Federal Reserve: Vaccine Mandates Hurting Employment, Exasperating Supply Chain Crisis

Vaccine mandates are hurting economic employment, which has resulted in exasperating President Biden’s supply chain crisis, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.

“Firms reported high turnover, as workers left for other jobs or retired. Child-care issues and vaccine mandates were widely cited as contributing to the problem, along with COVID-related absences,” the Fed stated in the Beige Book.

Biden mandated in September all companies with more than 100 employees must force their employees to become vaccinated or submit to cumbersome coronavirus testing. Though the mandate has not gone into effect, some companies have started to compel their employees to become vaccinated at the risk losing their jobs.

Such as been the case for Southwest Airlines, for example. But the airline reversed the policy this week presumably due to a lawsuit by Southwest employees over the mandate.

However, not all employees of large companies have won out over their employer’s mandate. “Thousands of police officers and firefighters in cities like Chicago and Baltimore are also at risk of losing their jobs in the coming days under mandates that require them to report their vaccination status or submit to regular coronavirus testing,” Reuters reported Tuesday.

Law enforcement officers in Washington state have also met the same fate as those in Chicago. “Washington State Patrol announced 127 of its employees have separated from employment due to the mandate,” Fox 13 in Seattle reported Wednesday.

Companies and organizations that are firing their employees over Biden’s mandate, set to go into effect in December, are also adding to the supply chain crisis.

Partner of West Monroe’s Operations Excellence, Jeremy Tancredi, told SupplyChainDive.com that Biden’s mandate could have “an undesirable impact” on warehouse workers, among other sectors.

“It is almost impossible to find workers,” Tancredi explained. “We know we have a lot of clients who are running north of 50% temp labor right now, which is just a crazy high number.”

The supply chain crisis has caused prices to increase for consumers. Economic reports indicate food costs have greatly risen since 2020, with meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increasing by 10.5 percent. The food shortage is driven by the supply chain crisis, which may be caused by a lack of truckers to carry away freight from shipping ports.

The full ports are preventing ships from offloading their cargo, further delaying their return voyage to areas of the world such as Asia to pick up more freight. But even if there were enough truck drivers to move the freight to storage facilities, warehouses are full and becoming increasingly more costly.

As the supply chain crisis is impacting American families and workers who are struggling to overcome the increase in food prices, bare hardware shelves, and a lack of emergency medical supplies, Biden is looking to reduce the crisis to improve his economic polling numbers.

A Wednesday poll revealed 26 percent of American voters say Biden is responsible for the rising inflation, and 41 percent of Democrats agree that inflation is a result of Biden’s failed policies. Sixty-one percent of independents and 85 percent of Republican voters believe the same. Overall, only 17 percent strongly approved of Biden’s economic record.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø