re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Is this a serious question?

What happens when you add supply of labor to a labor market?

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It is a fact that especially welders are in very short supply. Many process equipment fabrication companies could have increased business but are at 50% of needed welders. This has been going on for a decade. They are losing orders to Mexico, China, S. Korea, etc... because they cannot find workers build what is needed. It doesn't matter if the company is located in Upstate NY, Oklahoma, or Texas. The problem isn't price point to be competitive either.

If you had been to the Morgan City fabrication yards say 2 decades ago, the vast majority of workers were "Mexican". They certainly were in 2008.

At a fabrication yard in Butte, MT owned by Texas based major private industrial contractor, Bay Ltd, they had to import welders from India and the Philippines to produce contract volume of just under $1 billion annually for the several years they were building modules for the Canadian oilfields. They couldn't find enough American welders even with pay scales from $220 to $280 per hour depending on level of competency, which was acceptable price point for the buyers in Canada.

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So how are they then threatening the wages of American workers?


Is this a serious question?

What happens when you add supply of labor to a labor market?

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He said "they" don't come to work but just get handouts, in which case they are not adding labor to the labor market.

But I posted something about this, immigrants from south of the border are filling in for missing American farm workers in rural areas... there's a labor deficit they are filling. Americans are not staying in those areas to be farm labor. The farming economy depends on them, and that's why no matter what dog and pony show is constantly flogged up for the media no one will really stop them from entering the US and getting work visas, or sneaking in for harvest season and working under the table.