The "extreme shortage" media narrative is misleading. Supply in many areas is at or above pre pandemic levels. What's changed is a massive demand spike as society reshuffles and realigns to post pandemic life.
It's a subtle and important point because it means inflation is not transitory. You should buy all and any risk assets to protect against inflation including homes and GME.
In fact I would say it's understated. We lost a half of builders, a third of tradesmen, and saw a massive drop in people training for the trades after 2008.
We only caught up to the peak in new home builds a couple of years ago.
Sure, there was a demand spike, but supply is about a decade behind in a market where it takes a very long time for supply to ramp up.
I believe you are correct [1][2] that wage workers in these occupations have declined since 2008.
Is that related, however, to physical good supply chain disruptions in the past 12 months? And if you're referring to labor supply - we are basically at the same or better unemployment rate than we were in 2016... which was already a pretty good time in the economy.
It's a subtle and important point because it means inflation is not transitory. You should buy all and any risk assets to protect against inflation including homes and GME.