{"id":9151,"date":"2023-10-10T20:07:46","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T20:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/affinityhrgroup.com\/?p=9151"},"modified":"2023-11-06T21:52:05","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T21:52:05","slug":"where-did-all-the-workers-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworkplaceadvisors.com\/where-did-all-the-workers-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Did All the Workers Go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I was sharing a cab with a client on my way to speak at a conference. He turned to me and said that he was interested to hear what I had to say about the state of the U.S. labor market.\u00a0 When I asked him what specifically he was hoping to hear in my talk, he said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m hoping you\u2019re going to tell us where the workers went and when they\u2019re going to come back.\u00a0 When are they going to get off the sofa and back to work. We\u2019re dying out here and people just don\u2019t seem to want to work anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If only I had a dollar for every time someone asked me this exact same question:\u00a0 where all the workers went and when they were going to come back.\u00a0 The truth, everyone <\/span>IS <\/span><\/i>back to work. They\u2019ve been back to work for a long time.\u00a0 The problem is, there just aren\u2019t as many of them as there used to be.\u00a0 And when I explain this to people like my client, they seem surprised. And that, in turn, surprises me because these labor trends have been on the horizon for a long time. I think business owners have been ignoring the reality that there aren\u2019t enough workers for all the jobs that are out there. In fact, as of August 1, 2023, there were almost 4 million more jobs than there were workers available to fill them. And what\u2019s worse is that we don\u2019t anticipate this changing anytime soon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, this has become my personal and professional mission it seems \u2013 to travel the country speaking to business leaders, making them aware of what they should already know: there simply aren\u2019t enough workers to satisfy all of the promises companies have made to their customers, let alone to support their growth projections. And here\u2019s why:<\/span><\/p>\n

Eight Million Missing Workers <\/b>\u2013 Since the COVID 19 pandemic, we have lost approximately eight million workers from the workplace.\u00a0 There are a number of places those workers went:<\/span><\/p>\n