Not Enough Workers? Part 2: More Places to Find Them
For employers these days, finding workers is like a game of Where’s Waldo?
If you go by the official numbers, there aren’t nearly enough workers to fill the open jobs in the US.
And while the gaps vary by state – from a high in Utah of 3.8 jobs for every person officially looking for work, to a low of Connecticut where the ratio is 1.3/1, with all sorts of in-between places, like North Carolina, where it is 2.2/1 — in every state there are more jobs than official jobseekers.
That doesn’t mean there are not people out there; it just means those folks are not actively looking for work. The national Labor Force Participation rate is declining, particularly among men aged 25-54 (the so-called “prime working age” — ouch!): about 1/9 men in that age group are neither working nor looking for work, compared with 1/50 for that age group in the mid-1950’s (women’s participation has substantially increased during that same period. More on that in Part 3). If we can find ways to get more of those people back into the workforce, the worker shortage will go away.
So where can companies struggling to find enough workers look to find solutions?
The biggest contributor to declining labor force participation is men aged 25-44. In Part 1, I looked at the impact our incarceration policy is having on keeping workers out of the economy – too often people emerge from prison with limited skills or find employers unwilling to hire them
This time I want to look at three other groups of men currently not participating who might be able to, given the right conditions, rejoin the workforce: those with disabilities, those facing mental health challenges, Black men, and those whose skills don’t appear to line up with the current needs of the job market. For those groups, this crisis could provide them with the leverage to overcome historic discrimination and help employers find good workers: as Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute recently told the New York Times: “When employers can’t be quite as choosy – when employers have to look beyond their network – that can provide opportunities for historically-marginalized groups.”
Men reporting disabilities
Fully 1/3 of men aged 25-54 who are not participating in work report disabilities of one sort or another. But those disabilities need not necessarily exclude workers: many companies can revisit or reimagine jobs to make it easier for those with mobility challenges to accomplish them. Half of those reporting disabilities report taking pain medications daily.
Idea: Increased government and private sector support for drug treatment programs prior to or during employment can reduce that dependence, and companies looking for additional workers might stand out by proactively advertising company support for drug treatment for workers.
Men with mental health challenges
During the pandemic, 68% of millennials and 81% of Gen Z’ers leaving jobs cited mental health reasons. Since then, employers have recognized that increasing support for mental health among workers improves their ability to both attract and retain workers, becoming what the Harvard Business Review describes as a “true business imperative.”
Idea: Given that 91% of workers believe workplaces should provide increased support for mental health, companies making more such services available will have a better chance of attracting employees.
Men of color
Black males make up 13% of the overall labor force but 22% of the “discouraged” worker population – people who are no longer looking for work because they believe no jobs are available to them. The challenges for Black men are numerous. They are more likely than Whites to occupy low-wage jobs and their median wage is 21% less than Whites.
The median wage for Blacks is increasing slightly after the pandemic, but is still well below that of Whites.
Add to that the fact that since the 1970’s, one in four Black men in their mid-30’s have spent time in prison, many of them on drug charges (see Part 1). But even Black males with no prison record have more difficulty being hired than White men with prison records. The range of challenges is significant enough that a bipartisan group in Congress has moved to establish a permanent Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys.
Idea: If we care about equity and want to solve our workforce participation challenge, Congress needs to take the Commission’s annual report on recommendations very seriously.
Men with mismatched skills
A final category of nonparticipating workers is harder to quantify but will be critically important to addressing the worker shortage: surveys show huge numbers of men are opting out of the labor force because they don’t believe their skills match up with any attractive jobs.
Among prime working age men, the lowest participation rate – 78% -- is among those with less than a high school education; followed by those who stopped school after graduating from high school.
Since 1990, these men have borne the brunt of downsizing from automation and outsourcing and, from the outside looking in, see few jobs in growing areas that look familiar or attractive to them. Overall inflation-adjusted wages for men with a “high school degree only” are 14% lower than they were 40 years ago; some opportunities, such as those in health care, have been traditionally performed by women (for example, men account for just 13% of registered nurses); others require new education or significant retraining – for those who didn’t have a good experience with education the first time, going back can be intimidating.
Idea: Companies looking to attract these men should look carefully at how they are marketing the positions, whether they can adjust minimum education requirement or provide credit for work experience, and create more hands-on training options.
Nobody said this would be easy. And, yes, 10 million jobs available and 6 million people officially looking for jobs sounds bad. But finding ways to reach out to those NOT looking can help bridge the gap.
—Leslie
Questions: What steps have you taken in your workplace to increase support for the mental health of your employees? Which ones have worked? Which ones have backfired, or made no difference? What steps have been most helpful to you in supporting your own mental health?
(Part 3 looks at some answers: Two different Washington’s are trying out big ideas to address the shortage of workers. Could any of them work?)
References:
Job openings vs. official unemployment: https://www.ft.com/content/9c5b5025-a995-494c-83a5-65ef04952a1a
Black male incarceration rates: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/
Black male labor force participation: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2021/home.htm
Racial wage gap: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/briefing/juneteenth-racial-wage-gap.html
Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys: https://www.usccr.gov/about/CSSBMB
Mental health impact on labor force participation: https://hbr.org/2021/10/its-a-new-era-for-mental-health-at-work
More ideas for finding workers: https://greensboro.com/opinion/columnists/leslie-boney-and-sarah-langer-hall-our-goldilocks-economy-and-three-bears/article_aea625fc-b9f4-11ec-b3d0-d72bf4fdb8a7.html
Occupations by gender (BLS): https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm