The Labor Shortage Isn’t Temporary: Why Today’s Staffing Challenges Are Structural
If role after role stays open despite your best efforts, it may be more than a tough market cycle—it may signal a structural labor shortage. Why This Doesn’t Feel Like a Normal Hiring Cycle There’s a difference between a tough hiring season and a system under strain. Even when organizations put more time and resources into hiring, roles seem to stay posted longer. Teams operate short-handed. Interviews are scheduled and offers extended, but the number of job openings doesn't seem to meaningfully decline. It doesn't feel like a typical slowdown in the market; it feels like something more systemic. We often hear the phrase labor shortage thrown around in news articles and board meetings, but the more frequently it’s used, the easier it is to miss what’s really happening underneath it. If this were simply a matter of effort, incentives, or speed, we would expect conditions to improve once those levers were pulled. Instead, staffing constraints are appearing across industrie...