What Is Causing The Global People Shortage?
Francesco Abbruzzino, The Uncensored Report, LLC
Did you ever imagine that we would be facing an epic shortage of workers all over the globe in the second half of 2021? Right now, thousands upon thousands of large companies all over the world are absolutely desperate for workers. They are raising wages, they are throwing in extra vacation days and they are even doing away with drug tests, but they still can’t find enough able-bodied people to hire. At this moment, this is one of the biggest problems that the global economy is facing. If we simply had enough people to do the jobs that needed to be done, a lot of our glaring supply chain issues would rapidly fade away.
So why can’t we find enough workers?
In my entire lifetime, our planet has never had to deal with a severe lack of workers.
Instead, chronic unemployment was always a huge unsolvable puzzle for global leaders. Politicians loved to give speeches about finding enough jobs for everyone, and of course none of them could ever actually accomplish that goal.
But now here we are in the middle of a pandemic and that puzzle has somehow suddenly been solved?
That seems rather odd.
Here in the United States, some of our biggest corporations can’t seem to hire enough people no matter how hard they may try. For example, things have gotten so bad at FedEx that they are now rerouting 600,000 packages a day…
FedEx Chief Operating Officer Raj Subramaniam said during an earnings call this week that there have been “widespread inefficiencies” in its operation due to “constrained labor markets” which have ultimately forced the company to divert packages.
There are more than 600,000 packages a day being rerouted across the entire FedEx Ground network, according to Subramaniam.
If they could find enough workers, this problem would be eliminated.
But they can’t, and so right now the hub in Portland is operating with only “65% of the staffing needed”…
Subramaniam pointed to the company’s Portland, Oregon, hub as an example, saying it’s running on “65% of the staffing needed to handle its normal volume.”
Of course FedEx is far from alone. According to Fox Business, a desire to hire workers is very widespread right now…
All 12 industry sectors in the U.S. reported having “hiring intentions at ten-year highs” with plans to bring workers back following the pandemic, according to ManpowerGroup’s Employment Outlook Survey of nearly 45,000 employers around the world.
“This recovery is unlike any we have seen before with hiring intent picking up much faster than after the previous economic downturn,” ManpowerGroup CEO Jonas Prising said.
When I have written about the labor shortage previously, some readers have argued that the blame should be pinned on the Biden administration.
And without a doubt, policy decisions that the Biden administration has made have definitely made the labor shortage in the U.S. even worse.
But this isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon.
What many Americans don’t realize is that there is a shortage of labor all over the globe at this moment…