Talent Shortage

Some of this panic is overdone and linked to the business cycle: there was much ado about the "war for talent" in America in the 1990s, until the dot-com bubble burst. People often talk about shortages when they should really be discussing price. Eventually, supply will rise to meet demand and the market will adjust. But while you wait, your firm might go bust. The evidence is that the talent shortage is likely to get worse. Nobody really disputes the idea that the demand for talent-intensive skills is rising. The value of "intangible" assets, everything from skilled workers to patents to know how, has ballooned from 20% of the value of companies in the S&P 500 to 70% today. The proportion of American workers doing jobs that call for complex skills has grown three times as fast as employment in general. As other economies move in the same direction, global demand is rising quickly.