The latest monthly jobs report was much better than expected, but nonetheless finds employers across the U.S. still crying out in vain for workers. Goods are undelivered for want of truckers. Code is unwritten for the want of coders. Even the Internal Revenue Service’s struggle to have enough people to deal with taxes on time is bordering on the apocalyptic.
The obvious reason for all of this, of course, is the coronavirus pandemic, supercharged by the omicron strain. Yet in many ways the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the workforce, whether through workers calling in sick or choosing to drop out, merely highlights problems that were already in place or at least on the horizon.