12 ms·

Where have all America’s workers gone?

38 points by ianai 4y ago

ianai 4y ago
“The ageing of the population accounts for the loss of 1.9m workers (0.7% of people aged at least 16), while the overall drop in lfp, mainly among the old, is responsible for a further 0.5m (0.2%).” “In 2022 an average of 1.6m Americans missed at least one week of work per month to recuperate—whether from covid, flu or something else—up from 1m before covid.” In short, the people likely to retire did it in response to Covid at increased levels. And illness (still including covid) has increased work absenteeism by 60%. They did mention “quiet quitting” but to my eye more in passing-it’s clearly not the driver and they seem to admit it with a limp mention of it. “most quiet quitters are high-earning workers, whereas the biggest labour shortages have been in basic service jobs”
- cratermoon 4y ago
  One of the economic calculations I learned many years ago was about two-income families with young kids. If both parents work, and the kids are too young to be self-sufficient, that requires some kind of day care, which can be expensive. Plus. commuting costs something, too, including the extra cost of maintaining and insuring a second vehicle as well as other costs of ownership. There's also other expenses and tax implications in a two-income family. In short, it turns out that the total after-tax disposable income for a dual earner family can end up being less than if just one person, the better-paid one, works, and the other takes care of the kids and handles other family things. Which brings me to my question: how many people quit or lost a job and discovered that they were better off and happier when one person worked than when both? I'd like to see some studies about that.
  - hadlock 4y ago
    About a third of people over 55 I've talked to in the last three years decided to go ahead and retire. Covid is usually two weeks from infection to recovery (seems to get 80% of the population once per year), and 30% of employees have "brain fog" for another 2 weeks - 6 months after. 1% of the population died across 2020-2021. These aren't small numbers.
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      No doubt that retirements are a big factor. I've been on a contract with an airline and am told that they had lots of folks peace out. Lots of institutional knowledge walked out the door, too.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    There should really be much larger tax breaks for having children. Dont just blunt the cost.
    - etempleton 4y ago
      If the goal is to increase population at a higher rate significant tax breaks would certainly help, though perhaps not enough. Immigration also needs to be examined.
      - nonethewiser 4y ago
        There is no shortage of immigrant supply though. The US is already using immigration to grow.
        randomdata 4y ago
        Which means that there is no mass benefit to producing children domestically. There is individual benefit to producing children domestically, sure, but why would the masses care to provide for the benefit of an individual?
        cudgy 4y ago
        So that the masses are supported by the younger when they retire through contributions to public pension like social security?
        randomdata 4y ago
        The comment before just got finished saying that there is an endless supply of immigrants willing to do that…
        cudgy 4y ago
        An endless supply? Other countries require workers to support their elderly as well. Are the immigrants going to leave their elderly behind to starve and suffer with no support from their younger generations? Or will they bring their elderly with them, nullifying the benefits?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    It’s not just that. There are a lot of dual income workers who are only able to work because of the free labor of older relatives - grandparents. They not only died at a higher rate, older relatives would be and should be reticent to have constant contact with kids that have been at school half the day.
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      That's a thoughtful point. I'm sure many families found things much more difficult without free daycare/childcare.
  - etempleton 4y ago
    Some, perhaps, but make no mistake that most families with kids find it absolutely required to have two incomes these days. I would even say the increase in participation by women have helped stave off the labor shortage, but it was always coming. The baby boomer generation is finally retiring. They worked longer than any other generation and they now hold most of the wealth. Caring for this generation is going to be a massive challenge. Nurses are already at a premium and it is going to get worse. There aren’t going to be enough nurses, teachers, cashiers, servers, etc. Any job that is tough and is traditionally underpaid will have to increase wages to compete or, and this is sadly more likely, standards will be lowered. This has already happened with teachers. Not enough teachers, no problem! Degree optional. There are two potential solutions: 1. Increase wages for less desirable jobs to increase labor participation. 2. Relax immigration policy to increase immigration.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      > They worked longer than any other generation Have they really? They are working into older age it would appear, but they also were the first generation to meaningfully delay going to work, opting to go to school instead. The previous generation maybe made it to 8th grade, after which to work they went. Before that, you went to work as soon as your body enabled it.
      - cudgy 4y ago
        Sure. They worked at the family farm in the same household along with multiple generations.
mbfg 4y ago
There seems to be a good number of workers laid off, at least in the tech sector. In case you are really looking for them.
- scarface74 4y ago
  It’s basically only in the tech sector.
- skibidibipiti 4y ago
  [dead]
simonblack 4y ago
