You can’t open a paper or turn on the TV at the moment without hearing about Australia’s worker shortage, or, if you’re a more emotive sub-editor, “worker drought”.

In just the last few weeks, we’ve been told worker shortages will harm infrastructure projects, hurt construction, cause cafe price rises, cause farm produce to rot, hurt iron ore exports, harm Christmas retailing, hurt aged care, manufacturing, shearing, tourism, even advertising (that one will really hurt).

Most of these stories are usually accompanied by companies, or business lobby groups, imploring the government to reopen borders and allow temporary migrants back in as quickly as possible.

Of course, employers have a far better tool for addressing worker shortages in their own hands: they can increase wages.

The evidence, so far, is that few are willing to do so. They’d rather hang tight in the hope that cheap foreign labour will return. The most recent Wage Price Index figure was 1.7% growth in 2020-21, including just 0.4% in the June quarter before the winter lockdowns commenced. There’ll be a figure for the September quarter released next week that, if the “worker shortage” stories across the economy are correct, should reflect a significant rise in wages growth.

The Reserve Bank isn’t expecting that, however. Last week’s final Statement of Monetary Policy for the year bumped up WPI forecasts, but only to 2.25% by the end of the December quarter, still more than 2% below headline CPI. Reflecting on the June quarter, the RBA pointed out “wages growth was subdued in most industries, including those where there had been reports of labour shortages, such as construction, professional services and mining.”

Wages haven’t grown because “reports from the Bank’s business liaison program suggest that recently firms have been using measures other than raising base wages in order to attract and retain staff, with wages only rising significantly for selected jobs in very high demand.”

That’s consistent with what the RBA and governor Philip Lowe have argued now for an extended period: Australian employers strongly resist paying higher wages even if they face shortages. Many jobs remained subject to wage freezes in the June quarter, the RBA noted but the bank thought that number would reduce in the September quarter. But overall, it expects wages growth to return to levels before the pandemic. That is, stagnation.

There’s a fundamental contradiction here: employers whinge about worker shortages but point-blank refuse to do anything to attract labour. Shortages, after all, are the market’s way of telling you there’s too much demand for too few workers. That can be addressed through increasing the price of labour — increasing supply and reducing demand. Such basic tenets of capitalism, however, appear anathema to Australian business.

It’s a different case in the United States. Last week’s labour report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed 531,000 jobs new jobs were created in October, and a further 235,000 were added to previously reported numbers from August and September. The jobless rate is now 4.6% — that’s still well above the 3.5% low just before the pandemic hit in early 2020, but the same as Australia’s was in September.

But US wages rose 0.4% for the month, to be up 4.9% year-on year. That’s more than double the RBA’s estimate for wages growth here at the end of the year. US wages growth is particularly strong at the lower end of the pay scale, with unskilled and semi-skilled workers enjoying strong competition for their labour from retail, hospitality and logistics firms like Amazon, which increased its starting wage to $18 an hour in September. Department store chain Macy’s lifted its minimum wage last week to $US15 an hour; average pay will be over $US20 an hour and the retailer will offer free school tuition at a cost of $US35 million over the next four years. The contrast with Australia’s systemic wage theft is stark.

What the US also has is inflation: yesterday’s inflation report showed CPI increasing more than 6% annually. Many of the causes are transient, but core inflation is still 4.6%. That means, despite high wages growth, real wages are going backwards in the US.

The positive for US workers is that wages growth should improve further — continued strong employment growth back to below 4% unemployment is likely to see even stronger growth, while inflation is expected to subside. Here, workers can only dream of wages rises with a 3 in front of them, even as they’re told by the media how in-demand they are.