Posted on 09/19/2021 8:35:07 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The unprecedented employment crisis that we are watching unfold around the globe is so bizarre that it could have been pulled straight out of an episode of the Twilight Zone. For the very first time in recorded history, there is an extremely severe shortage of workers in nations all over the planet. When this shortage first started to emerge earlier this year, I thought that it was very strange, because 2020 had been a year when we had seen unemployment absolutely skyrocket in the U.S. and other western nations.
In fact, somewhere around 70 million Americans filed claims for unemployment benefits last year. Not too long ago we had vast hordes of people that were out of work, and now we are suddenly facing the greatest labor shortage in history? Something is not adding up.
When I wrote my most recent article about the labor shortage, a few people wrote to me and blamed the Biden administration for what we are witnessing. And it is certainly true that actions that the Biden administration has taken have made the labor shortage in the United States even worse.
But the Biden administration is not the reason why there is an extremely severe shortage of workers literally all over the planet. In Vietnam, for example, there are so few workers that the government actually sent the army out to help with the rice harvest…
Across the world, a dearth of workers is shaking up food supply chains.
In Vietnam, the army is assisting with the rice harvest. In the U.K., farmers are dumping milk because there are no truckers to collect it. Brazil’s robusta coffee beans took 120 days to reap this year, rather than the usual 90. And American meatpackers are trying to lure new employees with Apple Watches while fast-food chains raise the prices of burgers and burritos.
Why aren’t there enough people to do these jobs? We have never seen anything like this before. Considering the horrendous unemployment crisis that gripped much of the globe during the earlier stages of this pandemic, you would think that there should be colossal pools of desperate workers for large companies to choose from at this point.
But instead, it is almost as if untold numbers of low paid workers have simply disappeared. Of course certain types of workers are far more important to the basic functioning of the global economy than other types of workers. For example, the world would be just fine if there was a severe shortage of actors and actresses. But if there aren’t enough people to grow, process and transport our food, that is a massive problem, and that is precisely what we are currently facing…
Whether it’s fruit pickers, slaughterhouse workers, truckers, warehouse operators, chefs or waiters, the global food ecosystem is buckling due to a shortage of staff. Supplies are getting hit and some employers are forced to raise wages at a double-digit pace. That’s threatening to push food prices – already heated by soaring commodities and freight costs – even higher. Prices in August were up 33% from the same month last year, according to an index compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Unfortunately, the shortages and price increases are eventually going to get a whole lot worse. I cannot recall another time since the dawn of history when the entire world has ever faced something like this. Please correct me if I am wrong. All over the globe, we are being told that shortages of food are being caused because there simply is not enough people to do the work…
Shortages are hitting farms, processors and restaurants alike. Malaysia, the world’s No.2 palm oil producer, has lost about 30% of potential output of the edible oil used in everything from chocolate to margarine. Shrimp production in southern Vietnam – one of the world’s top exporters – has dropped by 60% to 70% from before the pandemic. And a fifth of tomato production in the south of Italy has been lost this year, due to the scorching heat and transport paralysis, according to the farmers’ association CIA.
Before the pandemic, there was never a time when we didn’t have enough workers to do the basic tasks that needed to get done. In fact, many nations around the globe were persistently facing huge problems with rampant unemployment. But now the pandemic has come along and suddenly all of our unemployment problems have been solved?
I don’t understand why this isn’t raising a red flag for more people. Here in the United States, if you want a job you certainly have many to choose from these days. In response to the article that I posted a few days ago, one of my readers sent me an email describing what conditions are like in one section of Illinois…
Where have all the people gone? When you drive down the highway in Fairview Heights and Swansea, Illinois, there are signs on both sides, now hiring. Fazoli’s, a fast food Italian restaurant has a sign stating that they pay up to $15 an hour. Domino’s is looking for employees, Sparkle Car Wash, a rental business, and several others within a two or three block area. Panera Bread Company has signs posted outside that they closed early now due to lack of employees. Food items on our grocery shelves are dwindling and they are never replaced. Some of the food is expired. I noticed when trying to purchase butter at Aldi’s, it had the same expiration date as it did months ago. They put out expired butter and left it out to sell in the cooler. Same thing at Schnuck’s, you have to be careful and check the expiration dates. A lot of their food has either expired or is about to expire very soon.
