Given that there continues to be more jobs than there are available workers to fill them, where are the workers? a recent survey by NCWorks.gov (North Carolina’s primary source for worker/employment data) asked.

The answer to the question reported in the survey is that there are five primary reasons.

Specifically, the nonprofit’s survey, as of November 2022, determined that the primary factors for those who are not working are the following:

ʉۢ Lack of affordable childcare

• Issues with transportation

• Concerns over affordable housing

• Job appeal

• Retirement

The lack of workers stands in the way of businesses trying to maintain their staffs, or those that are looking to expand.

“At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a significant plunge in the number of both jobs and workers in the local economy. In the time since, jobs have bounced back strongly, while the number of workers entering (or re-entering) the workforce has lagged behind,” the survey stated.

According to NCWorks, there are currently approximately 11,800 available jobs in the four-county Asheville metropolitan area, which includes Madison, Haywood, Henderson and Buncombe counties. However, in the same four county area, there are only 9,100 available workers to fill those jobs.

“Nathan Ramsey at the Mountain Area Workforce Development Board says the shortage of labor underlines why the area needs to keep growing,” Asheville television station WLOS (News 13) reported on Nov. 23. “If our community’s not growing  — and the labor force isn’t growing, then that has really negative consequences for our region.”

Meanwhile, Clark Duncan at the Asheville-Buncombe Chamber of Commerce, told News 13 that much of the responsibility for attracting a qualified workforce is on the employer.

The reasons listed above are myopic, reflecting today’s “woke” worldview that avoids, for the sake of others’ feelings and at the cost of accuracy, the obvious — that too many Americans in general, and local residents in particular, are afflicted with laziness and the lack of a work ethic... to the point that they see those who do work as “losers,” along with their firm sense of entitlement.