The number of workers in the U.S. has continued to shrink as businesses struggle to find employees for their openings.
“The hope for many to achieve a soft landing is that you meet in the middle, with demand cooling off and labor supply picking up, and we reach a much healthier equilibrium between the two,” Michael Pugliese, an economist at Wells Fargo, told the Wall Street Journal Sunday. “But if labor supply flatlines or keeps falling, you need to bring demand down even more in order to cool off wage growth.”
According to Labor Department data, the number of workers in the U.S. has fallen 400,000 since March, a troubling sign after the number of workers approached prepandemic levels earlier this year. The total labor force is now about 600,000 smaller than it was in early 2020, right before widespread COVID-19 restrictions plunged the economy into a recession…
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