Retired or fired. That leads to the disaster of a huge loss of expertise and manual skills. Sure we can rebuild factories that have disappeared, but who is going to work in those factories? Who knows how to do fitting and turning these days? Who is skilled in designing equipment? Who knows how to use a sewing-machine? Who knows how to use explosives in mining? What about the use of a soldering-iron? And many more skills which have disappeared. Then there is the huge amount of background knowledge and expertise that has also disappeared. What is the best design for a ship? Where can we get the cheapest materials for refining X? What is the best, fastest, or cheapest process for refining X? Should we be refining X? Maybe it would be best to use Y instead, because it doesn't corrode as easily as X. Offshoring is quick and easy. Onshoring is a completely different kettle of fish. Once manufacturing goes, it very rarely comes back to anywhere near the extent we had before. That capability is gone forever.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Seems like you're talking about jobs that were eliminated. I agree with your diagnosis in that regard. But the article is about unfilled positions. They aren't unfilled because they fired people.
- skibidibipiti 4y ago
  [dead]
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  > Who knows how to use a sewing-machine? Who knows how to use explosives in mining? What about the use of a soldering-iron? YouTube videos! /s
- cudgy 4y ago
  “Offshoring is quick and easy. Onshoring is a completely different kettle of fish.” Offshoring is onshoring in the opposite country, so this makes no sense.
  - simonblack 4y ago
    Offshoring is onshoring in the opposite country, so this makes no sense. Offshoring is the loss of your own workers and expertise. Onshoring back to your own country is hopefully a regain in workers and expertise. But as I said, that is a completely different kettle of fish. Onshoring overseas manufacturing back to your own country doesn't happen because all those workers and expertise that your country used to have in the past, before those manufacturing companies were offshored have been lost. Onshoring to the opposite country means that opposite country is the country which gains in both skilled workers and also expertise. Their gain is your loss. Their economy grows, your economy dies. Their workers get richer, your workers have to go on the dole. Once upon a time, in the 1980s, I had relatives who worked in a Paper factory in Michigan. I wonder where those guys from that town are working now. I wonder how many people, if any, that Paper factory employs now. Oops. Seems that paper mill was shutdown in 1994 and demolished in 2002. China is today's biggest paper producer. Who coulda foreseen that? https://www.swmpc.org/downloads/mill_historysignfinal.pdf https://www.swmpc.org/downloads/mill_historysignfinal.pdf
rqtwteye 4y ago
Workers were told over decades that they are dispensable and all gains should go to owners. Especially low wage workers get treated terribly (by customers and employers) and don't make much money. It's not exactly surprising that people opt out as soon as they can somehow. The shareholder value ideology has destroyed the social contract that we are all in the same boat.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  That's not what I'm reading from the article. Seems more to do with people electing to age out early from work due to the pandemic.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022081pap.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022081pap... “The Great Retirement Boom”: The Pandemic-Era Surge in Retirements and Implications for Future Labor Force Participation
    - etempleton 4y ago
      So retirees aren’t even retiring earlier than in the past, it is finally just happening in mass. Additionally all those anecdotes about people “not wanting to work” and “no one wants to work anymore” are false. More people of non retirement age are working as a percent of the labor force now then in the past. There are also just more jobs now and less people to work them.
  - hirako2000 4y ago
    But the article isn't answering the question. It gives some interesting facts but wouldn't put the finger anywhere near what's actually going on. And I concur, the capital greed and dehumanised workplace dynamics make more workers give up. Most stay employed of course, but gave up nonetheless. Curious to see what's next, the stick has proven far less effective than the carrot, in the long term in particular.
  - 4y ago
alex_young 4y ago
Doesn’t this also line up nicely with us turning off new immigration? Of course the population skews older after you do that - there’s no one to fill in the working age population. Edit - here’s the data if anyone is interested: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/net-international-migration-at-lowest-levels-in-decades.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/net-internati...
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/KcAac https://archive.ph/KcAac
sammalloy 4y ago
Retired, fired, or killed by covid. Covid killed a huge number of US workers, and for some strange reason that nobody can figure out, all the workplaces who refused to help protect their workers are either completely silent about their complicity in their deaths or saying ridiculous things like "nobody wants to work anymore". > Covid caused huge shortages in US labor market, study shows > https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/13/us-labor-shortage-long-covid https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/13/us-labor-sho... > “Our estimates suggest Covid-19 illnesses have reduced the US labor force by approximately 500,000 people,” say the study’s authors, Gopi Shah Goda of Stanford University and Evan Soltas of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s economics department. > “Covid-19 illnesses persistently reduce labor supply. We estimate that workers with week-long work absences are 7% less likely to be in the labor force one year later compared to otherwise-similar workers who do not miss a week of work for health reasons.” > The study adds: “Many who fall ill but survive Covid-19 suffer from enduring health problems … approximately 500,000 adults are neither working nor actively looking for work due to the persistent effects of Covid-19 illnesses.” > How much of our labor force has been lost to COVID-19? > https://www.marketplace.org/2022/01/24/how-much-labor-force-has-been-lost-covid-19/amp/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/01/24/how-much-labor-force-... > Richard Johnson, who researches the economics of aging as a senior fellow at the Urban Institute…took excess deaths and COVID deaths by age and applied labor force participation rates by age. And he got 300,000 workers who died as a result of COVID. Add that to the long-haul workers, and we’ve lost 1.9 million workers — or 18% of currently unfilled jobs.
- dv_dt 4y ago
