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April’s Jobs Report Was a Disaster
There are plenty of jobs, but no one to fill them.
Let’s get straight to the point: the economy added a mere 266,000 jobs in April, much further below estimates of almost 1 million.
This was nothing short of a disaster.
It means that even though there were a record number of job openings at small businesses, which serve as a proxy for the economy as a whole, for the third straight month, companies could not find enough people to fill those slots.
As I’ve written about previously, there are a few reasons why these jobs go unfilled:
- New graduates can’t find jobs
- Low skilled, low wage work is being automated
- Persistent fear of COVID
- Lack of child care
- High unemployment benefits
I thought that the combination of the vaccine rollout and stimulus packages would be able to help, but it looks like I was completely wrong. This problem is not going to be solved any time soon.
Bank of America has estimated that 4.6 million workers that would have been in the labor force before the pandemic are staying on the sidelines.
Some issues won’t be fully solved when life returns to normal…
