
Nicholas Anway is a student at Harvard Law School.
In today’s news and commentary: We’re in the midst of a “structural” labor shortage, giving workers bargaining power.
“It feels like we have a structural labor shortage out there,” said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell late last week. And according to Business Insider, the tight labor market is a source of worker power. There are just under 4 million more jobs than workers in the labor force, the Fed reported; the aggregate labor force participation rate remains stuck below pre-pandemic levels. Powell pointed to three factors as driving the worker shortage. First, “accelerated retirements”: Goldman Sachs estimated that of the 2.5 million people who retired during the pandemic, 1.5 million retired early. Second, Powell emphasized the pandemic’s tragic effects on workers, explaining that “[c]lose to half a million who would have been working died from COVID.” Third, the market is “missing” over one million immigrant workers, according to Giovanni Peri, the director of the Global Migration Center at the University of California at Davis. “If you ask businesses, you know, pretty much everybody you talk to says there aren’t enough people,” Powell said. The labor market demand, reports Insider, means that “employers are still offering more in attempts to get workers.”
Daily News & Commentary
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August 28
contested election for UAW at Kentucky battery plant; NLRB down to one member; public approval of unions remains high.
August 27
The U.S. Department of Justice welcomes new hires and forces reassignments in the Civil Rights Division; the Ninth Circuit hears oral arguments in Brown v. Alaska Airlines Inc.; and Amazon violates federal labor law at its air cargo facility in Kentucky.
August 26
Park employees at Yosemite vote to unionize; Philadelphia teachers reach tentative three-year agreement; a new report finds California’s union coverage remains steady even as national union density declines.
August 25
Consequences of SpaceX decision, AI may undermine white-collar overtime exemptions, Sixth Circuit heightens standard for client harassment.
August 24
HHS cancels union contracts, the California Supreme Court rules on minimum wage violations, and jobless claims rise
August 22
Musk and X move to settle a $500 million severance case; the Ninth Circuit stays an order postponing Temporary Protection Status terminations for migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal; the Sixth Circuit clarifies that an FMLA “estimate” doesn’t hard-cap unforeseeable intermittent leave.