My take on the worker shortage

We can all plainly see that businesses - especially service industry - are struggling to get/retain employees. The quality of the worker is no longer of any concern, they just need bodies.

This phenomenon didn’t just happen, but the free money certainly exacerbated the problem. No, this has been brewing for about 5 years and really gained speed around 2018 under Trump’s economy.

On a recent family vacation, I noticed a glut of restaurants at just about every interstate exit - no matter how rural the town. I also saw help wanted signs at nearly all the restaurants as well as signs and billboards advertising company hiring efforts in the region…and lots & lots of ‘drive for us’ ads on every corporate-owned semi rig.

Folks, the problem isn’t so much that people aren’t working due to unemployment benefits. I sincerely believe we have too many businesses.

Competition is healthy for any system as it increases effort & outcomes, but we’re in a period where the employers are now competing for the worker resource and not the opposite.

In my little town of 15K people, there are dozens of job openings in the $15-$20/hr range with barely any applicants.

Another thing hampering service industry and entry level employment is a booming upper-middle class. Almost everyone I know - degreed or not - has a household income of $100K+. This kind of wealth doesn’t motivate folks to take a second gig and many times a second household income isn’t needed.

Lastly, I think the gig economy had taken folks from traditional service labor. This will only get worse as a car is usually all that is needed to “be your own boss!”.

I don’t think our country has ever seen the pendulum swing this far to the employee side. Businesses are going to close and the economy will likely have a hard landing, but the pendulum will swing back one way or another.