Labor shortage
A condition whereby there are not enough qualified candidates (employees) to fill needed jobs. Techniques for measuring the existence and level of shortages are complex and controversial. Sometimes alleged labor shortages are used to justify the importing of temporary foreign labor. Critics of such practices argue that the laws of supply and demand would correct such shortages as more citizens enter a field when wages go up due to the shortage, and that companies lobbying for foreign labor simply want cheaper or more docile employees.
Wage levels have been suggested as one way to measure a labor shortage. However, this often does not match people's common perceptions. For example, if wages alone are the best measure of labor shortages, then that would imply that we should be importing doctors instead of farm workers because doctors are far more expensive than farm workers. However, there are institutionally-imposed limits on the number of doctors that are allowed to be licensed. (Whether these limits are selfish or not is subject to debate.) If foreign migrant workers were not allowed into a nation, then farm wages may go up, but probably not enough to approach the wages of doctors.