For markets to work efficiently, prices need to equilibrate to shifting supply and demand. As workers become less valuable, the ideal market would reduce their pay. The problem is, in the real world, cutting an employee’s pay is effectively unheard of: it seems unfair and punitive. Two other solutions present themselves: freeze nominal wages and let inflation take care of the rest or cut benefits. The latter is more efficacious but again faces the issue of angering the employees. The problem is that healthcare benefits’ costs handily outpace inflation. Even as we fix an employee’s wages, they cost more over time because their coverage becomes more expensive. Labour’s intractably increasing costs incontrovertibly harm employment rates.