As businesses in the United States begin to reopen after the COVID-19 pandemic, employers are replacing the “closed” signs in their windows with another: “Now hiring.” Labor shortages have emerged in a broad range of industries as people take stock of the last year, but three Northeastern economic scholars say it might not be such a bad thing.
The latest jobs reports from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics present a puzzling fact: Millions of people remain unemployed even as many employers complain of worker shortage. So, what’s going on?
“For the most part, it’s not a shortage of workers that’s the problem, per se,” says Robert Triest, professor of economics at Northeastern, “it’s a sign that employers just need to offer better packages of wages and working conditions to attract workers.”
