Global supply chain delays are threatening to disrupt shipments.CHANG: Retail experts on network TV are already saying stuff like this about the holiday shopping season.UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #8: There isn't a lot of inventory, so if you - the longer you wait, the more of a premium you're going to pay on not just shipping, but also the price of those items.CHANG: So yeah, shipping delays are one big part of the problem right now. And even though it's still September.UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #7: Tis the season for holiday panic. Home Depot and IKEA are literally chartering their own shipping vessels to move product faster. It includes bourbons, Champagne, Hennessy and Patron.CHANG: Purchase limits are also newly in place at Costco.UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: No more stocking up on toilet paper, cleaning supplies and other items at Costco.CHANG: And unlike the start of the pandemic, it's not because people are panic-buying.UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: It's because of supply chain issues overseas.CHANG: Many more companies are dealing with the same thing.UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: Supply chain delays.UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #5: And product shortages.UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #6: For all types of goods.CHANG: Nike is warning of delays through next year.
I spoke to an economist at the University of Michigan, Betsey Stevenson - she's a former member of President Obama's White House Council of Economic Advisers - about why this labor shortage is going to continue for a while.All right, so Betsey Stevenson, before we even talk about how jobs and the supply chain are connected, can I just ask you, have you even started your holiday shopping? - because I sure haven't.BETSEY STEVENSON: Oh, well, I actually have been pushing my children to give me their lists for what they might want. This global shortage of labor is also not going away anytime soon. Internationally, COVID spikes have hobbled factories in places like Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.
And I've told them this year that they will get donations to charity only.STEVENSON: And I was like, and you will love them. You know, my kids notoriously tell me on, like, December 15 what they want for the holidays, and then I'm, like, in a mad scramble. OK, so you're totally on top of it.STEVENSON: I'm very worried.
The supply chain is still out of whack. But it's been more than 18 months. But I just want to ask you, why are we even at this point? Like, you know, we all remember how hard it was to get Clorox wipes, masks, toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic.
You feared that everybody else was going to buy toilet paper and there'd be none left for you.STEVENSON: Yeah, your best response to your fear about what everybody else is going to do is going to be to go out there and buy toilet paper. What we saw last year was a toilet paper run. In order to fight COVID, the way we're living our lives, what we want is different.The second reason - it's what economists might call a bank run, right? You fear that everybody else is going to go ahead and take their money out of the bank. You know, we all discovered a brand-new love of masks, and they had to - companies had to change what they were producing in order to meet all these shifts in demand that occurred because our preferences have changed. Last year, we all discovered a brand-new love of hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes, and they just couldn't keep up with that newfound demand that quickly.STEVENSON: But, you know, they've learned, and there's a lot of new companies making hand sanitizer. One can be that we're changing what we consume.
So there are entire factories shut down because too many people in the factory have COVID for it to be able to operate. And most of what we want in life involves people doing something. And it's important for us to realize that COVID's affecting the entire world. And that's just because they don't want these toilet paper runs, which kind of create artificial problems because they're really just about people panicking.Now, the third thing - a lot of companies just can't run things the way they were being run prior to COVID. And, you know, Costco's already got the one toilet paper per person please sign up. And so we see stores now that are like, hey, we've been burned by this before.
So we don't have immigrants coming in, doing some of the jobs that they used to do before. But this global shortage of labor - there are other factors that have contributed to that, right?STEVENSON: One thing to think about with COVID and where are the workers - and I think countries around the world are struggling with this - is there's been also a reduction in movement of people. So yes, deaths from COVID are certainly a factor. And because they're sick and dying, they're not making computer chips or they're not making cars or they're not making clothes.CHANG: All right.
That means people might not want to do that job anymore, or they might be demanding higher pay in order to do that job. And those characteristics have maybe made the job more dangerous, less pleasant. We're also seeing that job - the characteristics of jobs have changed. But it's not obviously just immigration.
People are quitting jobs.STEVENSON: And job openings are also at an all-time high.STEVENSON: The great thing about there being so many openings out there is that means there's lots of opportunities for you as a worker. Quits are at an all-time high right now. So people want to hire, but people also want to change jobs.
And they can afford to hold out for better wages because there are so many opportunities out there. They're looking for better opportunities, and they're holding out for better wages. We're seeing a lot of them changing occupations. And we're seeing a lot of workers changing industries.
So you don't want to be hiring more workers because you can't even keep the ones that you have busy because you're not getting the supplies in. But maybe you're a construction site and you've got the workers to lay the bricks, but you don't have the bricks. Maybe can't find enough workers to complete the job. And so they can be creating their own disruption. Workers themselves are part of the supply chain.
There's a lot of churn in the job market, as we were talking about, as people are rethinking all of their options. And I think that it's also the case that customers are changing what they want to buy, and they're still trying to figure some of that out.CHANG: So let me ask you. So there's just a lot of turmoil in the labor market right now and turmoil in the product market.
What do you think? What is it going to take for people to get back to work?STEVENSON: I think partially we don't know what the new normal is going to be.
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