If there’s an oh-so-contrarian thesis that really grates right now, it’s the one that businesses just can’t seem to find workers, despite the fact that millions of people are out of work.

The “can’t find workers” thing has become something of a chestnut in the American press in this recession, so maybe it will help to look how strange it seems when applied to another country.

Dean Baker pointed to a good example the other day, dinging The New York Times for an article that says Germany is in trouble because unemployment hit its lowest point in eighteen years—so low that its businesses can’t find workers.

For most of those eighteen years we’ve heard that Germany was the Sick Man of Europe, that its high unemployment rate showed the perils of a generous welfare state and strict labor laws. We must let the market work! Now that the unemployment rate is down a couple of points, we’re told that that the country doesn’t have enough labor. We must not let the market work! (unless the Germans let in a bunch of cheap foreign labor).

As Baker points out, a low unemployment rate is good for workers. It’s the market at work: More demand for labor pushes up workers’ pay. That makes owners nervous: Might cut into their profit margins a bit. And I’m not going to tell you that’s not a story. It is: Owners Are Worried Tight Labor Markets Will Squeeze Profits. But even with that frame you’d want to talk to a worker or two.

The Times doesn’t bother here. Baker, that wag, puts it this way:

The NYT Can’t Find Anyone In Germany Who Is Not an Employer

Indeed, there are none quoted here. Here’s every source in the piece: nursing-home boss, the consulting firm McKinsey (notoriously labor friendly), Germany’s leading high-tech business organization, the head of another trade organization, the Federal Statistics Office, the chief regional economist for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the chief operating officer of Accor Germany. The only source quoted who might be partial to workers is the director of the Labor Market Institute at the Federal Labor office, but even he’s a technocrat manager with a payroll (And for all I know about Germany’s government, he could be another Elaine Chao)

That’s a long way of saying Baker’s right: There’s not a single worker, much less a union official, quoted here.

And the NYT writes this line without backing it up:

While a jobless rate in single digits would be cause for celebration in many countries, in Germany it is the sign of a critical lack of workers.

How and why is it a sign of a critical lack of workers? We’re not told.

Indeed, nowhere in the story does the Times bother to tell readers what the actual German unemployment rate is: 7.4 percent. Why is 7.4 percent unemployment a looming disaster for German employers? Recall that before the recession started, U.S. unemployment was 4.6 percent. Even that wasn’t enough to raise the median wage.

Why does a 7.4 percent jobless rate means a super-tight labor market in Germany, while here in the U.S. it’s evidence of a real unemployment problem. Does Germany count differently somehow? Are there structural differences? The Times doesn’t say.

The Times’s lede anecdote, oddly enough, leads us to infer that Germany may have a wages issue:

Dana Russow longs for the day when she will not have to worry about staffing problems.

“It’s not easy finding qualified staff to take care of the elderly,” said Ms. Russow, 41, director of Residenz Zehlendorf, a privately owned nursing home in southwest Berlin. “This profession has such a low status in Germany.”

The low pay does not help, either: Staff members earn the minimum wage of 8.50 euros, or $11.60, an hour.

But even then the paper doesn’t make the obvious connection between a tighter labor market and increasing pay.

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