I'd argue the underlying cause is poor wealth distribution. There's lots of demand for labour, just not from people/companies/industries that have the means to the pay for it.
> There's lots of demand for labour, just not from people/companies/industries that have the means to the pay for it.
I agree, but I think you mean income distribution and latent demand. The idea is that a lot of people would be consuming more goods and services if they weren't so cash strapped. Some of this is also affected by wealth distribution also, though.
Latent demand and wealth distribution interact strangely.
There's a bunch of work no one wants to do that gets dumped on people who need the money by everyone who can afford it. Elder Care is an obvious examples in the US, along with Child Care to a lesser extent. Lots of people consume free or budget versions of these services with which they're dissatisfied, and the root of their dissatisfaction is often that they can't pay enough to get the people providing the service to accept micromanagement, either because there aren't enough of them to implement it, or because they don't need the money enough to put up with it.
I guess the flat-wealth-distribution case is most people grudgingly using some economy-of-scale option leveraging the people with more patience for this kind of work, and a few control freaks either doing it themselves or economizing elsewhere to pay for a boutique option.
> I guess the flat-wealth-distribution case is most people grudgingly using some economy-of-scale option leveraging the people with more patience for this kind of work, and a few control freaks either doing it themselves or economizing elsewhere to pay for a boutique option.
That can be said of practically every industry. They are all segmented by cost/quality, whether that quality is real or perceived.
That said, the goal behind reducing wealth and income disparities isn't to flatten them completely, it's to put a floor under the standard of living of those at the bottom of the wealth/income distribution. That doesn't mean everyone will be consuming boutique products and services, but it means that latent demand, currently repressed by lack of income/wealth, will become active demand, and money velocity in the economy will increase.