For months, I have been writing about one of the greatest mysteries that has emerged over the past year. Both in the United States and around the globe, millions of workers seem to have completely disappeared from the system. I wrote major articles about this in September, in October and in December. When this first started happening, it greatly puzzled me, but thanks to some deeply alarming new numbers things are starting to become a lot clearer. Unfortunately, the news is not good.
Just before the pandemic, 152 million Americans were employed, and we have never come close to returning to that level. In fact, despite the fact that companies all over America are absolutely desperate to hire anyone with a pulse, the number of Americans that are employed is sitting at just 148 million. There are literally “help wanted signs” everywhere that you look, and stores are starting to shut down all over the country due to a lack of staff.
We have never seen anything like this in all of U.S. history, but it isn’t just happening here.
As I have documented in previous articles, we have also been witnessing simultaneous worker shortages in major industrialized nations all over the planet.
So why is this happening?
Well, it appears that at least part of the answer is that working-age people are dying at an unprecedented rate…