Demographics: Is there any field that doesn’t have a labor shortage?

The staffing shortages extend beyond physicians and nurses, and include technicians, respiratory therapists and other hard-to-fill jobs, Klibanski said.

Source: Hospitals hitting capacity from RSV, flu, covid and staffing shortages – The Washington Post

• We have a shortage of pilots and aircraft and powerplant certified mechanics.
• We have a broad shortage of health care workers.
• We have a shortage of retail labor.
• A shortage of farm workers.
• A shortage of aerospace and heavy equipment manufacturing workers.
• A shortage of skilled workers (electricians, plumbers, welders, etc)
• A shortage of restaurant workers.
• A shortage of police officers.
• A shortage of marine industry workers in Alaska.
• A shortage of TSA security staff.
• 75% of US employers say there is a shortage of workers. The shortage may even be permanent. (This is the only article that understands the problem!)
• The World Economic Forum blames immigrations rules and populist resistance to immigration as the problem (except the root cause demographic issues affects almost all countries of the world – and there will not be sufficient workers willing to immigrate to all other countries)
• Oh, the shortage is in Japan too.

The list goes on and on. Obviously, everyone has died of Covid and no one is left to do any work. Hah hah.

Each category hypothesizes it is something to do with their own field. For pilots, it’s the 1500-hour rule and the costs of training. For manufacturing, it must be because young people don’t want to work in manufacturing. In health care, it’s because workers are treated like crap.

May be, just maybe, it has something to do with our long-time low fertility rate, are incredibly shrinking youth cohort of new workers, and a cut in immigration due to public health policies.

Not many are looking at the big picture, though. It’s still viewing each category as a silo. The root cause is a decline in workers due to a smaller young cohort just as the “baby boom” is already half way retired and the remainder will be retiring in the next few years.