The New York Times had an excellent article entitled, “Retirees Are One Reason The Fed Has Given Up On The Worker Rebound” which outlines the fact that many people close to retiring during Covid opted to retire early or retire permanently which is currently creating the current and ongoing labor shortage.
Among Americans ages 18 to 64, the labor force participation rate — the share of people working or actively looking for work — has largely rebounded to early 2020 levels. Among those 65 and up, on the other hand, participation lags well below its prepandemic level, the equivalent of a decline of about 900,000 people. That has helped to keep overall participation steadily lower than it was in 2020.
New York Times
The problem isn’t unique to the United States. In Canada, The Globe and Mail reports that one in six family doctors are near retirement age.
A CMA comparison of job postings to newly qualified family physicians shows that Canada does not have the capacity to absorb those leaving the profession– 6,819 were 65 and olderin 2021. Government recruitment websites advertised full-time positions for 2,571 family doctors in December, the CMA data show. But only 1,461 completed the postgraduate supervised training required to become licensed family doctors in 2021 – a gap that has doubled over the past two years.
The Globe and Mail
While the New York Times and Globe articles point out the problem, none of the articles suggests any real kind of solution to the problem. New engineers, doctors, nurses, airline pilots and more can’t simply be conjured up from air, investments need to be made in educating and training people to perform these roles but no one seems to have an appetite to do such a thing. Immigration reform is also needed to bring in more skilled people into the US and Canada but there is resistance to doing so which only leaves the problem to grow worse over time.
The labor crisis will continue to grow as will inflation over the next decade as boomers retire and don’t contribute to productivity but do consume goods and services. We continue to research investment opportunities that can help solve this issue or generate profits from this issue so stay tuned, stay profitable and stay solvent…