If you haven’t heard about the labor shortage around the country then you can catch up by reading this, this, this, and this. Now that you are caught up, let’s talk about consequences.
There is a growing problem across every major city in America and very few people are talking about it. What is that problem? There aren’t enough people to do the normal day to day work that city workers do because the pay is too low. Why work for a city hauling trash for $10/hour when you can go over to Amazon or Costco and earn $20/hour?
You don’t have to take my word for it, let’s go through some recent news.
In Milwaukee, the city can’t find enough workers to salt roads or clear snow for the winter.
The DPW is currently dealing with a shortage of roughly 57 workers, which meant other city employees – like sanitation or forestry workers – are picking up the slack.
Fox6 News
The problem doesn’t stop there, from Utah to Nashville, there aren’t enough city workers to collect trash across the country. If you want to see the problem grow from the start of the year to the end of the year, look no further than Jacksonville, Florida which has been fining companies for not picking up trash.
The waste management industry has been aware of the problem since 2019 but the issue has now grown even harder and faster than anticipated.
Organizations within recycling and waste management industries continue to face major challenges retaining and recruiting drivers of their transportation fleets at a particularly perilous time, as drivers are needed more than ever to continue transferring the shipment of materials to keep clients happy.
Waste Today Magazine
As we have stated in numerous posts, there are 61 million baby boomers that WILL hit the age of 65+ in 2030. There are 10,000 boomers that hit age 65 almost every day now and many choose to retire, collect social security and enroll in medicare for health insurance. The boomers have little incentive to work when they get almost free healthcare and income from the Social Security Administration.
The key issue however is that boomers still demand goods and services while not participating in the labor force so the net results are: declining productivity, declining access to goods and services, and increasing inflation because the demand is still there.
We just focused on snow plowers and trash collectors in this post but the problem exists across all job roles and industries. You don’t need to take our word for it, head on over to the BLS website and check out the data. We were so concerned about, we largely started this blog because of the issue. It is what is prompting companies like UPS and Amazon to start paying upwards of $20/hour for jobs that were $8/hour a few years ago. This problem isn’t going to go away even when covid disappears because boomers will continue to retire, all 61 MILLION of them. As the labor force shrinks, deep pocket companies will slurp up all the labor through higher and higher wages, small businesses wont’ stand a chance.
The labor shortage we are experiencing now is a sneak peak at what is to come in 2030. Prepare accordingly by building the right investment portfolio for you and your circumstances and as always, do you own due diligence.
Stay tuned and stay solvent.