  In the UK, they can trace some of the missing workers directly into a surge of long term health problems - likely from covid directly or covid induced other issues. This was predicted by many public health experts I was following in the middle of the first waves of Covid. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63625989 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63625989
darth_avocado 4y ago
Workers are right there, just not at the price point employers want them to be at. At some point it’s better to not work than to work at a job that pays nothing. Personal anecdote: my friend’s wife was a host at an upscale restaurant. They decided to have a baby during the pandemic, the wife went back to work and within 2 weeks quit. Why? Because the childcare was more expensive than what she made. It was cheaper and more fulfilling than the money she was making. They got rid of a car because she no longer had to go to work and she now had the time to take care of everything in the house which brought their costs down. Eventually she started her own little shop on Etsy and makes a nice little side income. They are actually in a better place without that job than they were with it.
- scarface74 4y ago
  No they aren’t. I know plenty of people who won’t go back to work at any price.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    How can they afford that?
    - scarface74 4y ago
      - close to retirement already - spouses who work and they didn’t need the extra money. I have no idea why people think this is so outrageous.
      - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
        It's a tiny number of people to the point of being irrelevant to the conversation.
        scarface74 4y ago
        You mean on a discussion thread about “Where have all American workers gone”? That kind of is the discussion…
nimbius 4y ago
>the biggest labour shortages have been in basic service jobs. yes, yes this is true. theyre all either dead or done. we spent decades forcing them to work for tips and bare minimum wage, fighting dirty to keep them out of unions and spending millions to avoid paying them a living wage, and in the last two years the straw that broke the camels back was demanding they put their lives at risk slinging chili's baby back ribs with no health insurance or paid time off during a pandemic where they also have to play covid police to largely ungrateful customers. when the time came for raises bonuses and benefits, we threw together about three months of service-sector hero porn, televised ads golf clapping the dwindling masses of exhausted underpaid slaves for their "Sacrifice" as we laud them for their heroic efforts to rack up back-pay rent debt theyll have to service the minute the government decides covids over because its too expensive. so yeah we're all out of people willing to do this kind of work because it sucks, and the economist cant seem to figure out why nobody wants this fresh new hell anymore.
- dv_dt 4y ago
  That and jobs for some people, even min wage jobs can be sticky. If you're just making it, it can be hard to break the routine and give up money from hourly pay to make time to look for a new job - even if its a better job. So with covid, people saw the blatant lack of safety net that they were living with and many got kicked out of work anyway, I think some managed to move up and out of t he worst jobs.
- cookie_monsta 4y ago
  There definitely seems to be a lack of analysis about this. I flew back into Australia recently and we had to wait ~ 2 hrs for our luggage to come off the plane because there weren't enough baggage handlers to cope with the volume. The representative who came around and explained this to everybody waiting at the conveyor belt seemed genuinely confused by the fact that they were unable to hire people to do this work, despite the fact that this very industry has been in the media for months/years now, with reports of poor conditions, strikes, exploitatative outsourcing, etc
  - flandish 4y ago
walterbell 4y ago
https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go > In a November 30, 2022, speech on “Inflation and the Labor Market,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell blamed most of the 3.5 million estimated shortfall in the U.S. labor force on premature retirements. He also blamed a large portion – between 280,000 and 680,000 – on “long Covid.” In a footnote, however, Powell acknowledged a far more somber factor: an estimated 400,000 unexpected deaths among working age people.
nostromo 4y ago
Our response to Covid was disastrous. Temporary closures to flatten the curve became permanent closures of many businesses. People asked to stay home decided not to come back. Inflation destroyed working class wages. We spent more on Covid by any measure than we spent on WWII. And we had mortality rates similar to countries that did next to nothing. Even China, which is the only major economy that could stay locked down forever, decided to finally accept reality and move on. Next time let’s be more clear eyed and protect the vulnerable with targeted interventions, encourage people to pay attention to their general health, and not just think we can hit pause on the global economy without messing everything up.
- mindslight 4y ago
  "Pause" ? More like money printer go brrr, so the government and Wall Street could pretend everything was fine. Reduced economic activity would have been entirely appropriate for a pandemic, but the feds forced the exact opposite.
refurb 4y ago
With government support and 2 years people just found other work or decided to retire early. I mean, they didn't expect that people would just stay home for 2 years, then pick right up where they left off, did they? I know people who had service jobs who found remote work, switched careers, went back to school.
basicincome 4y ago
[flagged]
- missedthecue 4y ago
  You already have the right not to work. What you do not have, but want, is the privilege of living off of my paycheck.
  - basicincome 4y ago
    Whose paycheck went to the VCs and co when interest rates were kept at zero?
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I'm more interested to know where the money is coming from for these workers who are not working. Are they just living off of welfare, savings, family, or what? Economics would dictate that at some point they have to reenter the job market, even if they don't like the price point. Am I missing something?
flandish 4y ago
When profits and shareholder benefits fall because corps are paying higher wages, that’s when workers will return.

