This runs contrary to the thinking of early industrialists like Henry Ford, who recognized that his employees are his customers.
But your employees are rarely your customers. And Ford was a bastard who cheated many of his partners and hated Jews. He didn't pay higher wages because of generosity but because his workers were skilled and he needed to slow the turnover.
If you think all that it takes to get a "better" job is more skills, then you know nothing about labour. The system has inherent unemployment, where people can't find jobs regardless of what skills they have or how much they're willing to work.
Getting good jobs is harder than getting bad jobs. That'll never change. But you do well in the bad jobs and progress upward if you keep trying and you're smart enough. Most of us have done it that way. You do shitty jobs to collect experience and build up a resume and you try to acquire skills along the way you can use to climb higher.
The problem with an elementary understanding of the market-effect on wages is that it ignores all of the problems with that theory. It pre-supposes that a person's wages are based on their productivity,
No. Wages aren't based on productivity, they're based on the scarcity of the skillset you are offering to your employer and the ease with which it and you can be replaced.
How do you measure the productivity of a judge, nurse, or a teacher?
Again, it doesn't matter. You offer up the job at a low wage. If that doesn't get you enough employees, you keep raising the wages until it does. Do you think if we cut the salaries of cops and firefighters in half we couldn't get lots of good applicants? We have way more teachers than we need and keep training more. Most of our public servants get paid far more than we need to attract and retain quality employees. Slash their wages until we don't and that's how you figure out what the job is worth.
Second, markets are not perfect. The assumption you're making is that there is perfect competition for jobs. There is not. People form unions for some jobs but not others. Employers sometimes have a buyer's monopoly on purchasing labour (ie, there's only or very few employers buying your labour).
There are always imperfections in any system. Most of them in this are caused by government. I once applied for a job as a technical writer. I passed the test and was offered the job. I forget what it paid but my reaction was indignation. I told them where they could stuff their job offer. I later found out they weren't able to hire enough workers. But then, they hadn't wanted to. They were then able to tell the government they hadn't been able to get people and were allowed to bring in temporary workers.
Then at the heart of the issue is whether someone "deserves" their wage. Sure Lebron James makes the Cleveland Cavaliers tons of money, but does he deserve millions of dollars for playing basketball a few nights a week?
To quote William Munny "Deserve's got nothin to do with it." Trump doesn't deserve to have all the money he has either. and CEOs don't deserve what they're paid. But that's irrelevant.
Job skills are one fraction of the total issue. You can have all the skills in the world, but if there's no opportunities you're not getting very far.
By definition, the skills which command higher wages are in high demand, and thus there will invariably be an opportunity.
And one of the biggest ways people foster opportunities is through connections. Everyone's heard of the saying, "it's not what you know, it's who you know." That phrase didn't become common because people with the best skills were getting the best jobs.
That's only a part of the issue. Yes, connections help. The higher level the connections, the better your jobs can be. But you can rarely keep those jobs if you don't have the skillset required of them. And while connections help you don't NEED them. I didn't use connections to get where I am. I kept flailing away at things until I succeeded.
You're trying to make employers responsible for helping along those they hire to do work for them. That's not fair. It's not their responsibility. If I was to decide I could use someone to help me do something, and reckoned how much I could pay to get that person and still make a good profit, it's simply not on for someone to come along and say "No no you have to double his wages so he has a better lifestyle."