Kristin Charlton, a manufacturing salesperson in Eau Claire, Wis., hears from recruiters all the time, about jobs all over the country—usually with deep skepticism. “I hear about these labor shortages, and I think, that’s a crock,” she says. “When I compare salaries to what they were 10 years ago, they’re not significantly higher. It’s not enough for me to move across the country.”

The US economy is in a peculiar phase in which millions of Americans remain out of work, even as employers report the most job openings in at least 16 years. Some companies are losing business because they can’t find enough workers. Businesses complain about job applicants who can’t pass a drug test or don’t want to work hard, along with new hires who turn out to be unreliable. Data shows Americans are far less willing to move for a job than they were in the past. And President Trump’s vow to “bring back” lost American jobs resonated so strongly among voters last year that it helped him get elected.

But there’s another important factor contributing to labor shortages: workers’ distrust of companies, driven by punishing trends in the labor market for more than a decade. In a recent online poll, Yahoo Finance asked more than 9,000 people whether they trust American businesses. More than 54% said no. Of those, 69% said employers care more about profits than anything else. Those findings reflect a long-term erosion of trust in American institutions, including business. According to Gallup, for instance, the portion of Americans saying they have confidence in big business has dropped from 30% in the late 1990s to 18% today.

Below are some of the findings from the Yahoo Finance poll, which we conducted on

SurveyMonkey from June 9-12. (Full results are available here.)

It’s not news that American workers have become jaded after years of offshoring, outsourcing, stagnant wages and doing more with less. Globalization, digital technology and other factors have given employers more tools than ever for moving work to lowest-cost locales and streamlining operations. Since employers can control labor costs more easily than commodity prices or other factors they must contend with, it’s no surprise they’ve squeezed workers.

But the distrust that behavior has engendered may now be limiting some companies’ ability to get workers, amid a relatively strong economy and tight labor markets in some areas. “Companies don’t value skills,” says Art Wheaton of the Worker Institute at Cornell University. “They post jobs with unrealistic expectations. They require 5 years’ experience but won’t pay a reasonable rate. There are a lot of incentives for them to be less than honorable.”

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