At a time when basic services are breaking down because of a lack of workers, the Biden administration has decided to make things even worse by imposing offensive new mandates on tens of millions of workers. As these new mandates go into effect, we could soon see things we have never seen before in the history of our country. For instance, it is being projected that close to half of the entire police force in the city of San Diego could soon be forced to quit their jobs…
A rather remarkable situation in San Diego that we could see play out in the rest of the nation. The police union, The San Diego Police Officers Association (SDPOA), asked their members about the vaccination mandate.
65 percent of the respondents said they would consider quitting the force if the city were to impose a requirement. However, an alarming 45 percent said they would rather be fired than comply with the mandate.
The SDPOA has 1,971 members. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, half of those officers are not vaccinated. If that half of the entire police department were to be fired for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate, the city of San Diego would be in a really sketchy place.
The path that the Biden administration has decided to take us down is absolutely nuts. As scores of qualified workers leave their posts, the problems that we are facing right now could go to an entirely new level. But the U.S. is only one piece of the overall puzzle.
Everywhere in the world there are alarming labor shortages, and we are being told that this is a crisis that isn’t going to be solved any time soon. So once again, there is a very simple question that I must ask. Where did all the people go? This is story of monumental importance, and hardly anyone is talking about it.
***
Pathetic pearl clutching. Butter, properly cooled, will last for years.
Why aren’t there enough people to do these jobs?
Stop the welfare benefits and extended unemployment and the creeps abusing disability programs and then see how quickly that changes things.
I took early retirement.....I could see what was coming and found things had already shifted when they began putting everyone in part time positions. Which my employees began doing in various departments at that time. They offered me part-time or severence....I took the severance, (much to their surprise) after calculating how much better I could do retiring and get a no brainer part time job that would free my time and pleasure. Never looked back.
Stop just stop beating the welfare horse. It’s false. Florida stopped the fed money May this year and there max UI benefit is $275 per week. So why then tell the class is Florida still having a critical shortage of workers of the fed money was cut in May it’s nearly the end of September now and the max you can get in Florida is 275 per week. You are telling us all that for $275 a week Florida can’t fill $15 dollar an hour jobs. Get real that’s not the case and you know it. There has been a shift in the labor force it’s so obvious even someone who failed freshman economics can see it, heck even AOC with a degree in econ can see it and she is according to most here the dumbest human on earth. Texas cut fed money in June same thing here service industry and retail trap jobs are empty yet not a single person in Texas has gotten cornpop moneys since June explain that. Texas also.ended it’s extended bennies months ago for state UI benefit.
He certainly isn't some punk in NYC who used to flip burgers for a living, but is now on the COVID-dole because that pays better.
I really doubt that the current apparent dearth of workers is due to the "producers" and "creatives" withdrawing from society in disgust.
Regards,
I was “retired” from my job as a legal secretary when Covid hit. I was a certified personal fitness trainer on the side. When my office laid off most of us, I picked up my training business and I drive for Doordash. I’m a much happier person.
Which in America simply does not usually mean the food is "expired," ceasing to be safe, nutritious and good, but that it is usually past its "best to use by" date, and if keep cold (keep you refer as close to freezing as possible on the top shelf) even boxed salads should be good for a week. But I microwave such (aside from greens) well before eating. Thank God for such.
“This is what happens when the friction of testing and masking is jammed into a just-in-time economy. The gears start seizing and incentives are skewed.”
Well put.
Part of such is related what this article worth posting attests to:
Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government...The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined....The vast majority of people on federal disability do not work.[1] Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed...
