Are high wages in wartime just a spending spree?

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I:

In order to get the needed workers, the weapons manufacturers started paying their workers higher wages. This had an immediate impact on other businesses and firms, which could not compete with the wages of the arms industry and therefore could not find workers. For example, at the Wöllersdorf munitions factory, the number of male workers increased fivefold from August to the end of December 1914, but the construction company that had to build new aircraft engine hangers had to apply to the War Department because it could not. I can’t find workers anymore.

That appears on page 202 of Manfried Rauchensteiner, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918. In that way it is a very good book, which holds all the ground despite its length.



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