That sweet song that CEOs love to sing

The CEOs of America know very few songs but those they know they sing often and with gusto.

Here's one of my all time favorites: the "Labor Shortage Blues." Remember that one? Bill Gates used to sing that as a medley with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam." The business press just loved those tunes.

Well, with U6 at 20%, audiences just don't clap as hard for the "Labor Shortage Blues," so some new songwriter has come up with the "The Labor Market Mismatch Boogie." You can still sing that in medley with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam." Labor market mismatch, oh labor market mismatch, good rhythm, good chorus.

Here's another new song you'll be hearing a lot of: "You Got the Wrong Training Baby and You're Education Ain't No Good." Oh yeah. See how that one also goes great with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam."

You'll find these great tunes and others in the new Siemens American Labor Songbook. Everybody, join in!

p.s. All fooling aside, why not just pay the damn wages the market requires? "Siemens had been forced to use more than 30 recruiters and hire staff from other companies to find the workers it needed ..." - yes, at the price it wants to pay! You've got some HR pay scale determined by "surveys" and you'll go any lengths to preserve that absurd scale. Hint: if you have to have 30 recruiters and then special training for the marginal employees and the rejects that you hire, your pay scale stinks and your business model is wrong. Likewise, if you're bringing in workers from overseas, you don't have a business model, you have an arbitrage model.