Disincentivizing work, incentivizing sitting at home...
- Peter Lorenzi
- Sep 2, 2023
- 1 min read
September 2, 2023
Since Labor Day 2021, unfilled nonfarm positions have averaged over 11 million a month. For every unemployed person in the U.S. today, there are nearly two open jobs, and the labor shortage affects every region of the country. Major sectors are now wide open to applicants without any great skills, apart from the ability to show up to work, regularly and on time, drug-free.
Why the bizarre imbalance between the demand for work and the supply of it? One critical piece of the puzzle was the policy response to the pandemic.
The lazy analysis is to deem this a "labor shortage" and to argue for more immigrant labor, like today's piece on staffing a $449 a night luxury hotel in Maine.
Apparently, the hotel can't find cheap, young labor domestically or locally, because the median age of the state is so old that there appear to be too few laborers. You'd think that everyone over the age of eighteen in the state of Maine is employed? Or retired? Or maybe just unwilling to work.
So we get idiotic policies from a senile president Biden and an arrogant Fauci, leaving people with no incentive to work and workers with their cost of living rising faster than their wage increases.
コメント