Today, as the political world looks at special elections and the future, near-term potential composition of Congress following the 2026 midterm elections, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest data on job openings for the month of March showing 7.56 million job openings nationwide.
That’s more than the number of people unemployed, which stands at 7 million. While in the past decade, politicians and policy makers in the past two administrations have thought of this a sign of economic “health” with relatively lower unemployment rates, the fact is that are more jobs available than there are people to fill those jobs.
In fact, the ratio of unemployed to job openings was less than one from January 2018 through February 2020, was interrupted by the short but steep Covid recession of 2020, and then persisted again from May 2021 through the present.
So, really, for five of the past six years, except for the recession, even with mass illegal immigration during the administration of former President Job Biden with 10.8 million border encounters, there have persistently been more job openings than available persons to fill jobs.
Recently at CPAC in February with Moms For America President Kimberly Fletcher was Mike Rowe speaking specifically on labor shortages in trades professions with some startling findings, with Rowe stating, “You start to go down the list and you begin to realize our workforce is wildly out of balance. And here’s the math that keeps me up at night: five and two. For every five trades people that retire this year to replace them. It’s been that way for 12 years: five out, two in. I don’t need to be a mathematician … this is bad arithmetic very bad. So, we’ve got all this like weird downward pressure on the on the demographics…”
For example, Rowe cited Blue Forge Alliance approaching him stating there was a shortage of 100,000 tradespeople in the nuclear submarine industry, the one the U.S. Navy depends on. Or in the automotive industry, there are 80,000 openings for technicians alone.
And the labor shortages are not just impacting trades professions, but all professions as the Baby Boomer retirement wave continues. Almost 1 million Americans over the age of 65 without a disability are leaving the labor force every year and now total 33.4 million. In Feb. 2014 it was 24.4 million. But with 27.4 million 55-to-64-year-olds in the labor force the numbers leaving the labor force over the next decade will only be accelerating.
Meaning, the U.S. economy needs to replace all college-educated professions, too, whether teachers, doctors, nurses, business managers and so forth retiring.
Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but since birth control was approved by the FDA in 1960, when there were 3.65 births per woman, the U.S. has not been replacing its population. The latest birth rate numbers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show just 1.61 live births per woman in 2023, the lowest ever on record in the U.S.
One of the only reasons the population in the U.S. is still growing is because of immigration. Since Jan. 2021, the overall population has grown by 9.3 million to 341 million. 7.35 million of that was an increase in the foreign-born population to 50 million. Put another way, the native-born population of the United States is only growing on a net basis by about 500,000 a year — and soon it will be declining outright as the Baby Boomers sadly pass away.
These are the tradeoffs for pushing women into higher education, for which there is a substantial gender gap.
According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of 2023, 76 million women attended college, including 16.75 million with some college, 12.6 million with associate’s degrees, 28.2 million with bachelor’s degrees and 18.4 million with master’s degrees or above. Comparatively, only 67.9 million men have attended college, including 16.1 million with some college, 10.87 million with associate’s degrees, 25.25 million with bachelor’s degrees and 15.75 million with master’s degrees or above.
The end result of birth control are the deferred decisions on getting married and having children. Ultimately, that means fewer workers, whether in trades or everything else. Currently, South Korea and Japan, with 0.77 babies per woman and 1.26 babies per woman, respectively, are experiencing population decline and soon, collapse. Or in Greece, where babies per woman is 1.43, and there are ghost towns everywhere as what remains of the working age population flees for other climes.
But ultimately, that is where much of the developed world is headed — a future where it’s somebody else’s responsibility to have kids and raise families, leaving far fewer individuals to work whether in trades or other institutions. Right now, the industry with the greatest number of job openings, more than any other, is health care at 1.45 million, largely to take care of all the senior citizens.
Right now, that’s pretty much set in stone, and the trends will certainly worsen before they get better. Culturally, there is very little that can be done to reverse these demographic trends, that really serve as a function of incentives. The average cost of a degree is about $80,000, which are subsidized by the Department of Education and financial aid. That’s a subsidy that long term results in fewer marriages, children and ultimately workers to the U.S. economy, that is, labor shortages.
It’s breaking the budget with comparatively fewer taxpayers, with the explosion of the U.S. national debt, now $36 trillion. Since 1963 through 2023, the percent growth of revenues has averaged 6.5 percent a year to its present level of $4.4 trillion, according to data compiled by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
In the meantime, mandatory spending including net interest owed on the national debt has grown an average 8.8 percent a year to its current level of $4.4 trillion.
And discretionary spending has grown an average 5.5 percent a year to its current level of $1.7 trillion.
If a village has 100 people, 50 men and 50 women, and they only have one child per couple, the next generation will only have 50 people, and 25 the generation after that, who will need to take care of 150 older villagers. As Rowe noted, it’s bad arithmetic.
And there could just be a short window of opportunity to address it. Vice President J.D. Vance in 2021 before he was elected U.S. Senator of Ohio in 2022, spoke at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Future of American Political Economy Conference in Alexandria, Virginia, addressing declining fertility rates all around the world that threaten population and economic collapse.
“There aren’t enough babies being born in our country… This is a civilizational crisis, and if we’re not willing to spend resources to solve it, we’re not serious about the very real problems that we face,” Vance said. He’s right.
And now, with the election of President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress, there could just be a short window of opportunity to address it.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023, Trump also expressed support for what he is calling “baby bucks,” stating, “We will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom! I want a baby boom! You men are so lucky out there — you are so lucky, men.”
One approach might be to front-load the tax credits into the child’s earlier, pre-school years, for example, $40,000 per baby, with $20,000 upfront and $4,000 a year for each of the following five years. The idea would be to foster a baby boom. Additional consideration could be given to incentivizing marriage, say, an additional $10,000 upfront for married couples having new children.
That could reduce the overall cost, although it would still be costly, $450 billion for every 10 million new babies, assuming equal amounts of single and married households. On the other hand, babies who grow up and enter the workforce end up paying in excess of $50,000 on taxes throughout their careers, so it would end up paying for itself.
Politically, with majorities in the House and Senate, the next two years are the years that anything at all might be able to be done to stop population collapse. There’s about a 90 percent chance Republicans would lose the House majority in 2026. But about a two-thirds chance of keeping the White House, although in modern history, only Harry Truman won the House back in 1948 after losing it.
After that the political cycle kicks in: Democrats would be likely to win the trifecta of the House, Senate and White House in 2032, leaving Republicans without the ability to address fertility (or much of anything else) being in the wilderness likely until 2040.
By then, it will likely be too late. Act now while majorities last, Mr. President. It’s time to get busy!
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government.
Reproduced with permission. Original here: Time To Get Busy! If The Current Congress And President Do Not Address Population Collapse, It Might Never Be Addressed
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