The lead, front-page story in today's New York Times runs under the headline "Worker Shortage in Health Fields Worst in Decades; Threat to Patients Seen; State's Nursing Homes, Private Agencies and Hospitals Lose Out to Other Employers."
Smartertimes.com isn't going to go so far as to call this story entirely bogus, but something doesn't quite add up. Read further into the story about the supposed "worker shortage" and the Times tells us that turnover among home health aides "is climbing, executives say, because there is not enough work to go around, and some are leaving the profession altogether, for jobs like being a clerk in the retail industry."
Well, hold on. Workers leaving an occupation "because there is not enough work to go around," doesn't quite seem like the sort of example the Times would want to back up a lead, front-page headline about a "worker shortage." That's a work shortage, not a worker shortage.
The "worker shortage" headline is also contradicted by a dispatch that ran yesterday in the city section of the Times. That dispatch reports on the closing of a day care center in Coney Island, Brooklyn, that had been run by Metropolitan Jewish Health System. That city section article paraphrased a vice president of the health system as saying that the health system opened the day care center "about eight years ago, hoping to attract parents to work at the nursing home across the street, which Metropolitan also owns and which had a shortage of nurses. Metropolitan cannot afford to run the center anymore, she said. There is no longer a staff shortage at the nursing home."
While the Times headline reports that the "worker shortage" is the "worst in decades," if the Times city section dispatch from yesterday is to be believed, the worker shortage was worse eight years ago, at least for one nursing home in Coney Island.