with Ferrari posters who like to talk big with their friends about how they want truck drivers, but when push comes to shove, they really don't.
Only labour gets the special shortage definition seen here. Seemingly because shortage was originally used with respect to healthcare practitioners, where true shortages are possible with price ceilings often imposed by government in order to allow equal healthcare access to all citizens regardless of how much they can afford to spend, and then misconstrued onto other fields.