38 points by ianai 4y ago

“The ageing of the population accounts for the loss of 1.9m workers (0.7% of people aged at least 16), while the overall drop in lfp, mainly among the old, is responsible for a further 0.5m (0.2%).” “In 2022 an average of 1.6m Americans missed at least one week of work per month to recuperate—whether from covid, flu or something else—up from 1m before covid.” In short, the people likely to retire did it in response to Covid at increased levels. And illness (still including covid) has increased work absenteeism by 60%. They did mention “quiet quitting” but to my eye more in passing-it’s clearly not the driver and they seem to admit it with a limp mention of it. “most quiet quitters are high-earning workers, whereas the biggest labour shortages have been in basic service jobs”

cratermoon 4y ago
One of the economic calculations I learned many years ago was about two-income families with young kids. If both parents work, and the kids are too young to be self-sufficient, that requires some kind of day care, which can be expensive. Plus. commuting costs something, too, including the extra cost of maintaining and insuring a second vehicle as well as other costs of ownership. There's also other expenses and tax implications in a two-income family. In short, it turns out that the total after-tax disposable income for a dual earner family can end up being less than if just one person, the better-paid one, works, and the other takes care of the kids and handles other family things. Which brings me to my question: how many people quit or lost a job and discovered that they were better off and happier when one person worked than when both? I'd like to see some studies about that.
- hadlock 4y ago
  About a third of people over 55 I've talked to in the last three years decided to go ahead and retire. Covid is usually two weeks from infection to recovery (seems to get 80% of the population once per year), and 30% of employees have "brain fog" for another 2 weeks - 6 months after. 1% of the population died across 2020-2021. These aren't small numbers.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    No doubt that retirements are a big factor. I've been on a contract with an airline and am told that they had lots of folks peace out. Lots of institutional knowledge walked out the door, too.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  There should really be much larger tax breaks for having children. Dont just blunt the cost.
  - etempleton 4y ago
    If the goal is to increase population at a higher rate significant tax breaks would certainly help, though perhaps not enough. Immigration also needs to be examined.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      There is no shortage of immigrant supply though. The US is already using immigration to grow.
      - randomdata 4y ago
        Which means that there is no mass benefit to producing children domestically. There is individual benefit to producing children domestically, sure, but why would the masses care to provide for the benefit of an individual?
        cudgy 4y ago
        So that the masses are supported by the younger when they retire through contributions to public pension like social security?
        randomdata 4y ago
        The comment before just got finished saying that there is an endless supply of immigrants willing to do that…
        cudgy 4y ago
        An endless supply? Other countries require workers to support their elderly as well. Are the immigrants going to leave their elderly behind to starve and suffer with no support from their younger generations? Or will they bring their elderly with them, nullifying the benefits?
- scarface74 4y ago
  It’s not just that. There are a lot of dual income workers who are only able to work because of the free labor of older relatives - grandparents. They not only died at a higher rate, older relatives would be and should be reticent to have constant contact with kids that have been at school half the day.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    That's a thoughtful point. I'm sure many families found things much more difficult without free daycare/childcare.
- etempleton 4y ago
