It’s August 2024 and we are still seeing massive labor shortages. Wait? What? Did we say labor shortages right when everyone was hollering about a surge in unemployment? What’s going on?
Yes, labor shortages continue to persist but don’t take our word for it. Let’s start in Denver, Colorado and New York where they are now trying to hire all those immigrants many have been complaining about:
From BNNBloomberg.ca:
So instead, Berzins is tapping into a city program to hire asylum seekers — primarily from South and Central America — who have obtained federal work permits. So far, he’s given jobs to about a dozen people at kitchens where the managers speak Spanish.
“It’s really gotten so bad that almost all of these kitchens around Denver are chronically understaffed,” he said. “They try to make college a priority for graduates of Denver public schools. When that happens, those are not your cooks of the future.”
Source: BBNBloomberg.ca
The State of Maryland isn’t fairing much better with labor shortages. From I95Business.com:
Maryland’s population has grown just .05% since 2020, less than half the rate of overall U.S. population growth, and the state lost residents in 2022. There are several reasons for this anemic growth. Some, like less favorable weather than in southern states, are unavoidable. The pandemic initiated a massive wave of early retirements, and many of those retirees migrated to other states. Even those retirees who stayed in Maryland are no longer part of the workforce.
Source: i95business.com
There are serious financial impacts in many ways but the industry that will be hit hardest over the next 7 years is health care. From HealthExec.com:
“What’s interesting is that labor costs on average account for about 60% of a hospital’s budget, so the increasing costs for labor are particularly impactful to hospitals’ overall financial health. And what we’ve seen is that between 2021 and 2023, labor costs increased by $42.5 billion for hospitals. It’s harder and harder for hospitals to get physicians and nurses and even nonclinical staff to come in and work,” Krishnamurthy explained.
Source: Healthexec.com
Absolutely nothing has changed with our basic thesis: 70+ million baby boomers will all be over the age of 65 in 2030 eligible for medicare and social security. This will be the largest drain on the labor force in the history of the United States. If that problem weren’t bad enough it is being exacerbated but the fact that younger people aren’t having as many kids to replenish the population.
The HealthExec article above hints at where the real pain will be: rural areas. The pain will also be felt in states with hostile tax policies or work environments that are not appealing to younger workers.
There will be plenty of profits to make and we continue to research opportunities so stay tuned, stay profitable and stay solvent…