[nmhancoc]

Taking a slightly different angle than most of the comments here, what if there really is a worker shortage?

Trucking seems, like trades or certain manufacturing jobs, to be in the category of labor historically done by men to provide for a family and not, e.g. for the sake of itself like medicine.

Married men, according to the BLS, work about 10.6% more weekly than unmarried men [1].

And as men without college educations are increasingly less likely to get married [2], you’d expect to see less total hours worked, and thus effectively less workers, in exactly these fields.

In other words, there may be a real shortage in labor in the sense that society has come to rely upon a group of people’s willingness to perform this labor at a given level of compensation, but the reason why that group of people was willing to do so has been invalidated. Thus there’s a shortage relative to an expectation which will have to get resolved one way or another.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat22.htm

[2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/09/14/as-u-s-ma...

[nix0n]

> the category of labor historically done by men to provide for a family

With cost-of-living increases, are these jobs still paying enough to provide for a family?

If they aren't, then it's possible you have cause and effect backwards: less families, because one job can't support a family anymore.