Letter: What’s driving the labor shortage?
Published 4:00 am Saturday, February 17, 2024
- Letter to the editor teaser graphic (close-up)
With the looming election this year it seems that everyone who wants a job has a choice of many options. In fact, many firms are having difficulty finding workers, even though there are crowds of potential workers gathered at our borders.
The unemployment rate in 2017 was 4.8%. In 2019, it was 3.6%. In 2023, it was 3.7%.
The construction industry averaged more than 390,000 job openings per month in 2022, the highest level on record, and the industry unemployment rate of 4.6% in 2022 was the second lowest on record, higher than only the 4.5% unemployment rate observed in 2019. National payroll construction employment was 231,000 higher in December 2022 than in December 2021.
The agricultural workforce is shrinking and has been for some time. The American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually, but there has been a drastic decline in workers each year.
Most hospitals say they have had to reduce capacity due to a lack of staff, a new Kaufman Hall report finds. Shortages figure to be a long-term issue. Hospitals and health systems continue to face staffing challenges, and many say it’s a factor in their inability to run at full capacity.
What is causing the labor shortage?
A labor shortage occurs when demand for workers exceeds supply, often leading to unfilled jobs, delayed services and potentially higher wages. With 3 million more jobs than people, a tight labor market has put employers in a difficult position to fill vacant jobs and conduct operations as planned.
This, while the MAGA Republicans are refusing admittance to immigrants seeking work in the United States. Republicans have gone to the extreme of building a huge fence and separating parents (who were deported) from their children in an effort to prevent entry; many of these separated families still have not been reunited, four-plus years after separation.
Immigration was capped at 675,000 in 1990 for immigrants and refugees. Executive orders subsequently have only increased border security. Donald Trump claims immigration would be poisoning the nation’s blood? He may have borrowed a prior dictator’s playbook; it seems he values specific immigrants more than others.
There are many refugees qualified to fill available openings. How about filling some openings in the IRS?
A “vermin” voter and proud of it!
David Ebbert
Enterprise