  Some, perhaps, but make no mistake that most families with kids find it absolutely required to have two incomes these days. I would even say the increase in participation by women have helped stave off the labor shortage, but it was always coming. The baby boomer generation is finally retiring. They worked longer than any other generation and they now hold most of the wealth. Caring for this generation is going to be a massive challenge. Nurses are already at a premium and it is going to get worse. There aren’t going to be enough nurses, teachers, cashiers, servers, etc. Any job that is tough and is traditionally underpaid will have to increase wages to compete or, and this is sadly more likely, standards will be lowered. This has already happened with teachers. Not enough teachers, no problem! Degree optional. There are two potential solutions: 1. Increase wages for less desirable jobs to increase labor participation. 2. Relax immigration policy to increase immigration.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > They worked longer than any other generation Have they really? They are working into older age it would appear, but they also were the first generation to meaningfully delay going to work, opting to go to school instead. The previous generation maybe made it to 8th grade, after which to work they went. Before that, you went to work as soon as your body enabled it.
    - cudgy 4y ago
      Sure. They worked at the family farm in the same household along with multiple generations.

mbfg 4y ago

There seems to be a good number of workers laid off, at least in the tech sector. In case you are really looking for them.

scarface74 4y ago
It’s basically only in the tech sector.
skibidibipiti 4y ago
[dead]

simonblack 4y ago

Retired or fired. That leads to the disaster of a huge loss of expertise and manual skills. Sure we can rebuild factories that have disappeared, but who is going to work in those factories? Who knows how to do fitting and turning these days? Who is skilled in designing equipment? Who knows how to use a sewing-machine? Who knows how to use explosives in mining? What about the use of a soldering-iron? And many more skills which have disappeared. Then there is the huge amount of background knowledge and expertise that has also disappeared. What is the best design for a ship? Where can we get the cheapest materials for refining X? What is the best, fastest, or cheapest process for refining X? Should we be refining X? Maybe it would be best to use Y instead, because it doesn't corrode as easily as X. Offshoring is quick and easy. Onshoring is a completely different kettle of fish. Once manufacturing goes, it very rarely comes back to anywhere near the extent we had before. That capability is gone forever.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Seems like you're talking about jobs that were eliminated. I agree with your diagnosis in that regard. But the article is about unfilled positions. They aren't unfilled because they fired people.
skibidibipiti 4y ago
[dead]
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> Who knows how to use a sewing-machine? Who knows how to use explosives in mining? What about the use of a soldering-iron? YouTube videos! /s
cudgy 4y ago
“Offshoring is quick and easy. Onshoring is a completely different kettle of fish.” Offshoring is onshoring in the opposite country, so this makes no sense.
- simonblack 4y ago
  Offshoring is onshoring in the opposite country, so this makes no sense. Offshoring is the loss of your own workers and expertise. Onshoring back to your own country is hopefully a regain in workers and expertise. But as I said, that is a completely different kettle of fish. Onshoring overseas manufacturing back to your own country doesn't happen because all those workers and expertise that your country used to have in the past, before those manufacturing companies were offshored have been lost. Onshoring to the opposite country means that opposite country is the country which gains in both skilled workers and also expertise. Their gain is your loss. Their economy grows, your economy dies. Their workers get richer, your workers have to go on the dole. Once upon a time, in the 1980s, I had relatives who worked in a Paper factory in Michigan. I wonder where those guys from that town are working now. I wonder how many people, if any, that Paper factory employs now. Oops. Seems that paper mill was shutdown in 1994 and demolished in 2002. China is today's biggest paper producer. Who coulda foreseen that? https://www.swmpc.org/downloads/mill_historysignfinal.pdf https://www.swmpc.org/downloads/mill_historysignfinal.pdf

