America May Soon Be Facing Largest Labor Shortage in Its History
15 240America "is facing what's projected to become the largest labor shortage in its history," according to experts interviewed by the Washington Post: Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech. It "could hobble the American economy for years to come," predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Lightcast, a labor market data company, calls it "the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen." JPMorgan Chase warns of a national security risk from "a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation's capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests." There will be shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction worker and airplane mechanics — jobs AI generally can't do...
Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance. "We have pumped so many young people into business and finance" when what's really in demand are graduates in other fields, [said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast's principal economist]. "It's like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, 'We really don't need them.' And the factory just keeps pumping them out." But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. A protracted decline in birth rates is coinciding with a record wave of retirements, data shows.
From 2024 to 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security payments, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor's degrees falls, the number of jobs requiring them will grow, the center forecasts. That will leave a gap of 4.6 million workers. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million... The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college, a sharply reduced rate of immigration, and a growing number of Americans leaving the workforce altogether because of such issues as lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
Three interesting statistics from the article:
- U.S. college/university enrollment in 2023 was down by nearly 2 million students since its peak in 2010, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Education Department.
- America's low birth rate since 2010 "means the number of college-age Americans is forecast to decline by another 13 percent through 2041."
- South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs... while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the Chamber of Commerce found.
15 comments
Oh well (Score: 5, Funny)
by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @12:55AM (#66235466)
I guess they'll have to raise salaries. What a shame.
Re: Oh well (Score: 5, Funny)
by ahoffer0 ( 1372847 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @01:07AM (#66235478)
They might have to do the unthinkable and invest in training and education. The horror!
Re: Oh well (Score: 5, Insightful)
by OS24Ever ( 245667 ) on <trekkie@nomorestars.com> on Monday July 13, 2026 @11:02AM (#66236116)
my oldest is 26, and my next is 22. oldest was told to go into cyberseurity , get a degree in it, gets out, no one will even interview without 5 years experience. no feeder jobs or anything that would give them that experience, just magically you need experience. they've been a supervisor at a fast food place for some time now, applying to 100-150 roles all over the USA and not getting a response, let alone a rejection.
My next just graduated in May, he has a little more of a plan, wants to be a professor and teach English to autistic kids (as he is one, but graduated magna cum laude with a BA in English)
Just wanting to work for a year to save up for his master program, finally found a job for $9.50 an hour at a movie theater, no other place would call him back as he has a BA in English and 'is over qualified' or doesn't have grocery store experience.
This is what happens when you don't hire people for the long haul, everything is transactional. I don't think you should work same place until you die but now business is so unwilling to invest in someone for them to leave, they won't invest.
Re: Oh well (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Mindragon ( 627249 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @08:23AM (#66235800)
It would be useful to fund schools that provide education pathways to gainful employment.
Also to fund Universal Healthcare and support services as a part of an overall employment tax split between employee and employers.
But all of this requires a thinking that goes beyond pure greed.
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Morromist ( 1207276 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @02:15AM (#66235522)
We could have been working for the last decade or 3 to make this a great country to have and raise children in but nah, we decided to have the most expensive healthcare system in the world (by far), no provisions for childcare for workers, no maturnity leave laws, no social safty net that would make having children less risky and very expensive housing.
Instead we were politically focused on getting rid of immigrants, which we'll eventually need to import more of because we don't have any young people because we were too focused on getting rid of immigrants to make life stable & happy enough for anyone to have babies.
Re:whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also rea (Score: 5, Insightful)
by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @02:47AM (#66235566)
Man, they really need to pass a law or something to make it affordable to have healthcare in this country, man. Someone should run on that premise. It's something long past having not been tried.
Re:whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also rea (Score: 5, Interesting)
by Un-Thesis ( 700342 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @06:57AM (#66235720)
With Silver Healthcare.gov insurance, i was quoted a bill of $17,500 for medical tests and 6 months of medication.
I flew down to Colombia:
* Specialty Doctor's visit: $35 x 2 vs $50 x 2
* Blood tests: $250 vs $1,820
* Medicine: $102/month vs $1,250 x 6
* Injection pen: Free via gov subsidy vs $200
* Flight to Colombia: $650 round trip
* Airbnb for a week: $244
* US insurance: $551/month
* Cost in Colombia: 244 + 650 + (102 × 6) + 250 + 70 = $932 without travel ($1,826 total)
* Cost in USA with insurance: 200 + (1250 × 6) + 1820 + 100 + (551 × 6) = $12,926
So Colombia is 13.87 times cheaper (or a 92.79% discount).
