Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech. It "could hobble the American economy for years to come," predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Lightcast, a labor market data company, calls it "the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen." JPMorgan Chase warns of a national security risk from "a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation's capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests." There will be shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction worker and airplane mechanics — jobs AI generally can't do...
Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance. "We have pumped so many young people into business and finance" when what's really in demand are graduates in other fields, [said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast's principal economist]. "It's like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, 'We really don't need them.' And the factory just keeps pumping them out." But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. A protracted decline in birth rates is coinciding with a record wave of retirements, data shows.
From 2024 to 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security payments, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor's degrees falls, the number of jobs requiring them will grow, the center forecasts. That will leave a gap of 4.6 million workers. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million... The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college, a sharply reduced rate of immigration, and a growing number of Americans leaving the workforce altogether because of such issues as lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
Three interesting statistics from the article:
U.S. college/university enrollment in 2023 was down by nearly 2 million students since its peak in 2010, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Education Department.
America's low birth rate since 2010 "means the number of college-age Americans is forecast to decline by another 13 percent through 2041."
South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs... while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the Chamber of Commerce found.
Welcome to the looming student loan crisis. Students know they are going to graduate with tens of thousands in student loan debt, so they are going for careers that have the potential to be able to pay off those loans someday. They don't want jobs as teachers and nurses, which will never pay more than $60,000 per year.
And that's for the citizens who decide to go ahead and jump into the student loan quagmire. Plenty more are just opting out. Many see college as just a way for the Sociopathic Oligarchs to enslave citizens for life. They don't see college graduates getting those high paying jobs needed to pay off that lifetime of debt, and they figure they can work a low paying job with out it. If you're going to end up in retail anyway, no sense in saddling yourself with debt that will ruin your life.
Then there are the ripple effects. Does a person with a lot of student loan debt want to marry another person with student loan debt, and double it? If they do, they'll never be able to afford a house, or even a family.
And why would a person who has avoided student loan debt want to marry a person who does? How many marriages and families are being deferred because of student loans?
And every year, thousands more financially enslaved young people graduate, and make the problem worse. How long before the lack of home purchases, furniture purchases, cars, vacation, families, etc. reaches a point where it is making a massive impact on the economy, and how long will it take to fight our way clear of it?
The growing student loan problem is going to become a serious national security problem, and it is already under way.
I think rather than loans, the main problem is that usable higher education is absurdly expensive in the US.
The reality is that in 2026 over two thirds of the teaching effort that happens in a University is redundant. Colloquiums are a total waste of time when you could just record them once & give the students the recording, maybe occasionally adjusting it to curriculum changes every 2-3 years. The quality of the recording could be much better than a live professor as well. (no awkward pauses, no mistakes etc..)
Also outside of the most elite institutions motivated students wouldn't really be much worse off than now, if the Uni only did examinations twice / semester & just provided or sold the learning material, or maybe not even that, just let the student self learn however they can from whatever they can & then test if their knowledge is up to a decently high standard. This would certainly work for the first 2-3 years of Uni. Of course whenever bigger student projects become inevitable, like from the 3rd year onward, more hands on interactions become a must, but overall I'm confident that education could be much much cheaper & more efficient and that before considering what happens if Ai becomes big in organized education.
Sure, I do agree with you that most people with no money, an average brain & mental fortitude would probably be better off, if they become plumbers, carpenters etc.. Getting a student loan on an art degree without being supremely talented is insane & it certainly will have life ruining consequences. Though there is also enlisting to the US Army to consider when it comes to student loan talk..