The emphasis is on “gradual,” here. If the jobs market stayed hot no matter what, and it was impossible to find workers for any open position, it would crater the economy in other ways. The goal is to have a roughly equal amount of jobs and people who want them.
If you have too many people and not enough jobs, you’ve got mass unemployment, which is bad for everyone. If you’ve got too many jobs and not enough people, you leave needed positions unfilled and businesses fail because they simply can’t get the employees they need, which is also bad for everyone.
Unemployment is also much easier to address than worker shortage. Paying for welfare of the unemployed is far preferable than importation of labour, or a export/downgrade of jobs/companies.
Similar our gripe with inflation as it hurts us a lot but the pains of deflation is a completely different magnitude of hurt on everyone who has debt.
That said, we have to have a government that is actually willing to address unemployment. We’re lucky enough to have that now, but the moment Republicans get into office again, they’ll move as fast as they can to gut unemployment assistance and then wonder why the economy is in the crapper.
The emphasis is on “gradual,” here. If the jobs market stayed hot no matter what, and it was impossible to find workers for any open position, it would crater the economy in other ways. The goal is to have a roughly equal amount of jobs and people who want them.
If you have too many people and not enough jobs, you’ve got mass unemployment, which is bad for everyone. If you’ve got too many jobs and not enough people, you leave needed positions unfilled and businesses fail because they simply can’t get the employees they need, which is also bad for everyone.
Balance is key.
Unemployment is also much easier to address than worker shortage. Paying for welfare of the unemployed is far preferable than importation of labour, or a export/downgrade of jobs/companies.
Similar our gripe with inflation as it hurts us a lot but the pains of deflation is a completely different magnitude of hurt on everyone who has debt.
That said, we have to have a government that is actually willing to address unemployment. We’re lucky enough to have that now, but the moment Republicans get into office again, they’ll move as fast as they can to gut unemployment assistance and then wonder why the economy is in the crapper.