The Looming Labor Shortage

Perhaps the biggest issue of the 2020s is now hovering within view.

It’s the labor shortage.

We are so accustomed to seeing labor as super-abundant that we’re not ready for it. But demographics are dictating it.

Consider this. I’m hale, hearty and 62. In 2020 I’ll be 65, retirement age. So, too, will millions of other Baby Boomers. We’re the heart of this demographic “pig in a python.” My wife was at the female peak of that boom, born in 1957. She can expect to retire in 2022.

Now, forget all those AARP ads you’ve seen. Retirement is not a picnic. I watched aging take my parents, and my wife’s parents. It’s like the old joke by Robert Klein. “I sent Florida two perfectly healthy 65-year-olds, and 25 years later they come back dead!”

Aging, in its most extreme form, comes with a lot of pain and a lot of demands. Hospitalization, yes, but also home health care and nursing care. It’s a continuum. It catches up with you.

Labor economists call what’s about to happen the “demographic cliff.” America has been lucky not to fall into it. Japan has already fallen, China is falling. As people gain middle-class status, and women gain control of their bodies, childbearing goes down. Most of the world is below replacement, meaning there aren’t enough kids being born (about 2.1 per couple) to replace us down the road. India and Africa are getting there. The only area where women are producing babies far above replacement is the Islamic World. That’s where “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a documentary.

What has kept us from falling into the cliff is immigration. What a lot of those women coming in from Central America, Mexico, and the Philippines have in common is that they work in the caring professions. My late mother’s caregivers were Brazilian and spoke Portugease.

My friend Martin Bayne, who was stricken by Parkinson’s with the onset of middle age, and has been in nursing care since 2002, has made a second (third? fourth?) career of tracking this problem. Nursing homes are becoming warehouses for the aged. He fights it, but just breathing and eating and sleeping and excreting eventually become a full-time job. We need someone to wipe your mother’s ass, and soon we’ll need someone to wipe yours.

Where will she come from?

Japan is already well down this cliff. That is why the country is leading the way in personal care robotics, but it’s something of a kludge. China is heading down the road very quickly, and their problem is worse because they just don’t have the cash to deal with things as Japan has. I predict dark days for their aged.

The U.S. was doing fine, until our idiot voters decided immigrants were a threat instead of a boon. It may take a decade to recover from the stupidity of Trumpism, by which time the global problem will be obvious and we’ll be in a bidding war.

Aging is just one aspect of this problem. What most demographers are asking is more basic. Who’s going to do the work, and who’s going to pay for it? These concerns are the excuse for the Republican Party’s “Granny Starver” wing to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This desire to starve grannies is going to destroy the GOP, to a greater degree, and for a longer time, than Trump did, because we’re just not going to take that shit. Grannies vote. You’ll find grannies fast as dirt. They’ll be wearing tie-dye shirts.

But the underlying problem will remain. Who is going to do the work that must be done?

Sure, my generation may work longer. I enjoy my job. It keeps my mind active. It’s good for me. But past, say, 2030 or 2040, even I’m going to lose touch with reality, as is every other baby boomer. Who is going to do the work of society that must be done? The estimate is that for every person on Social Security by 2030, there will only be two workers supporting them. Something’s gotta give. The Granny Starvers say, kill granny. You’re granny. I’m grandpa.

We have a challenge for our technology markets, and our labor market. Our retirement will be far more technology laden than that of our parents. Our vital signs will be monitored. People will come only when the machine calls. The Internet of Things will serve our old age, our houses doing most of the needed work by themselves. Our cars will drive themselves. All the workers who now fear technology are going to find there are plenty of jobs to be had, and we’ll have the wealth to pay them for their time.

Time. Time is the gating factor in our lives. The more money you have, the more time you can buy. The more machine time, the more human time. Those who can’t afford the time are going to be a burden on their kids, or do without. A lot of folks are going to check out early.

And this doesn’t even count the employment cost of fixing this poor world we’ve spent 500 years trying to destroy with our “civilization.”

Where will all the workers come from?