Leadership Quote by Dennis Hastert

“Too many employers have said that they are unable to find skilled workers” is politician-speak with a purpose: it shifts the locus of blame while sounding dutifully concerned. The key phrase is “have said.” Hastert isn’t asserting a verified labor-market reality; he’s laundering an interest-group complaint into a public problem. The sentence quietly invites listeners to treat employer testimony as evidence, not advocacy.

The subtext is a familiar Washington bargain. If employers “can’t find” workers, the implied solutions tend to be policy levers that help employers first: expand guest-worker programs, loosen immigration restrictions, trim training requirements, or pressure wages downward by increasing labor supply. Notably absent is the most obvious market response: raise pay, improve conditions, invest in training, or redesign jobs. The quote’s vagueness does work here. “Skilled” is elastic enough to cover genuinely scarce occupations and also roles where employers simply don’t want to pay for competence.

Context matters because Hastert’s era in Republican leadership was defined by close alignment with business constituencies and a legislative style that translated corporate priorities into neutral-sounding “workforce needs.” By framing the issue as an employer shortage of workers rather than a worker shortage of good jobs, the line keeps the moral pressure off companies and places it on schools, workers, and government to “fix the pipeline.”

Rhetorically, it’s a soft scold aimed at the public: if the economy is stalling, don’t look at corporate practices; look at the supposed inadequacy of the labor force. It’s less a diagnosis than a permission slip for a particular set of reforms.