It’s The Boomers Stupid!

In the not too distant future, we think “It’s the boomers stupid” will become the cliche of the day. In 1992, James Carville came up with a similar phrase, “It’s the economy stupid” as a key message to the Clinton campaign staff to focus messaging for the election.

CNN has an excellent article written by Allison Morrow and Anneeken Tappe that largely disproves various narratives about why there are 11+ million jobs open and growing. Here is a key quote from the CNN article:

“Last month, there were 3.6 million more Americans who had left the labor force and said they didn’t want a job compared with November 2019, says Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist and professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. Older Americans, age 55 and up, accounted for whopping 90% of that increase.”

We felt the narratives about “paying people to stay home” that was causing a labor shortage were largely nonsense and we have written about how 10,000 boomers retire each day and sadly about another 5000 die each day.

As we navigate toward 2030, this problem will grow exponentially. As we have written before, boomers will largely stop working by 2030 but they will be “paid to do nothing” through social security. Boomers will also have access to almost “free” healthcare through Medicare or Medicaid. All of these social benefits will INCREASE demand for goods and services while the labor force DECREASES.

What about younger people? The answer is simple, there aren’t enough young people to back fill every job vacancy for every retiree. Covid helped tremendously accelerated the inevitable labor pain that was going to happen in 2030 and right now we are just getting an early preview of what is to come.

The future looks bleak from our perspective. Labor shortages and high demand are a formula for massive inflation, shortages, and long lines. Those types of conditions often lead to stress, aggressive competition, more stress and ultimately violence and we expect the most likely victim of crime in the future will be boomers.