Today, the Committee for Economic Development, the public policy center of The Conference Board (CED), issued a new Solutions Brief, The US Labor Shortage: A Plan to Tackle the Challenge. As detailed in the report, prior to the start of the pandemic, a series of long-term, troubling demographic trends—including minimal growth in the number of working-age Americans, a diminishing number of working-age adults without a college degree, and historically low US birthrates—formed a perfect storm that left countless businesses struggling to fill staffing vacancies. The report—the latest in a series on Sustaining Capitalism—goes on to note that the pandemic only further constricted the labor supply. Even with the economy reopening and rebounding, labor force participation rates have not returned to their prepandemic levels.
