Do we have a personnel crisis in immunology research?

I "And, one last thing, I'm recruiting postdocs to the lab." i At this year's Annual Meeting for the American Association of Immunologists, this phrase was easily the most common final line of any talk by a principal investigator (PI). Several institutions have experimented with supplementing postdoc salaries, providing increases over the mandated NIH stipend as well as access to better benefits and retirement savings. We are going to have to work to actively change our expectations, or risk having empty labs, continually shouting into the void, 'and, like everyone else, I'll just add that I'm recruiting postdocs to the lab'. In years past, the postdoc was considered to be a time of "sacrifice": a few years of your life on your way to your faculty job, so you could accept an undercut salary. [Extracted from the article]