Help Wanted: Why Can’t Businesses Find Enough Workers?
COVID-19 may have kicked off a severe labor shortage, but longer-term demographic trends are partly to blame for this highly unusual job market. The headline U.S. unemployment rate fell from 6.7% at the end of December 2020 to 3.9% in December 2021, marking the biggest one-year improvement in history.1 While many workers took advantage of this […]
Shortages and Bottlenecks Expose Weak Links in U.S. Supply Chains
Some supply constraints may ease in the coming months, but other problems could take longer to resolve. U.S. consumers won’t soon forget the troubling shortages of personal protective equipment during the early days of the pandemic, or when the first stay-at-home orders spurred panic buying and stress-inducing shortages of toilet paper, cleaning products, and food. […]
High-Frequency Indicators: Where to Look for Signs of Recovery
Technology companies rolled out tools to help public health officials and policymakers around the world monitor mobility trends with data collected from smartphone apps. Since the pandemic began, disruptions in business activity have varied greatly from region to region, and often from one week to the next, according to the severity of local COVID-19 outbreaks. […]
