Columns
THE PUBLIC EYE:View from the Barricades: The Labor Market
l If you're confused by the state of the US economy, you're not alone. Market watchers know that stocks are sending confusing signals. Some "experts" say we are in a recovery, other predict big problems. In August, consumer sentiment (https://tradingeconomics.com/
Duh: we're in the middle of a civil war.
Thankfully, so far it's a non-shooting civil war. Nonetheless, it's a civil war marked by two vectors: one is the millions of folks who insist that the orange menace won the 2020 presidential election; they're more interested in creating chaos than a better world. The second is the millions of Americans who refuse to get vaccinated: They are leaving and aggravating the labor market. (By the way, these populations overlap.)
The Unemployment Rate: The latest jobs report ()https://www.bls.gov/news.
What's happening? For one thing, the latest jobs report indicates that there's no truth to the Republican claim that workers were staying out of the job market in order to get unemployment insurance benefits; many are reentering but looking for better jobs. The churn in the labor market can be understood by studying the relationship between unemployment and vaccination rates. For example, California the state with the highest vaccination rate is also one of the states least impacted by the labor shortage. (Conversely, South Dakota one of the states with lowest vaccination rate is also one of the states most impacted by the labor shortage.) Where it's safe, workers are returning to the labor market, but they are being picky. Where it's not safe, workers are quitting their jobs.
Unfilled Jobs: There remains a big gap between the number of job openings and those who are looking for work -- a deficit of several million. Many employers -- particularly small businesses -- are desperately looking for employees. There are several explanations for the lower than expected "job participation rate." The most obvious is that "caregivers," mostly women, are staying at home taking care of vulnerable family members: children or the elderly. Their justification is that they don't feel safe letting others care for their family members or, in some cases, there's no safe hospital or nursing home option. (More than 300,000 women over 20 dropped out of the labor force in September.)
The second explanation is that some unemployed workers came from sectors that are on the "front lines" dealing with the pandemic: leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, retail trade, and public education. Many of these workers left jobs where there was a high probability of exposure to the coronavirus -- such as bus drivers -- or they were put in the unpleasant position of having to enforce a mask mandate -- such as restaurant employees. They don't want to return to that hassle. (Consider this Buzzfeed article where restaurant workers report the abuse they've recently had to endure https://www.buzzfeed.com/
The third explanation is that many American workers now feel empowered to quit their jobs. The August labor report ( https://www.bls.gov/news.
Writing in The Washington Post (https://www.
Worker Power: UC Economist Robert Reich postulates that we're experiencing a form of national strike (https://www.theguardian.com/
Summary: We're living in interesting times. We're in the middle of a (low key) civil war and similarly subdued national employment strike. And then there's climate change. Stay tuned.
Bob Burnett is a Bay Area writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net