WH Economic Adviser Bernstein: Difficulty Filling Jobs Is Due to High Demand and That ‘Dates Right Back to the Rescue Plan’

During an interview on MSNBC on Friday, White House Council of Economic Advisers member Jared Bernstein stated that the nearly 2:1 ratio of available jobs to people looking for work and difficulty in filling jobs is due to increased demand, which “dates right back to the Rescue Plan, the American Rescue Plan.”

Host Andrea Mitchell asked, “Now, there’s still such a big demand for workers. You’ve got nearly two jobs available for every person looking for work. What is your read on that? Why is it so hard to fill these jobs?”

Bernstein responded, “Labor demand is remarkably strong. If you look at the payroll numbers that we’ve been talking about, 372,000 last month. That’s a pace of 375,000 for the past three months on average. Here at CEA, we like to average out some of the bips and bops in the monthly data. If you add on top of that over 11 million vacancies, what you quickly understand is that labor demand is really quite high. And look, the basic economics of this are important and interesting. Labor demand is derived demand. It’s demand that comes from people wanting more services, wanting more goods, wanting restaurants, wanting exercise bikes, wanting vacations. And one of the reasons that we have a consumer sector that’s been as strong as it is dates right back to the Rescue Plan, the American Rescue Plan. By getting shots in arms and checks in pockets back when this president first got here, we set the stage for a robust recovery and that meant that consumer strength was going to need labor market workers to fill in behind that. And that’s what we’ve seen.”

He continued, “Now, at the same time, we have elevated prices. And, again, that, at this point, is in no small part being driven by the war in Ukraine. We have to do everything we can to help bring down those prices. But we shouldn’t forget, amidst those inflation concerns, about this very strong consumer backdrop, good household balance sheets, and of course, these very strong and steady job gains.”

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