The BLS released their JOLTS report and it looks like there are still 11.3 million open jobs out there. From BLS.GOV:
The number of job openings decreased to 11.3 million on the last business day of May, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Hires and total separations were little changed at 6.5 million and 6.0 million, respectively. Within separations, quits (4.3 million) and layoffs and discharges (1.4 million) were little changed. This release includes estimates of the number and rate of job openings, hires, and separations for the total nonfarm sector, by industry, and by establishment size class. Job Openings On the last business day of May, the number and rate of job openings decreased to 11.3 million (-427,000) and 6.9 percent, respectively. The largest decreases in job openings were in professional and business services (-325,000), durable goods manufacturing (-138,000), and nondurable goods manufacturing (-70,000). (See table 1.)
There is no surprise here. We’ve written about air traffic controller shortages, pilot shortages, nursing shortages, teacher shortages and on and on all the meanwhile as 10,000 boomers retire each day exacerbating the problem. But the problem doesn’t stop there, retired boomers continue to consume goods and services but aren’t contributing to the production or servicing of goods and services. By 2030 there will be 70 million people on social security and medicare. Government money and nearly free healthcare will cause massive inflation of most goods and services but particularly healthcare goods and services.
The problem is bad enough that companies are now trying to expand immigration in a variety of ways.
The best thing to do is to position our portfolio to take advantage of future opportunities. Wel’ll be updating our investment portfolio soon. In the meantime stay tuned and stay solvent…