Boise's Hiring Shortage: Why Boise's Businesses are Unable to Fill Positions

In today's ever-changing market, keeping the supply and demand of labor equal can be increasingly difficult. The new technologies and a vast amount of uncertainty about the future can be attributed to job shortages as well as over saturation in certain industries. These problems are caused by the misallocation of job skills and could lead to increases in the cost of labor for companies ultimately pushing businesses to migrate away from the Boise city center. Our group will use data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics to further explore the intricacies of the supply of labor in Boise. We want to explore what industries are getting hit the hardest and use analytical tools to identify independent variables affecting this. These variables may be new production methods that need specific training, is it intrinsic to the worker (such as not wanting to get into a blue-collar career), has the economy shifted people’s willingness to work, etc. We would like to explore preventative/responsive ideas that can help get the labor market into a more socially optimal equilibrium.