Every business I see is hiring. Businesses are shortening hours because they can't find people to work. Why?
Why is there a labor shortage? This makes no sense to me.
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (42)
sorted by:
Multi-causal. Here are three reasons I know of, there are likely more, but these three I believe have the largest r-squared.
First, lots of people said "fuck it" with the vax mandates. Primarily women, and they are now doing what they should have done previously, which is stay home and take care of the kids.
Second, very generous unemployment benefits and stimmies are just now running out.
Third, excess mortality. Vaxxed people dying off.
Ver generous unemployment benefits - are you aware of any datasets that have "total people currently receiving unemployment" over time? All I have found is weekly 1st time unemployment claims
early retirement due to mandate bs
a lot of illegal skilled labor went back to sit things out but found with their skills, they have a decent place in their societies. same thing happened after 08.
notice most of the shortages are in very highly skilled category or the low middle/entry income.
Labor market mismatch is the term:
The most recent World Economic Outlook for April 2022 just released by the IMF has some evidence here, suggesting four possible hypotheses for the current labor market:
(1) labor market mismatch—discrepancies between the types of vacant positions and the skills of job seekers; (2) health-related concerns, which may be a strong driver of the withdrawal of older workers from the workforce; (3) changing job preferences among workers, which may account in part for historically high quit rates—a phenomenon sometimes called the “Great Resignation”; and (4) school and childcare center disruptions leading mothers of young children to exit the labor force—the “She-cession.”
https://conversableeconomist.com/2022/04/21/the-current-puzzle-of-labor-markets/
yea no shortage for highly paid work from home middle managers.
the early retirees aren't difficult to replace. it's their skilled/productive replacements that are difficult to replace
You need to look for the U-6 dataset.
What Is the U-6 (Unemployment) Rate? The U-6 (Unemployment) rate measures the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is unemployed, plus those who are underemployed, marginally attached to the workforce, and have given up looking for work. The U-6 rate is considered by many economists to be the most revealing measure of the true state of the nation's employment situation.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/u6-rate.asp