[Alberta's Child]

This reflects what I’m seeing in my own industry. The labor market is definitely getting tighter, but it’s really in a very narrow band of my profession. It’s like we’ve thinned the herd of workers in the 40-60 age group and we can’t find enough competent 25-30 year-olds to replace them.

[expat_panama]

labor market is definitely getting tighter,

True, and at the same time the number of 'not-employed' is still way over the long term trendline:

Maybe the thing is that the market's merely not as tight in comparison to what it's been recently.

[Mr. Jeeves]

It’s like we’ve thinned the herd of workers in the 40-60 age group and we can’t find enough competent 25-30 year-olds to replace them.

I think you've put your finger on it. Companies have a strong desire to hire more 25-30 year-olds but too high a percentage of them have been completely miseducated for actual corporate work. But they see the 40-60 year-olds who can actually do the work as too expensive and possessing a limited upside, so they hold off on hiring and wait for the "perfect fit" - even if that turns out to be an H1B.

[Grampa Dave]

"This reflects what I’m seeing in my own industry. The labor market is definitely getting tighter, but it’s really in a very narrow band of my profession. It’s like we’ve thinned the herd of workers in the 40-60 age group and we can’t find enough competent 25-30 year-olds to replace them."

We have several younger relatives from the midwest to the west coast as execs in hiring positions in a cross section of industries, and they are having the same problems/issues. Their problems with the so called younger hires is a failure of work ethics, and a know it all attitude from day one of their hire to their exit interviews.