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American workforce continues to shrink, falls 400k since March after nearly hitting prepandemic levels
Fox business ^ | 08/14/2022 | Michael Lee

Posted on 08/14/2022 12:39:09 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27

The number of workers in the U.S. has continued to shrink as businesses struggle to find employees for their openings.

"The hope for many to achieve a soft landing is that you meet in the middle, with demand cooling off and labor supply picking up, and we reach a much healthier equilibrium between the two," Michael Pugliese, an economist at Wells Fargo, told the Wall Street Journal Sunday. "But if labor supply flatlines or keeps falling, you need to bring demand down even more in order to cool off wage growth."

According to Labor Department data, the number of workers in the U.S. has fallen 400,000 since March, a troubling sign after the number of workers approached prepandemic levels earlier this year. The total labor force is now about 600,000 smaller than it was in early 2020, right before widespread COVID-19 restrictions plunged the economy into a recession.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: american; bideneffect; employment; labor; prepandemic; shrink; workforce
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To: Hammerhead
Re: IT (Post 15)

IT died in the mid 2000s and the U.S. government actively worked to kill it.

CEOs around the country complained at the cost of hiring IT talent and the U.S. government undercut Americans via the H-1B visa program.

These CEOs wanted top-tier talent at floor cleaner wages and drove their companies into the dirt to get there.

21 posted on 08/14/2022 1:38:42 PM PDT by T.B. Yoits
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To: Hammerhead

I’m still in IT and can’t wait to get out. 3 more months and 3 days until I ditch my main gig.


22 posted on 08/14/2022 1:42:13 PM PDT by AbolishCSEU (Amount of "child" support paid is inversely proportionate to mother's actual parenting of children)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Government making it easy to live in poverty.


23 posted on 08/14/2022 1:42:31 PM PDT by vpintheak (Live free, or die!)
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To: DIRTYSECRET

Amen!


24 posted on 08/14/2022 1:43:26 PM PDT by AbolishCSEU (Amount of "child" support paid is inversely proportionate to mother's actual parenting of children)
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To: Captain Peter Blood

At the link are the births in the US by year. Go back thirty years and you’ll see that at that time births averaged four million per year. Retirements will be four million give or take depending on when people decide to retire. Covid has probably induced a whole lot of people to retire early. So, eight million or so is not out of the expected range.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/06/12/how-many-people-were-born-the-year-you-were-born/111928356/


25 posted on 08/14/2022 1:44:54 PM PDT by Gen.Blather (Wait! I said that out loud? )
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To: ChicagoConservative27

“you need to bring demand down even more in order to cool off wage growth”

Raise your price, moron. That kills demand real fast. Or pays for wage growth if it keeps up.

This idiot is an “economist”?

I know better economists standing out in the hot hot sun of the average car lot.


26 posted on 08/14/2022 1:52:33 PM PDT by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: Gen.Blather

The labor force (or the employment rate) remains flat (and way below Feb 2020) even when adjusted to the age range of 25-54.


27 posted on 08/14/2022 1:54:15 PM PDT by buwaya (Strategic imperatives )
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To: T.B. Yoits

Yup

And the CEOs live in the hills above Los Gatos in their $15M mansions laughing about how they screwed the pasty faced pointy heads who invented the whole “IT” industry.


28 posted on 08/14/2022 1:54:18 PM PDT by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: Hammerhead

Which is pretty much why I retired early, at 59.
I was too burned out for IT management work (program and project management in F500 company).

I rather like IT people though. YMMV I guess. Sharp, funny, interesting, practical, no nonsense. We engineers are the salt of the earth.

The good thing is I had excellent pension benefits and investments, plus houses free and clear, kids finished college, etc. Why suffer once you’ve made enough?

Retired abroad since 2020.


29 posted on 08/14/2022 2:01:19 PM PDT by buwaya (Strategic imperatives )
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To: Regulator

I don’t know - those guys are welcome to their palaces, I never wanted one. Me, a “pointy head”, I got out of it with modest prosperity, a family and a secure retirement. And that went for most of us that I recall.


30 posted on 08/14/2022 2:05:51 PM PDT by buwaya (Strategic imperatives )
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To: CommieCutter

CommieCutter wrote:
I don’t see how people find the means to do it.
...........
I’ll never understand it either. I do pretty well and its still a financial minefield to stay on top. How do so many not work? They probably think they’ll make a living starting a youtube Chanel.


31 posted on 08/14/2022 2:07:10 PM PDT by toddausauras (How far will the left go in terms of destroying our personal freedoms?)
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To: AbolishCSEU

You’re out in 3 months you’re lucky. You’ll miss most of the woke hoops many of us will have to jump through or navigate. At work I’m hearing talk of pronouns being needed in our emails etc. Fighting that one.


32 posted on 08/14/2022 2:10:38 PM PDT by toddausauras (How far will the left go in terms of destroying our personal freedoms?)
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To: entropy12

That’s more than the household family income in our city, which is $56,000, probably with 2-3 people working.

Welfare more generous than work obviously is not sustainable.

But you can see the effects everywhere. Filthy restaurants, overworked bankers with few support employees, amusement parks with not enough workers to staff the rides, etc.

One of my friends manages a restaurant in a university town. He says they can’t get any help. He works the front by himself, there is one person doing the drive-through and one in the kitchen.

You think a college student would want to scoop up a part-time job for $21 an hour, but no.


33 posted on 08/14/2022 2:15:22 PM PDT by packagingguy
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To: joma89

Yes. I left in March after working full-time for over 47 years. I don’t miss it. Being accustomed to living frugally, that has not been an adjustment, but I do admit that the inflation and impact on investments has been somewhat disturbing.


34 posted on 08/14/2022 2:18:09 PM PDT by NEMDF
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To: CommieCutter

“I don’t see how people find the means to do it.”

I know a guy who is in his 70’s and has never worked a full-time job except for in the Air Force when young. He’s done various part time jobs with long breaks of nothing in between. He gets Social Security, VA disability payments and VA health insurance.


35 posted on 08/14/2022 2:44:06 PM PDT by SaxxonWoods (The only way to secure your own future is to create it yourself.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27
..... Baby Boomers are taking this time to retire and leave the workforce .......

.

36 posted on 08/14/2022 2:49:41 PM PDT by R_Kangel ("A nation of sheep will beget a nation ruled by wolves")
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To: pierrem15

“Great example of how most of our economic elite as well as our political elite needs to be removed.”

And replaced with who???


37 posted on 08/14/2022 3:05:08 PM PDT by hopefullamerican
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To: toddausauras

Believe me, I see plenty of the other depts (public health, etc) add their pronouns to their email signatures, etc.

I’m leaving an archaic 911 system (frankensteined up to .NET) that NO one wants to handle nor do they want to learn. And frankly IDGAfig.


38 posted on 08/14/2022 3:26:52 PM PDT by AbolishCSEU (Amount of "child" support paid is inversely proportionate to mother's actual parenting of children)
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To: Gen.Blather

Those are people that have just dropped out of the workforce, not retiring, just dropping out.


39 posted on 08/14/2022 3:40:27 PM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
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To: Captain Peter Blood

How in the hell can peop,e just drop out of the work force especially with the economy being what it is!! How in the hell are they surviving!!


40 posted on 08/14/2022 3:46:27 PM PDT by Trump Girl Kit Cat (Yosemite Sam raising hell)
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