Meaningful work shortage explains worker shortage

Ayn Rand sort of got it right — only backward.

In "Atlas Shrugged," her massive novel adored by millions, the shrugging is done by the captains of industry, who just walk away from their command posts and disappear. In consequence, the country tanks. Rand's moral is that without the few but highly gifted heads of our major companies our economic system would fail.

Well, the founding geniuses aren't going anywhere. Instead — to much surprise — it's the workers who are quitting. Millions have left the workforce and that trend is becoming a stampede.

Everyone is asking why. It's certainly not a lack of available jobs. Employers are begging for workers and are raising wages to lure them.

Neither love nor money seems to work.

And it's not that government stimulus payments make it easy to stay home. Where the government money has stopped there's still no queue for jobs.

COVID may play a role, and it's getting top billing, but it isn't really the star of this show. In August, 4.3 million workers quit their jobs — work they'd been performing throughout the height of the pandemic. Clearly, something else is going on.

They want careers, not jobs. It used to be that able factory workers had lifetime jobs which enabled homes, cars, houses, vacations and education for the kids. Plus some pride in their work. But no more. The factories are run by robots, or offshore.

Yes, there are unfilled jobs that come with ladders leading upward, but workers know that sooner or later they'll hit a class ceiling. The underlying cause of workers' withdrawal is their accurate perception that in post-COVID America the only good jobs are reserved for college graduates or highly skilled artisans such as electricians or plumbers. These do not constitute anything remotely near a majority of the workforce. The left-behinds know this and have just given up.

It should be noted that it's more difficult for those with families to drop out. They have kids to feed, and rent to pay. So a huge factor in the current labor shortage is that fewer people are getting married and having traditional families.

In 1978, 59% of Americans between 18 and 34 were married. By 2018 it was 29%. The Pew Research Center says that in 2019 the portion of all adult Americans who were neither married nor living with a partner was 38%.

But even if they're single, if people don't work how can they eat?

At this stage of our economic system, there are fewer good jobs and they require high ability. That ability is very widely scattered throughout our population, possessed by many who don't possess four-year degrees, and from every background.

Those who do the hiring must recognize this and retreat from credentialism in the search for talent that really is everywhere.

This won't provide meaningful careers for all. But it will enhance the quality of workers at the top, and strengthen our country by making earned achievement more fairly representative.