https://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomer-retirement-surge-spark-forever-labor-shortage-jobs-workers-2023-5

But the boomers, unlike their parents, didn't have many babies themselves. The pill and the legalization of abortion sent fertility rates cratering — from 3.7 babies per woman in 1960 to 1.8 babies a decade and a half later. For a few decades, an influx of women and immigrants into the workforce kept the labor pool expanding. But by 2000, the rising supply of female workers reached its peak. And after Donald Trump took office, immigration took a nosedive. That meant there were no new workers left to hire, just as the first of the baby boomers were starting to retire.

Then COVID-19 put the labor shortage into hyperdrive. Immigration came to a standstill, the boomer retirement wave began in earnest, and millions of younger boomers decided to tap into the stock boom and retire early.

The Congressional Budget Office projects the potential labor force to expand by a mere 3.6% between 2022 and 2031 — one-eighth of the pace in the 1970s. Over the following decade, that growth is projected to slow even more, to 2.9%. That means employers face decades of an essentially stagnant labor pool.

But here's the thing about this new age of labor scarcity: Employers aren't going to take it lying down. The labor shortage makes workers more expensive, and that's not a price companies are willing to pay.

That means the Forever Labor Shortage will be more an ongoing battle than an enduring peace. Power never changes hands without a struggle. Millions of workers are going to benefit from the new demographic shift — but the greater the reward to employees, the greater the backlash from employers will be.