It’s not a ‘labor shortage,’ it’s a reassessment of work
The balance of power between labor and capital is shifting a little bit back towards labor, and this is one aspect of that.  It’s going to mean higher wages and slightly lower profit margins.  A good thing, in my view.  I’ve noticed an uptick in labor organizing, minimum wage referendums, and so on.<p>Also we’re finally giving a little bit of due to the house and home portion of a person’s work- the work of maintaining a house and caring for children.  In other words some of those people now are probably staying home to care for kids.<p>Now hacker news being a bastion of people who want to be capital C capitalists, it’s natural the prevailing sentiment favors capital.  I therefore expect that my expression of support for labor to garner me some harsh words.<p>But you can’t argue against the fact that having some kind of government assistance to fall back on makes it much easier to negotiate a higher salary, and will result in higher wages.