America is refusing to do the one simple thing that would solve the Great People Shortage
The Great People Shortage is about to wreak havoc on the US economy — but there's an easy way to fix it.
www.businessinsider.com
Two simple words: more immigrants
America needs more workers.
The United States is already running low on critical positions such as nurses, home-health aides,farmworkers, and truckers. And there are fewer young people on the way to make up the difference: The National Bureau of Economic Research found that birth rates in the US have declined by nearly 20% since 2007, while the fertility rate has been below the replacement level for decades.
That means that unless people start having a lot more kids, the US population could eventually start to shrink — just like China's population has. The problem, though, isn't just a smaller population, but an aging one. With fewer people to pay into Social Security to support the growing number of retirees and fewer workers in critical industries, including healthcare and agriculture, a declining populationwould have devastating consequences for the American economy.
Politicians have suggested various ways to encourage people to have more children: "We will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom," former President Donald Trump said at a conference in March. But even if these policies went into effect, we'd still have to wait for those kids to grow up before they could enter the workforce. The labor imbalance is already here, and the economy needs more workers now. That's why a growing number of demographers,economists, and business executives support letting more immigrants into the US as a more immediate way to fill in the gaps. President Joe Biden's economic advisors even said in March that more legal immigration is needed to boost the economy. And while immigration is a politically touchy solution, the quickly aging US economy is running out of options to keep itself afloat.
