The excellent Tim Sackett on the labor shortage

I’m a daily reader of your stuff and I just love the sharing you do. Thank you! I’m a blogger and analyst in the HR and Talent Acquisition space and speak to CHROs and Org Executives every day and over the past 90 days or so there has been a giant disconnect between something I frequently see Economists saying in the media verse what is reality in the job market. I was hoping you guys could tackle this subject in a future post!

Specifically, around this idea that extended Unemployment Insurance and the extra federal government stimulus being given out to unemployed workers having only a “marginal” effect on the amount of available workers. A great example of this – https://www.wsj.com/articles/millions-are-unemployed-why-cant-companies-find-workers-11620302440

Economists claim that these policies have little impact to availability of workers, but CHROs at every size company, every industry, in all markets are begging for workers right now, and every one of them I speak to complain that they have workers telling them they won’t come back until they have to because they can make as much, or more, or even slightly less, but don’t have to work because of these additional benefits.

Why the giant disconnects between what Economists believe about UI verse what the reality is on the ground for organizations trying to hire? Also, I’ll give you UI/Stimulus isn’t the only factor driving difficult hiring. We have a ton of older workers leaving the workforce for retirement, which is giving us this step-up kind of hiring, where younger workers are skipping traditional entry level jobs and getting opportunities up the job food chain, we have GenZ who doesn’t want to work some dirty, crappy $12/hr job, so we see fewer GenZ in the labor force than previous generations at the same age, fear of Covid, etc. I still believe, especially in the $12-22/hr job market, UI plays a significant impact to worker availability currently.

File under #TheGreatForgetting.  Noah fortunately remembers.

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