Restock the Labor Pool

even while unemployment Numbers have soared, korzenik says, the next U.S. president will need to deal with a longer-term shortage of workers that will hurt GDP after the pandemic is over. Part of this shortage, he says, comes from declining birth rates as well the retirement of baby boomers. Newer and more worrisome is “the declining participation of 35- to 54-year-old women, which had previously been a bright spot in workforce growth.” Korzenik thinks a big factor is that so many women now need to be home with school-age kids who are attending school remotely. He thinks incentives for employers to provide childcare would help as well as enhanced health measures for schools so they can begin in-person teaching faster.

He is also concerned that, in terms of joblessness, “the worst is yet to come,” as people who were laid off early in the pandemic join the ranks of the long-term unemployed. In general, the longer you've been out of work, the harder it gets to find work and the more likely you are to drop out of the workforce. One way the next president could help the situation, Korzenik says: Provide back-to-work bonuses as an incentive for discouraged workers to continue to look for jobs.