"Shortage," occurs when marginal cost of production exceeds an externally imposed price ceiling. Normally this refers to government imposed price controls causing producers to forgoe loss-generating production. Do these educated people use the term shortage correctly and thereby imply cartelization of labor consumption or are these independent decisions of rational actors? There is an argument for cartelization when you consider interlocking directorates of publicly traded companies through large financial manager (black rock, vanguard, ssb&t) voting control of custody shares. These people control who goes onto the boards of directors and may execute their agendas this way. There is also an argument that this is poorly educated people who do not understand what shortage means. Shortage does not mean that people are not responding to your shitty job offers. These are not mutually exclusive, and in fact are complimentary by muddying the water of public perception through misinformation.