Zero percent unemployment is viewed as a bad thing by almost everyone with a familiarity of the employment markets.
Zero percent unemployment means that no one without a job is looking for one. It means no new entrants into the job market (since by definition, you are unemployed the moment you start looking for your first job). And it means that no one is transitioning jobs or careers without a firm job offer in hand. It means that no business ever fails. It means that it is remarkably difficult to find employees. It means that there are no employees that quit instead of doing something immoral.
You should look into the different types of unemployment, as well as the definition of "unemployed", and specifically, frictional unemployment since you seem very unfamiliar with the base concepts.
Okay, maybe not literally zero percent unemployment, but my point still stands that we do not have a shortage of labor in this country and we do not need to import any at this time. We should incentivize workers through better compensation and retraining to fill skill gaps.
There is not a shortage of labor in general. There is possibly a shortage of specialized labor (although arguably not in high skilled and technical positions like the H1B intends/typically aims to fill).
Again, people study this and have a name for it: structural unemployment. This is the unemployment level caused by employers needing to hire for skills that the market cannot currently provide. Think of the town with high unemployment due to a car factory closure, but a local business that needs scuba diving instructors can't find one. Plenty of labor, but no scuba diving instructors.
I think this is what you are getting at: If you want to hire someone foreign because the skills don't exist in the local labor market, you should be obligated to prove that the skill is being developed in the local labor market.
The argument (not mine, just an argument) against that is that individual firms should not necessarily be forced to bear the cost of training workers in a portable skill when you can just bring in non-local labor (H1B). Back to the Scuba shop example: it costs 5 figures and 6+ months to train a non-diver to the level of scuba instructor. It is good for the labor pool to force the shop to train a new instructor, even if they have to pay a massive cost for them to get certified, and the labor can quit the day they get certified. It is bad for consumers and the shop. They would much rather pay lower prices and bring in a foreign instructor than run short handed for months while they plow money into training someone in a skill that the worker can take to their competition.
My feeling is that H1Bs are probably useful in much more limited circumstances than they are used in now (probably something more like O-1 visas that are given for people who are leaders in their fields, or demonstrably and uniquely talented). If the H1B job can be done interchangeably, then it should be done by domestic labor. If you want to hire the one guy who just won a nobel prize to work on your time machine, that is when we should allow foreign labor.
> it costs 5 figures and 6+ months to train a non-diver to the level of scuba instructor. It is good for the labor pool to force the shop to train a new instructor, even if they have to pay a massive cost for them to get certified, and the labor can quit the day they get certified. It is bad for consumers and the shop.
I believe the common situation is a company pays for your masters degree but the two of you end up with a contract where you'll stay at the company for X years afterwards.
I don't see why there can't be a non-"At will" situation for the scuba instructor.
Zero percent unemployment means that no one without a job is looking for one. It means no new entrants into the job market (since by definition, you are unemployed the moment you start looking for your first job). And it means that no one is transitioning jobs or careers without a firm job offer in hand. It means that no business ever fails. It means that it is remarkably difficult to find employees. It means that there are no employees that quit instead of doing something immoral.
You should look into the different types of unemployment, as well as the definition of "unemployed", and specifically, frictional unemployment since you seem very unfamiliar with the base concepts.