Unemployment is at a 60 year low. 10k Boomers retire a day, almost 3 million a year. About a million folks permanently exited the labor force during the pandemic, for a variety of reasons. Wage gains are wrestling with inflation. The benchmark rate increasing will continue to push down equities and real estate while providing risk free return for cash. In the Fed’s attempt to cool the economy, they have arrived at a soft landing.
If workers want wages to accelerate (or job security), they will have to organize and unionize as there is a lot of corporate and political momentum attempting to maintain the status quo of an extraction environment.
Expect to see profits decline as labor power increases and Boomer consumption declines (half of all people over 55 in the US have no retirement savings per the GAO, 1.8 million of them die every year per the CDC, but those folks clinging on to labor participation is also what’s preventing unemployment from declining further). The stock market is not the economy. Structural demographics have the wheel for the next decade. There is no labor shortage, just a shortage of people willing to work for poverty wages.
> Iowa has a stubborn, worsening labor shortage. Burt we don’t believe a bill advancing in the Iowa Legislature loosening child labor laws is a smart or prudent way to address it.
> Under the bill, 14-year-old Iowans would be allowed to work in industrial freezers and meat lockers, unloading vehicles and in laundry facilities. Fifteen-year-olds could work in light manufacturing and could work up to six hours daily. Sixteen-year-olds could work as bartenders with parents’ permission.
> But find two other provisions of the bill are the most troubling. One would permit businesses that conduct on-the-job training programs to seek state waivers allowing 14-17-year-olds to work in jobs related to manufacturing, mining, construction and processing.
Interestingly, the bill would not raise the minimum wage from $7.25/hr or improve worker benefits/working conditions.
Aside from being tragically disturbing, this is the stress you want to see if you care about workers. They are grasping at straws.
https://www.thegazette.com/staff-editorials/lawmakers-should...