Now it is clear that the government overstimulated the economy. Nearly $3 trillion was saved by households who simply did not need to spend the money. Trillions more dollars were spent by these households, often to purchase goods that were in short supply. This led to the near double-digit inflation we are currently experiencing.
Many mostly lower-income workers chose not to return to their job when their employer called them back. These workers were living off the stimulus money they received, and they were not paying their rent or their student loans. Many liked this lifestyle and chose to stay out of the workforce, at least until the money runs out. The labor force participation rate fell. Employers had millions of open jobs that could not be filled.
Even today there are nearly 11 million job openings and less than 6 million unemployed workers. Because of this labor shortage, the unemployment rate will likely stay below 4%, which is generally considered a full employment level. The result is that we are in a full employment recession, where GDP is declining but the unemployment rate is not significantly increasing.
You should go to work with the government or at least work for CNBC with that BS.
If you calculate unemployment honestly, we’ve been at depression levels for some time now. And knowing your posts for years, you damn well know that.
And workers of ALL skill levels and income witnessed the crumbling of all social contracts and attacks on personal sovereignty during the pandemic.
See, for a lot of people, when they take a JOB, they trade some sort of dream like being a writer or in a band or an actor, etc. They ditch the dream for the security of the paycheck. During the pandemic, many learned that there was no security. They were not ‘essential’, therefore nobody gave a damn what happened to them.
Going forward, many of those people have a lot of things to figure out about how to proceed. But once that trust is broken by the system, it isn’t coming back.
Even for those who are back at their jobs, any passion they once had has been sucked out of it. Some just don’t care. Some are ‘vacationing in place’ as long as they can con a paycheck. Some are actively working to undermine the bastards that screwed them over.
Welcome to the new world. It’s the same as the old one, but more people are wise to more of the BS.
There is a 20-35 million US worker population out there that have zero motivation to work long term, occasionally journey into the unemployment rolls, taking an occasional seasonal job to reset their unemployment eligibility. The actual health status of 15 million of this group is so questionable if they are employable long term.
No such thing. There is a wage shortage.