rqtwteye 4y ago

Workers were told over decades that they are dispensable and all gains should go to owners. Especially low wage workers get treated terribly (by customers and employers) and don't make much money. It's not exactly surprising that people opt out as soon as they can somehow. The shareholder value ideology has destroyed the social contract that we are all in the same boat.

rootusrootus 4y ago
That's not what I'm reading from the article. Seems more to do with people electing to age out early from work due to the pandemic.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022081pap.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022081pap... “The Great Retirement Boom”: The Pandemic-Era Surge in Retirements and Implications for Future Labor Force Participation
  - etempleton 4y ago
    So retirees aren’t even retiring earlier than in the past, it is finally just happening in mass. Additionally all those anecdotes about people “not wanting to work” and “no one wants to work anymore” are false. More people of non retirement age are working as a percent of the labor force now then in the past. There are also just more jobs now and less people to work them.
- hirako2000 4y ago
  But the article isn't answering the question. It gives some interesting facts but wouldn't put the finger anywhere near what's actually going on. And I concur, the capital greed and dehumanised workplace dynamics make more workers give up. Most stay employed of course, but gave up nonetheless. Curious to see what's next, the stick has proven far less effective than the carrot, in the long term in particular.
- 4y ago

alex_young 4y ago

Doesn’t this also line up nicely with us turning off new immigration? Of course the population skews older after you do that - there’s no one to fill in the working age population. Edit - here’s the data if anyone is interested: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/net-international-migration-at-lowest-levels-in-decades.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/net-internati...

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/KcAac https://archive.ph/KcAac

sammalloy 4y ago

Retired, fired, or killed by covid. Covid killed a huge number of US workers, and for some strange reason that nobody can figure out, all the workplaces who refused to help protect their workers are either completely silent about their complicity in their deaths or saying ridiculous things like "nobody wants to work anymore". > Covid caused huge shortages in US labor market, study shows > https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/13/us-labor-shortage-long-covid https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/13/us-labor-sho... > “Our estimates suggest Covid-19 illnesses have reduced the US labor force by approximately 500,000 people,” say the study’s authors, Gopi Shah Goda of Stanford University and Evan Soltas of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s economics department. > “Covid-19 illnesses persistently reduce labor supply. We estimate that workers with week-long work absences are 7% less likely to be in the labor force one year later compared to otherwise-similar workers who do not miss a week of work for health reasons.” > The study adds: “Many who fall ill but survive Covid-19 suffer from enduring health problems … approximately 500,000 adults are neither working nor actively looking for work due to the persistent effects of Covid-19 illnesses.” > How much of our labor force has been lost to COVID-19? > https://www.marketplace.org/2022/01/24/how-much-labor-force-has-been-lost-covid-19/amp/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/01/24/how-much-labor-force-... > Richard Johnson, who researches the economics of aging as a senior fellow at the Urban Institute…took excess deaths and COVID deaths by age and applied labor force participation rates by age. And he got 300,000 workers who died as a result of COVID. Add that to the long-haul workers, and we’ve lost 1.9 million workers — or 18% of currently unfilled jobs.

dv_dt 4y ago
In the UK, they can trace some of the missing workers directly into a surge of long term health problems - likely from covid directly or covid induced other issues. This was predicted by many public health experts I was following in the middle of the first waves of Covid. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63625989 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63625989

darth_avocado 4y ago

Workers are right there, just not at the price point employers want them to be at. At some point it’s better to not work than to work at a job that pays nothing. Personal anecdote: my friend’s wife was a host at an upscale restaurant. They decided to have a baby during the pandemic, the wife went back to work and within 2 weeks quit. Why? Because the childcare was more expensive than what she made. It was cheaper and more fulfilling than the money she was making. They got rid of a car because she no longer had to go to work and she now had the time to take care of everything in the house which brought their costs down. Eventually she started her own little shop on Etsy and makes a nice little side income. They are actually in a better place without that job than they were with it.

