The Lack of Candidates

I have discovered there is a name for the candidate shortage phenomena we are all going through, Sansdemic. A sansdemic is the lack of people, or the lack of enough people, to fulfill the work force openings that exist. For the last year, people have been trying to blame the COVID Pandemic, but the signs of the upcoming sansdemic have been building for years. We are suffering the beginning phases of a great sansdemic or a demographic drought that is projected to worsen throughout the century and will impact every business and organization.

In February 2020, before the COVID crisis started, a record 70% of US businesses reported a talent shortage. That was more than double the 32% of businesses who reported difficulty finding talent just five years earlier in 2015.

People working or actively seeking work, has dropped to lows we haven’t seen since the recession of the mid-1970s. Businesses and Organizations across the country are frantically posting for jobs, but simply cannot find enough candidates to fill all the open positions.

At the same time, postsecondary education enrollment has also dropped. Typically, economic down turns will send people rushing back to school to gain new knowledge and skills, but not so this time. Freshman enrollment has fallen an unprecedented 13%. Academia has become a giant that exists, not to help students determine and achieve careers they naturally will succeed at, but a mega money-making industry that has no concern about the financial nightmare they leave their graduates in. The student loan concept of “have a great college experience and pay for it later” has created a generation of people with so much debt they cannot start families, which fuels the demographic drought of the future.

Here are the three conditions driving this sansdemic:

• The exodus of baby boomers retiring. Last year, the number of baby-boomer retirees increased by over a million. The largest generation in US history remains a powerful force of key workers that still hold millions of roles. Their departure from the labor force in the next few years will eliminate staff in crucial positions with decades of experience that will be hard to fill.

• Record-low number of people looking for jobs that are in the normal working age group. Thousands have voluntarily opted out of looking for work. The children and grandchildren of baby boomers are not replacing the boomers who are leaving the workforce.

• The lowest birth rates in US history. The national birth rate, already in decline, hit a 35-year low in 2019, and the relative size of the working-age population has been shrinking since 2008. The boomers normally had 3 to 4 siblings. The families in the last few generations have 1 or 2 children. This means that over the next generation, talent shortages will only compound.

A sharp reduction in the work force will have enormous implications on the lifestyle we all take for granted. The ability to order a package and see it in a couple days, to buy a cup of coffee on your way to work without waiting 20 minutes, to have our garbage collected, to fill a prescription, to receive nursing care, to call a plumber or electrician in an emergency. The list goes on and on. All these functions depend on an army of workers that simply cannot be replaced if they were never born.

So, what do we do? I wrote a blog in 2015 about “Being an Employer of Choice”. (You can read it and other similar blogs on this site).  In short, you need to answer the question “Why would a candidate choose to work for you when they have multiple choices of organizations to work for”. The easiest way to find the answer is to ask your current long-term staff why they are still there.

The candidate shortage is not going to go away. I suggest we all get ready for it.