Labor Shortages
Copyright © October 16, 2021 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
Everywhere you look you can see "Help Wanted" signs that say:
We Are Hiring ! ! !
Great Pay and Benefits ! ! !
In September of 2021 in North Georgia several of the fast food restaurants posted signs advertising "Starting Pay $10 per hour." Then it was changed to $11 per hour. And now it is $12 per hour.
About a year ago it was easy to find a Walmart employee if you needed assistance. Now you can walk down aisle after aisle inside Walmart until you get tired of looking for an employee (or associate). Then you have to walk to the front of the store and have someone paged to come to the department where you need assistance. And Walmart also has a big sign that says "We Are Hiring."
You may have noticed similar "labor shortages" where you live.
The problem is not the lack of skilled labor. The problem is that a lot of people have made a decision to not work for a variety of different reasons.
The purpose of this article is to briefly look at the short-term and long-term impact of the "labor shortages" that companies are now experiencing.
Discussion
In the early 1900s people gradually began to leave their farm jobs and accept jobs with companies that offered them a steady job and a weekly paycheck. These people were responsible for their families and a dependable paycheck made their lives more predictable. And it gave them some peace of mind that their families would have food to eat regardless of the changing weather conditions. These people had previously lived on a farm and they were used to good years, average years, and lean years when starvation was a very real possibility. A steady job meant that their family would not starve to death. And it also meant that their children could get an education at a local school and learn a skill other than farming.
One-hundred years have passed and today in the early twenty-first century most people know very little about farming. And many people do not clearly understand how food gets from the farm where it is grown all the way to the store where they buy it. The food has always been available in a local store and most people expect the food to always be there in the future. These people may be right. But it is also possible that these people may be wrong.
Most commercial farming operations are heavily dependant on commercial fertilizer. Fertilizer is one of the many, many possible by-products of the petroleum refining process. If more people stay at home and do not commute to work, and if the shortage of truck drivers continues to get worse, and if the ships sail less frequently, and if the airplanes fly less frequently, then there may be less commercial fertilizer available to keep the mega-farms in operation.
Although most commercial farms use a lot of very expensive equipment, the equipment is still operated by people. And after the food is grown and harvested, the food is transported to food processors, and then through a distribution network until it arrives in a store where it is sold to a customer. The entire food production, processing, and distribution network depends on labor. People have to work on the farms and in the food processing facilities. And people have to drive the trucks to move the food from the farm to the food processor, to the distribution center, and then to the retail store where it is sold to a customer. And people at the store have to unload the trucks, put the food on the shelves in the store, and work at the cashier area to complete the sale of the food to the customer.
In summary, people are an essential part of providing the food that you eat every day. If enough people are not evolved then the following may happen:
- Farms: If seed is not planted then it will not grow into food. If the food is not properly tended while it is growing then it will not mature into something that can be eaten. If the food does mature then it must be harvested correctly at the proper time or it will rot in the field. And it must be properly stored where it is harvested (such as grain silos for foods that have a long shelf life if the grain is protected from moisture and rodents), or it must be immediately transported to a food processor or a local store (fresh foods with a short shelf life).
- Food Processors: Fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, and seafood must be processed within a short period of time after harvesting or butchering. The food processing equipment requires power, packaging materials, and labor. If packaging materials are not available then the food cannot be processed. If there are not enough properly trained people who can operate the equipment then the food will not get processed and packaged. More people are required to move the packaged food into some storage racks or onto a truck for shipment.
- Distribution Centers: Even in a highly automated warehouse there are people who run the equipment and who have to take corrective action when something doesn't work the way it should. People have to unload incoming trucks and put items in the warehouse. Later they have to remove items from the warehouse and load them onto outgoing trucks.
- Retail Stores: People have to unload incoming trucks and put the food on the shelves in the store. Other people have to work in the cashier area to facilitate the sale of the food to the store's customers. If a store does not have enough people then the store cannot operate properly.
- Truck Drivers: These people are frequently taken for granted. But without truck drivers food will not move from the farm to the processing centers. Processed food will not move from the processing centers to the distribution warehouses. Stored food will not move from the warehouse to a retail store. If there are not enough truck drivers then the entire food distribution network will fail, even if there are enough farmers, and enough employees at the food processors, and enough people to run a distribution center, and enough people to operate a retail store.
