The wages of the top 10% of designers have risen strongly; the wages of the average designer have not. There is a shortage of skilled designers but it can only be seen in the wages of those designers who have managed to master new technologies.
The wages of the top 10% of designers have risen strongly; the wages of the average designer have not. There is a shortage of skilled designers but it can only be seen in the wages of those designers who have managed to master new technologies.
I think when you cut through all the verbiage, the rapidly changing skill set winnows out the truly talented graphic designers from the untalented ones. This almost surely applies to any skill where the technological frontier is changing rapidly.
This suggests inadequate monetary policy to keep wages growing.
Econ 102 – elasticity or inelasticity of supply.
I have personally witnessed circumstances where adquate numbers of people with adequate skills to perform some tasks could not be employed, in spite of large numbers of applicants and a compensatoin scheme that basically promised to make people rich.
There are really two kinds of skills gaps:
Gap A – caused by inability to pay market clearing rates for labor, because the price consumers will pay for the end product limits the labor payments the employer can afford. Competitiors in these markets who do not have very strong productivity complements to labor (best equipment, automation, processes, etc.) will be in deep trouble. For *these* orgs, paying more will fill their staffing needs, but also make their product uncompetitive.
Gap B – a worldwide shortage of people with the relevent skills. Such things do happen, I’ve lived through it. It is surely true that the fact that *summer interns* at places like MSFT or Google now get paid about twice the median wage will encourage rather than discourage people from entering the field. But it has paid the top participants really really well for a very long time….