In our continuing series of labor shortages state by state, the city of Detroit encapsulates a broader problem across America. From The Detroit News:
A coalition of organizations have been rallying over recent months calling on transit agencies and elected officials to address a severe shortage of bus drivers at the region’s two major transit agencies, DDOT and SMART. The shortage has led them to significantly reduce bus service for thousands of people who rely on it daily.
The Detroit News
In August of last year, we wrote Labor Compensation Up 5.3 Percent – Government Worker Shortage and pointed out that, at the time, civilian pay was up 5.3 percent while government pay was only up 3.4 percent. Over time, that disparity in pay has shown up as greater and greater labor shortages in places like Texas, Illinois, and cities like Philadelphia, Boston, Milwaukee and Denver.
In What’s Happening With Labor Shortages? T-Rex Will Eat First we made the case that large deep pocket corporations like Amazon and Walmart will consume most of the labor first because they have the ability to pay higher wages and others, like city/county/state and federal governments won’t be able to pay competitive rates leaving vacancies or hiring less capable people.
We think that this will ultimately lead to the privatization of government services to the private sector and we are currently researching investment candidates for this play over the long term.
We’ll let you know what we find so stay tuned, stay profitable and stay solvent…