In Hale County, Alabama, nearly 1 in 4 working-age adults is on disability.[2] On the day government checks come in every month, banks stay open late, Main Street fills up with cars, and anybody looking to unload an old TV or armchair has a yard sale. ..There's no diagnosis called disability. You don't go to the doctor and the doctor says, "We've run the tests and it looks like you have disability." It's squishy enough that you can end up with one person with high blood pressure who is labeled disabled and another who is not....The health problems where there is most latitude for judgment -- back pain, mental illness -- are among the fastest growing causes of disability.
People on disability are not counted among the unemployed. "That's a kind of ugly secret of the American labor market," David Autor, an economist at MIT, told me. "Part of the reason our unemployment rates have been low, until recently, is that a lot of people who would have trouble finding jobs are on a different program."..disability has also become a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills. But it wasn't supposed to serve this purpose; it's not a retraining program designed to get people back onto their feet. Once people go onto disability, they almost never go back to work. Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce since then, one economist told me....
As I got further into this story, I started hearing about another group of people on disability: kids. People in Hale County told me that what you want is a kid who can "pull a check." Many people mentioned this, but I basically ignored it. It seemed like one of those things that maybe happened once or twice, got written up in the paper and became conversational fact among neighbors. Then I looked at the numbers. I found that the number of kids on a program called Supplemental Security Income -- a program for children and adults who are both poor and disabled -- is almost seven times larger than it was 30 years ago.
By Chana Joffe-Walt. More on a problem designed to combat a problem: Unfit for work, by Chana Joffe-Walt. On a problem designed to combat a problem: https://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
"Baker said the cost will be reimbursed by the federal government since it is a COVID-related issue."
What is not a "COVID-related issue?" Or Climate Change, which could be the next category for Federally funded help.
I think that is probably what is happening in that business district. A lot of people probably either retired during covid or decided to work for themselves.
My son wrote a paper on the labor force for his economics class last year - he was looking at at the large baby boomer population in or near retirement and how there was a much smaller population of younger workers coming up with people having less kids. No doubt, covid bumped those retirement numbers up a lot. The mandates will make it even higher I bet.
In addition to the retirements from people who could have retired years ago, I see a lot of the second income job workers have pulled back.
It really hit food services and retail, and especially seasonal businesses. I know firsthand of small companies that have six or seven full-timers, mostly to cover the slower weekdays, and 20-25 part-timers to cover the weekends and busy holidays. Many of those part-timers left.
One way the owners cope is by shortening business hours, closing at 6 or 7 instead of 9 or 10. One of my favorite food joints closes at 8 instead of 11.
That’s probably a lot of it. How much of an increase in home schooling has there been in the US? 10-20%? How many people, mostly women, is that no longer in the workforce?
TPTB forced people to stay home and not all of them got unemployment and the extra $300 ended quite a while ago in red states. They had to manage.
Some people also quit their jobs because they were scared of covid. All the older women no longer work at our local grocery store. They worked for extra income to go along with what their husbands made.
Some people said screw wearing a mask all day. Now people are saying screw the jab mandate.
COVID made people live a different way and get by with less and they decided they liked it.
A lot of people went into homesteading mode and they decided they liked it.
If it was the Rapture, then I am feeling very sorry for myself and everyone else.
I note at the grocery store, during peak time, at most will be two open cashiers, and I end up having to bag my own groceries because there’s nobody there.
So now, basically whereas I used to do one trip per week, I do two, and just get enough to be able to do the self-checkout.
Also for those who do want a 2nd gig a lot of them are now driving for themselves doing Uber/Doordash/Instacart etc.
Covid was a real break through for home delivery. Lots of people who never dream of ordering groceries on line are doing it now
Who wants to work at a place that forces mask wearing and an experimental shot?
How are those dropping out of the workforce surviving?
# I know I would quit my job in a heart beat if they mandated the shot at my work.
I’m planning for exactly that.
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