Will the rich world’s worker deficit last?
It will depend on whether the people who have left the workforce can be lured back
AMERICA’S LATEST jobs report was both encouraging and sobering. The world’s largest economy added 943,000 jobs in July. That is the best tally in nearly a year—but even at this pace employment will not catch up with its pre-crisis level until early 2022, six months after output regained its peak. Jobs in the rest of the rich world, too, are likely to take a while to return to pre-pandemic highs. Demand for workers is still lower than it was before covid-19 struck; and, more important, people have withdrawn from the world of work.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Coming up short”
Finance & economics August 14th 2021
- Will the rich world’s worker deficit last?
- America’s inflation scare becomes less menacing
- India consigns its tax time-machine to the past
- Britain’s regulator makes a play for SPAC listings
- How the delisting of Chinese firms on American exchanges might play out
- A glimpse into Japan’s understated financial heft in South-East Asia
- A new theory suggests that day-to-day trading has lasting effects on stockmarkets
From the August 14th 2021 edition
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The great-man theory of Wall Street
Why finance is still dominated by bold individuals
Hong Kong’s property slump may be terminal
Demographics and geopolitics will make a recovery harder
Why everyone wants to lend to weak companies
An unanticipated side-effect of Donald Trump’s election victory
American veterans now receive absurdly generous benefits
An enormous rise in disability payments may complicate debt-reduction efforts
Why Black Friday sales grow more annoying every year
Nobody is to blame. Everyone suffers
Trump wastes no time in reigniting trade wars
Canada and Mexico look likely to suffer