You make some good points, and some inaccurate ones. For one, wages are not increasing rapidly - the real wage dropped 0.8% between September 2020 and September 2021. Some industries having labor troubles may be increasing wages, but most are not and the increases are small. Also, while some employers are offering bonuses and perks, I have not seen where this trend is widespread.

The minimum wage is not $15 per hour. The federal MW is still $7.25. It is going up in several states - 8 have started raising it, 16 more are scheduled in 2021. But even these increases are staggered over a number of years, so that they will not reach $15 per hour for a few years. Besides, if the MW had kept pace for inflation from when I was working in a gas station as a kid, it would be over $20 per hour.

And you left out one of the major reasons, besides low wages, for a "shortage" of labor. Boomers are retiring. The labor force has been shrinking for a long time, and we are right about in the middle of the boomer retirement.

I have mixed feelings about your proposed fix. Using immigrants to provide cheap labor will improve the labor "shortage", but it will also lead to them being exploited, always does. I am not at all opposed to immigration, but the best solution, IMHO, would be to raise wages and improve working conditions, become more efficient in production, and, as a society, do a much better job educating our youth.