1. The minimum required experience is also increased. You see this in industries where it's very difficult for new blood to break into because the minimum required experience/skill level is above an "entry level" position because the pay expectations of the industry require a certain degree of skill and experience going in.
2. Companies outsource. They seek to maximize profits, which means reducing costs, which means paying those with low demands for work that's good enough.
I actually moved out of the US for work because I found that I had better opportunities outside the US than in it. Not higher-paying (those would be in the US), but opportunities to build work experience from nothing, which I didn't see an option for in the US as a fresh college grad with a journalism degree looking to break into software engineering. I've been working outside the US for ~3 years now and although there have been challenges it's changed my life and career for the better. YMMV.
The US job ads have such absurd expectations and requirements, and demonstrate a total lack of any holistic approach to hiring, even for junior jobs. The companies come off as arrogant and entitled in their writing, even for areas which supposedly have shortages (eyeroll).
The job ads overseas are much less rigid and more flexible. I often see ads that lack any sort of requirement bullet points.
It seems much easier to get in, get trained and work your way up in the other country.
Then, you can return to the US and compete for senior roles, which can be pretty cushy in the US, and seem much more in-demand, if you want.
All but the dumbest recruiters know that a huge amount of people filling their roles are liars and I say this as a contractor. Just like any other group of people some contractors and recruiters are great and some are garbage. When garbage recruiters make garbage demands they get garbage contractors.
What are examples of such industries?
Although my opinion is in the current US climate, the prices will remain the same and someone else will just suck up the profit.
I do grant I'm not sure the government with the law that exists can do anything about Whole Foods, or should it, and thus, I am making a bigger point about that the government is supposed to function for the public good. I think the glimmer in Whole Foods is more an indictment of the system in the US than anything.
Incomes, maybe; wages are a lever on incomes, but not the only one (and a potentially problematic one because pushing too hard on them depresses employment while driving up wages for the still-continuing, worsening inequality), and should not be focused on as a primary goal.
Disagree. The aim of government should be to enable the elimination of every single job while also enforcing a fair distribution of wealth. Wage regulation is a traditional capitalist approach to solving this problem. There are other approaches which might need to be tried in the coming decades..
Your premise is incorrect and historically ignorant. Slaves are net more costly and drastically less efficient than free employees. George Washington, among numerous other slave owners of the time, for example wrote about that fact indepth. The net cost of workers skyrockets and their productivity implodes, in the case of slavery. Washington made the economic point that with slaves, he became entirely responsible for the cost of their existence, in all regards (shelter, food, health, etc), and their work output was at best on par with or below that of free labor (which is exactly what one would expect). As a system, slavery was a failure morally and economically.