This suggests that the second factor, fear, may be important in explaining America's shortage of staff. Nearly 4m people are not looking for work "because of the coronavirus pandemic", according to official data. And consider which industries are experiencing the most acute worker shortages. Jobs in health care, recreation and hospitality report the highest level of job openings, relative to employment. Many of these involve plenty of person-to-person contact, making their workers especially vulnerable to infection (a study from California earlier this year found that cooks were most at risk from dying of covid-19). By contrast, in industries where maintaining social distancing or being outside is often easier, labour shortages are less of an issue. The number of job openings per employee in the construction industry is lower today than it was before the pandemic.
這表明了第二個因素：擔憂，這可能是解釋美國勞動力短缺的一個重要原因。官方數據顯示，有近400萬人“因為新冠肺炎大流行”而沒有找工作。再看看哪些行業正經歷著最嚴重的勞動力短缺。相對于就業率而言，醫療保健、娛樂和酒店行業的職位空缺最高，其中許多都涉及大量的人際接觸，以致于他們的工作人員特別容易受到感染(今年早些時候加州的一項研究發現，廚師死于新冠的風險最大)。相比之下，在那些更容易保持社交距離或外出的行業，勞動力短缺不是什么大問題。目前建筑業每名雇員的職位空缺數量比大流行前要少。
The final reason for worker shortages relates to the extraordinary reallocation of resources under way in the economy. The headline growth in vacancies represents the rise in opportunities in some industries—say, clerks in DIY stores—as others decline, reflecting changing consumer demands. Analysis by The Economist of over 400 local areas also finds a wide variation in job churn across geographies: the gap between jobs growth in the most buoyant areas and that in struggling ones is twice as wide as it was before the pandemic. Workers may take time to catch up with this creative destruction. A former bartender looking for work in downtown Manhattan, for instance, may not quickly spot and secure a position as a delivery driver in farther-out Westchester.
勞動力短缺的最后一個原因與經濟中正在進行的資源的異常重新配置有關�？杖甭毼坏目傮w增長代表了某些行業機會的增加——比如DIY商店的店員——而其他行業的機會卻在減少，這反映了消費者需求的變化�！督洕鷮W人》對400多個地區的分析也發現，不同地區的就業崗位有很大差異：就業增長最活躍地區和困難地區之間的差距是疫情爆發前的兩倍。工人們可能需要時間來趕上這種創造性破壞。比如，一個在曼哈頓市中心找工作的前酒�？赡軣o法在再遠一點的威徹斯特迅速找到并獲得送貨司機的職位。
As vaccinations continue to reduce hospitalisations and deaths from covid-19, and limit the spread of the disease, Americans' fears about taking high-contact jobs should fade too. But if shortages are to dissipate fully, and the threat of inflation is to be contained, some of the unemployed will also have to take up work in sectors and areas that are new to them.
隨著疫苗的接種，因新冠住院和死亡的人數持續減少，同時該疾病的傳播也得到了限制，美國人對于從事高接觸性工作的恐懼也應該會消退。但是，想要完全消除短缺并控制住通貨膨脹的威脅，一些失業者也將不得不在他們不熟悉的行業和領域工作。
