In attempting to find investing opportunities over the next decade, we wanted to focus on where and when shortages would arise driven by boomers. We have already seen labor shortages arise out of an extra jump in early boomer retirements and that has had an impact on the service sector and inflation but what else?
“Since April, nationally we’ve broken a record with 4 million, 4.3 million, 4.7 million people voluntarily leaving work voluntarily,” Missouri Director of Workforce Development Dr. Mardy Leathers said. “We were trying to understand the age group there and they are overwhelmingly over the age of 60.”
Fox2Now
The second item that jumped out as a shortage caused, in part, by boomers is housing. It may seem counter-intuitive but as boomers retire they tend to downsize and move south to warmer climates so this should naturally result in a higher availability of homes in one area and a lower one in another but that hasn’t been the case so far. What is happening is wealthier boomers are retaining their old homes and buying second homes in warmer states such as California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida.
The third item that is currently experiencing shortages is health care. While Covid has filled many hospitals and cause the deferment of other surgeries and services, it is nursing that is experiencing a mass exodus of workers. As the years progress however, we expect boomers to drive an even greater demand for nursing as boomers end up requiring more care and treatment as they age and will rely on social programs of medicare or medicaid to pay for it. According to this report, nursing shortages grew from 8.2 percent in 2017 to 9.9 percent in 2020.
In an earlier post we wrote about key demographic issues with husbandry that will impact farming significantly and potentially cause food prices to soar and possibly leaving to shortages.
In a future post, we’ll dive into some of our findings and opportunities on how to possibly invest in these future shortages and earn a decent return. We will also try to cover the cold trading war with China and the impact that may have on future shortages as well.
Stay tuned and stay solvent.