Re:Oh well (Score: 5, Interesting)
by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @03:12AM (#66235586)
There's a cost to increasing salaries. The cost of the product or service will be higher, meaning fewer consumers will have access to it.
This doesn't seem to be a concern when it comes to increasing executive salaries. They could lower some of those and have plenty more money to spend on new workers. Really... "We have pumped so many young people into business and finance" -- No shit, Sherlock. Maybe because the only people making 7 figures in healthcare are the administrators and folks in insurance, not the ones actually practicing medicine. The very long shifts medical careers seem famous for are a good indicator healthcare facilities need to hire more people, but who wants to enter a job with such long hours. Meanwhile the work to be done isn't going down, so everyone has to work longer. It becomes a feedback loop.
Make the MBAs knife fight- (Score: 5, Funny)
by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @01:03AM (#66235472)
-to decide which of them has to deport their grandparents to places that have retirement care. The other MBAs will monetize the knife fights through short form videos. Everyone wins!
The Slashdot title indicates... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @01:31AM (#66235490)
... that Slashdot could benefit from hiring at least one English major.
Is this true? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward ( None ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @01:39AM (#66235496)
I'm not an American, but this sounds like the kind of drivel spewed on behalf of big companies that want to be able to hire cheap foreign labour. Rather than paying local resources a fair wage, they want to flood the market with job-seekers and reduce salaries for everyone.
Throw in statements like "fall behind China" and "national security" and decision makers will just eat it up blindly without verifying who is paying the economists / paying for these studies, and what the real motivation is, and just as important - what the actual truth is.
Then explain the layoffs (Score: 5, Insightful)
by ebunga ( 95613 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @02:38AM (#66235550)
Because they layoffs say there's a surplus.
The sky is falling (Score: 5, Interesting)
by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @04:07AM (#66235616)
We've been hearing for the last 3 years that graduates can't get jobs, that increasing automation is shrinking the required workforce, that a shrinking population requires far fewer employees. There's always some industry demanding the government find them more employees (before wages are forced upwards).
It's difficult to sympathise with these alarmists.
We have pumped so many young people into business (Score: 5, Interesting)
by hwstar ( 35834 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @09:23AM (#66235944)
Absolutely. This is a serious issue and is driven by businesses thinking in the short term in perpetuity.
This framework describes the Kondratiev Wave (or Long Wave Cycle), a theory suggesting capitalist economies rotate through 40- to 60-year multi-decade phases driven by technological revolutions.
Society's dominant demand shifts sequentially from builders to engineers, then to financiers, before collapsing and restarting.The cycle progresses through distinct phases, mirroring seasons:
1. Spring (Expansion)The Drivers: Builders and Entrepreneurs.The Focus: Radical new technologies (e.g., steam power, railroads, IT) drive an explosion of infrastructure and basic production.The Demand: Raw materials, physical capital, and foundational labor.
2. Summer (Stagflation)The Drivers: Complacency and shifting societal attitudes.The Focus: The initial boom matures, leading to affluence, overproduction, and inflation.The Demand: Mass-market consumer goods as wealth becomes widespread, leading eventually to structural inefficiencies.
3. Autumn (Plateau / Financialization)The Drivers: Financiers and Capital Allocators.The Focus: Real economic growth slows, prompting a shift toward financial engineering, debt expansion, and speculation.The Demand: Financial services, wealth management, and capital consolidation. This phase is characterized by growing inequality and asset bubbles.
4. Winter (Recession / Depression)The Drivers: Engineers and Restructurers.The Focus: The structural excesses (debt and obsolete industries) collapse, triggering a painful but necessary period of deflation, restructuring, and cleansing.The Demand: Efficiency and cost-cutting technologies. This phase lays the foundation for the next wave, as the engineers redesign systems for the next major technological revolution.
Predictable (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday July 13, 2026 @09:59AM (#66235988)
When a significant portion of your labour is a near-slave class of recent immigrants doing jobs natural born citizens won't without more pay, and you start chasing immigrants out of your country... that's a cause with an effect.
Then you add on tariff wars with every nation on Earth (and an island of puffins for some reason).
Then you start some wars that cause oil supply disruptions.
And you threaten your allies so they increase military spending... but spend it somewhere else whenever they can.
If only the US had educated economists who could have warned the government this was the certain outcome ...
Actually, I'd kind of expect the loss of labour to have been balanced by a loss of jobs, so maybe this is not quite as predictable an outcome as I initially thought.