Washington Post: Older Americans Return to Work
Vaccines, better workplace conditions, and higher wages are encouraging older people to get back into the workforce, so undermining business demands for more migrants.
“The percentage of retirees returning to work has picked up momentum in recent months, hitting a pandemic high of 3.2 percent in March,” according to a May 5 Washington Post article that relies on data from Indeed.com. The Post continued:
In interviews with nearly a dozen workers who recently “un-retired,” many said they felt comfortable returning to work now that they’ve gotten the coronavirus vaccine and booster shots. Almost all said they’d taken on jobs that were more accommodating of their needs, whether that meant being able to work remotely, travel less or set their own hours.
The good news is caused by investors’ demand for additional workers, according to the article:
“This is primarily a story of a tight labor market,” said [Nick] Bunker of Indeed, who added that there was a similar rebound in people returning from retirement after the Great Recession. “For so much of last year, the big question in the labor market was: Where are all the workers? This year we’re seeing that they’re coming back.”
The labor market’s incentivized return of absent American workers is a political problem for business lobbyists.
The lobbyists are telling U.S. legislators that they should import more immigrants to ensure U.S. employers get enough U.S. workers at the offered wages.
“The U.S. now has nearly double the number of open jobs than we have available workers,” said a press statement from Neil Bradley, the chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He continued:
We hear from businesses every day that the worker shortage is their top challenge, and it’s impacting the country’s ability to ease supply chain disruptions, get inflation under control and continue our economic recovery. It’s past time for Congress to act on solutions like modernizing our broken immigration system and helping expand affordable childcare options to help fill our 11.5 million open jobs.
More at: https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/05/06/washington-post-older-americans-return-to-work/