scarface74 4y ago
No they aren’t. I know plenty of people who won’t go back to work at any price.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  How can they afford that?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    - close to retirement already - spouses who work and they didn’t need the extra money. I have no idea why people think this is so outrageous.
    - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
      It's a tiny number of people to the point of being irrelevant to the conversation.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        You mean on a discussion thread about “Where have all American workers gone”? That kind of is the discussion…

nimbius 4y ago

>the biggest labour shortages have been in basic service jobs. yes, yes this is true. theyre all either dead or done. we spent decades forcing them to work for tips and bare minimum wage, fighting dirty to keep them out of unions and spending millions to avoid paying them a living wage, and in the last two years the straw that broke the camels back was demanding they put their lives at risk slinging chili's baby back ribs with no health insurance or paid time off during a pandemic where they also have to play covid police to largely ungrateful customers. when the time came for raises bonuses and benefits, we threw together about three months of service-sector hero porn, televised ads golf clapping the dwindling masses of exhausted underpaid slaves for their "Sacrifice" as we laud them for their heroic efforts to rack up back-pay rent debt theyll have to service the minute the government decides covids over because its too expensive. so yeah we're all out of people willing to do this kind of work because it sucks, and the economist cant seem to figure out why nobody wants this fresh new hell anymore.

dv_dt 4y ago
That and jobs for some people, even min wage jobs can be sticky. If you're just making it, it can be hard to break the routine and give up money from hourly pay to make time to look for a new job - even if its a better job. So with covid, people saw the blatant lack of safety net that they were living with and many got kicked out of work anyway, I think some managed to move up and out of t he worst jobs.
cookie_monsta 4y ago
There definitely seems to be a lack of analysis about this. I flew back into Australia recently and we had to wait ~ 2 hrs for our luggage to come off the plane because there weren't enough baggage handlers to cope with the volume. The representative who came around and explained this to everybody waiting at the conveyor belt seemed genuinely confused by the fact that they were unable to hire people to do this work, despite the fact that this very industry has been in the media for months/years now, with reports of poor conditions, strikes, exploitatative outsourcing, etc
- flandish 4y ago

walterbell 4y ago

https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go > In a November 30, 2022, speech on “Inflation and the Labor Market,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell blamed most of the 3.5 million estimated shortfall in the U.S. labor force on premature retirements. He also blamed a large portion – between 280,000 and 680,000 – on “long Covid.” In a footnote, however, Powell acknowledged a far more somber factor: an estimated 400,000 unexpected deaths among working age people.

nostromo 4y ago

Our response to Covid was disastrous. Temporary closures to flatten the curve became permanent closures of many businesses. People asked to stay home decided not to come back. Inflation destroyed working class wages. We spent more on Covid by any measure than we spent on WWII. And we had mortality rates similar to countries that did next to nothing. Even China, which is the only major economy that could stay locked down forever, decided to finally accept reality and move on. Next time let’s be more clear eyed and protect the vulnerable with targeted interventions, encourage people to pay attention to their general health, and not just think we can hit pause on the global economy without messing everything up.

mindslight 4y ago
"Pause" ? More like money printer go brrr, so the government and Wall Street could pretend everything was fine. Reduced economic activity would have been entirely appropriate for a pandemic, but the feds forced the exact opposite.

refurb 4y ago

With government support and 2 years people just found other work or decided to retire early. I mean, they didn't expect that people would just stay home for 2 years, then pick right up where they left off, did they? I know people who had service jobs who found remote work, switched careers, went back to school.

basicincome 4y ago

[flagged]

missedthecue 4y ago
You already have the right not to work. What you do not have, but want, is the privilege of living off of my paycheck.
- basicincome 4y ago
  Whose paycheck went to the VCs and co when interest rates were kept at zero?

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I'm more interested to know where the money is coming from for these workers who are not working. Are they just living off of welfare, savings, family, or what? Economics would dictate that at some point they have to reenter the job market, even if they don't like the price point. Am I missing something?

flandish 4y ago

When profits and shareholder benefits fall because corps are paying higher wages, that’s when workers will return.