A lot of people in the USA and in many other nations of the world are not working for one or more of the following reasons:
- Forced Vaccinations: People have the right to be suspicious of a government they believe is not being 100% truthful. Since all world governments are aggressively trying to force everyone to be vaccinated, many people are suspicious of the real motive behind this objective. Therefore they are choosing to be unemployed instead of being forced to get a vaccination they do not want, and which they believe they really do not need, and which they suspect may be the cause of a variety of short-term negative health problems in a significant number of people, and which they suspect may cause serious long-term negative health problems because the vaccine has not been tested for its impact on the long-term health of people. When the deadline for forced vaccinations arrives, a lot of people may be fired or they may quit their jobs, and this may cause significant additional problems for a system that is already on the verge of collapse. It won't matter if the collapse was planned or not, the chaos that results will come as a complete surprise to most people.
- Government Ethics: When people believe that their votes are not being honestly counted by the government, then these people realize that they are no longer living in a republic or a democracy. Instead they are living in a dictatorship where a single political party will do anything and everything to remain in power. These people are choosing to not work to keep the entire system running for the benefit of the few people who are in power. This happened in Russia in the late 1900s. And it is currently happening in the USA and in several other nations around the world.
- Work Standards: All companies have minimum work standards to ensure that their jobs are done correctly, and that their products are correctly made, and their products are correctly delivered to their customers. One of the causes of the current "labor shortage" is that for the past 25 years the government of the USA and our public schools have allowed young people to mature without any guidance or discipline. Many of our young adults have graduated with a high school diploma but they did not acquire the same academic skills as their parents, and they did not learn to show respect for anyone in a position of authority, and they did not learn to follow instructions. Instead they learned that society would allow them to do anything they wanted to do, and that they would always be taken care of by someone. Therefore some of our young people do not believe that they need to do what their boss tells them to do and they can do whatever they want. They also believe that if they get fired then everyone will understand that it was not their fault and that their boss was to blame for one reason or another. Therefore a significant number of our young people will not be able to keep a job with a company because they have never had to obey any rules in the past.
- Welfare Benefits: People who have been surviving on welfare benefits for most of their lives have no work ethnic. And they have no intention of becoming a productive member of society. They believe that the government has to take care of them and if the government fails to do what they expect then these people will "riot" and destroy public and private property. (Please forgive me for using the word "riot." I am an old man and I know that only honest law-abiding people who are peaceably assembling to petition their government for their grievances are labeled as "rioters" today. And the people who are burning down buildings and looting stores are simply people who are misunderstood and they should not be called "rioters" because this is not the current politically correct term to use for this type of behavior.)
If the above comments are correct, then the worldwide food distribution network may be in serious trouble because food may not be available for sale if any part of the food distribution network fails.
If the food distribution network does fail, then none of the governments of the world (including the USA) can make food appear everywhere it is needed, as quickly as it needed, to prevent widespread rioting, chaos, and mass starvation.
In the past when a hurricane or other disaster impacted a specific area anywhere in the world, no government has been able to provide food to the refugees on a timely basis even though most of the worldwide food distribution system was still working correctly. The reason for the failure may have been due to government incompetence. Or it may have been due to one or more evil people who had some type of authority in the emergency relief system, and they intentionally delayed or obstructed the delivery of food to the people who desperately needed it because they enjoyed making other people suffer.
(Note: Although it is not common knowledge, in the past it was usually religious organizations that delivered and served food to the thousands of people who were devastated by a disaster. However, when the media showed a video of one of these successful relief efforts, the media always filmed a government official or someone in a Red Cross uniform who happened to be at the disaster site in order to create the illusion that some other organization was responsible for feeding all the hungry people. The religious organizations never objected because they did not care who received the credit. They only cared about being able to successfully help the people who desperately needed help. Unfortunately these religious organizations will not be able to help in the future if the entire food distribution network fails because there will be no food to give away.)
Conclusion
I hope and I pray that the worldwide food distribution network continues to function in a reasonable manner.
However, my opinion is that most of the people in every nation of the world are depending on manmade solutions to the above problems instead of seeking God's will for their lives. Therefore I suspect that a day-of-reckoning is in the near future for most of us.
Instead of depending on the food distribution network to supply 100% of all your food for the rest of your life, perhaps it might be a good idea if you invested a little of your time learning how to provide food for your family the way your ancestors did. In other words, learn which foods are the best value to buy today. And learn the basic concepts of hunting, trapping, and fishing even if you do not intend to do these things at the current time. Also learn the basic principles on how to grow food, how to harvest and correctly process food, and how to properly store food so that it will be edible for a very long time. Any person who correctly understands these concepts now will probably be in a much better position to feed his or her family in the future if the internet becomes an unreliable source of information, and if some things become unavailable in the future, such as grocery store food, or heirloom garden seeds, or ammunition.
May God Bless.
Grandpappy.
Grandpappy's e-mail address is: RobertWayneAtkins@hotmail.com