You certainly have many good points and the uneveness of wages is factor. Real wages are uneven and maybe industry specific, but there is little indication at this point that we do not have a highly fluid workforce that seeks higher pay. There is no way real wages have only gone up less than one percent in the past year. No employer is reporting this. Prior to the past year, for sure wages were paltry in *some* areas - especially non-mobile and phased out skillsets. High skilled and educated workers have seen gains far greater. For the $15 hour, I mentioned that as the defacto minimum. not the minimum. The Feds can call $7.25 an hour all they want, but there are probably only a few places and industries where any non-mobile population would accept that. There are few (if any) urban centers where $7.25 exists in any great quantities. Lastly, I don't see migrants as cheap labor except in a few select areas and industries. If you are hiring them illegally (many do) and paying them cash you might get away with that for a while. How many can actually do that ? Probably not enough to scale. As you mentioned, boomers leaving is a factor (not large). The bigger one is that the birth rate is alot slower and their is no one to replace them. If you don't bring in migrants, you will never reach the employment levels necessary. We are simply not having large families any longer.