If you walk around Kathmandu, it looks like the entire city is under construction. It seems like every other building is a construction site. But if you look closer, you'll see that most of them are missing something: construction workers. I'm connected to the internet right now via an ethernet cord (remember those?) because our wifi isn't working (I know, cry me a river), and apparently there is only one internet repairman in all of Kathmandu.
Meanwhile, walk around on a weekday and you'll notice the streets are full of working-aged adults, not working. Nepal has sky-high unemployment, around 46% according to the internets. What is going on here? How can you have a labor shortage and high unemployment at the same time?
My coworker, who is trying to find people to work on her house, explained that if you have any construction skills, you can make a whole lot more in India or the Middle East, so all of the Nepali electricians and plumbers are in Qatar and Delhi. I ask myself why all those guys I see sitting around don't learn some construction skills. Could be a good project for one of the bazillion NGOs in Nepal. But what's to keep them from leaving for better pay just like everyone else?
So why don't wages for skilled labor go up here if there is such a shortage, maybe providing incentive for more people to join the market or to stay in Nepal? What happened to that nice little supply-and-demand graph? These guys are working on a dozen projects at once, showing up for a few hours a week at each one. But if my time on the buses here has taught me anything, it's that Nepalis are in no rush. So if you're willing to wait long enough, there is no labor shortage.
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