The term "labor shortage" was Googled more in May. Headline after headline has cited wage rises and bonuses that seem to make it a job hunter's market.

The concept sounds simple — American companies must be struggling to find the employees they need. Yet some labor economists would argue the picture isn't complete. Employers are unable to find the workers they want at the wages they're willing to pay. Failing to appreciate this distinction could lead to policy errors down the road.

The laws of supply and demand should make spotting labor shortages relatively straightforward. When there aren't enough workers, employers pay more to get them and wages go up.

Yet quickening wage growth isn't the only mark of a shortage. The sign is seeing this trend alongside stalling（停滞） job growth. Just look at what's been happening in the leisure and hotel industry, among the most bruised by the COVID-19 shutdown. After jobs almost disappeared during the pandemic, we're starting to see a rebound: In May, the industry created 292,000 jobs, far outpacing other corners of the economy. Meanwhile, average weekly earnings have been rising faster. In other words, the market is working to resolve a shortage: When employers lift wages, they're able to attract the employees they need. Yet, the industry wages are only just meeting pre-COVID levels; they are not too high.

To assess a shortage accurately, though, you need to look beyond industries to specific locations and occupations. The taxicab queuing model was used to address the debate about a shortage of workers in engineering. Employers and job openings can be thought of as taxis, while workers are a line of waiting passengers. Depending on your location, there may be a long line of taxis (say, at the airport), or on the contrary a long line of passengers (at a hotel). Demand for chemistry engineers in Texas, for example, is different from chemistry engineers in Massachusetts.

The bottom line is that, in the market, shortages are not universal. Simultaneous shortages and surpluses can come to the force across the economy at any given point, which is why broad-brush policies can be counterproductive.

Has your mom or dad ever posted a photo of you on social media that you don’t want anyone outside your family to see? In an age when people regularly share personal information on websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, many parents post photos of their children on a regular basis. On average, a parent will post almost 1,000 photos of a child online before the children turns 5, according to a survey.

Parents often post photos on social media because they want to share their children’s milestones and special moments with friends and family. Some moms and dads do it as a way to connect with other parents. They may be seeking health tips or other parenting advice. Most parents don’t ask their children for permission before posting photos of them. They feel it is not necessary to consult the children first because the benefits outweigh (比……更重要) any possible risks.

Other parents and child experts believe that children older than age 6 should be consulted. They say that the photos can stay online for many years and that children should have some control over their online presence. Devorah Heitner is an author who runs workshops about children and digital world. She believes that parents should get their children’s consent before posting their photos. “It teaches your child that his or her image is his or her own.” she said. “It helps their child recognize that sharing is a choice and that some things are private.”

What do you think? Should parents get their children’s permission before posting photos?

The Internet, E-commerce and globalization are making a new economic era possible. In the future, capitalist markets will largely be replaced by a new kind of economic system based on networked relationships, contractual (契约的) arrangements and access rights.

Has the quality of our lives at work, at home and in our communities increased in direct proportion (比例) to all the new Internet and business-to-business Internet services being introduced into our lives? I have asked this question of hundreds of CEOs and corporate executives in Europe and the United States. Surprisingly, virtually everyone has said, “No, quite contrary.” The very people responsible for showing in what some have called a “technological renaissance” say they are working longer hours, feel more stressed, are more impatient, and are even less civil (礼貌的) in their dealings with colleagues and friends—not to mention strangers. And what’s more revealing, they place much of the blame on the very same technologies they are so aggressively championing (捍卫).

We are told that access would make life more convenient and give us more time. Instead, the very technological wonders that were supposed to liberate us have begun to enslave us in a web of connections from which there seems to be no easy escape.

If an earlier generation was concerned about the goal to enclose a vast geographic frontier, the generation to come, it seems, is more caught up in the colonization (殖民) of time. Every spare moment of our time is being filled with some form of commercial connection, making time itself the scarcest of all resources. Our e-mail, voice mail and cell phones, our 24-hour Interact news and entertainment all seize for our attention.

While we have created every kind of labor-and-time-saving device to serve our needs, we are beginning to feel like we have less time available to us than any other humans in history. That is because the wide spread of labor-and-time-saving services only increases the diversity, pace and flow of common day activity around us. For example, e-mail is a great convenience. However, we now find ourselves spending much of our day anxiously responding to each other’s electronic messages. The cell phone is a great time-saver, except now we are always likely to reach someone else who wants our attention.

Social conservatives talk about the decline in civility and blame it on the loss of a morality and religious values. Has anyone bothered to ask whether the fast speed culture is making all of us less patient and less willing to listen, consider and reflect?

Maybe we need to ask what kinds of connections really count and what types of access really matter in the e-economy era. If this new technology revolution is only about efficiency, then we risk losing something even more precious than time—our sense of what it means to be a caring human being.