memes

In theory yes, less employees means the value of labor goes up because of demand. This is what happened after the Black Death in Europe.

In the wake of the drastic population decline brought on by the plague, wages shot up, and labourers could move to new localities in response to wage offers. Local and royal authorities in Western Europe instituted wage controls. The government controls sought to freeze wages at the old levels before the Black Death. Within England, for example, the Ordinance of Labourers, enacted in 1349, and the Statute of Labourers, enacted in 1351, restricted both wage increases and the relocation of workers.[30] If workers attempted to leave their current post, employers were given the right to have them imprisoned. The statute was poorly enforced in most areas, and farm wages in England on average doubled between 1350 and 1450,[31] but they were then static until the late 19th century.[32]

Cohn, comparing numerous countries, argues that the laws were not designed primarily to freeze wages. Instead, he says that the energetic local and royal measures to control labour and artisans' prices were responses to elite fears of the greed and the possible new powers of the lesser classes that had gained new freedom. Cohn continues that the laws reflected the anxiety that followed the Black Death's new horrors of mass mortality and destruction and from elite anxiety about manifestations, such as the flagellant movement and the persecution of Jews, Catalans (in Sicily) and beggars.

Of course nothing will stop the ruling class from fuckery.