I know two young people with degrees who are both working, but very much underemployed and not happy about it. Both want to work from home, and don’t want to take an office job. So both are doing ‘gig’ work. One is classifying data for AI use, and the other is doing translations (has a degree in linguistics). Both are earning less than half of what they’d get with a ‘traditional’ job given their education. Also, ‘gig’ work leaves little opporunity for promotion and improvement and training. And there are no benefits.
Neither of them can come close to making enough money to truly start out on their own. They would not show up in the unemployment statistics, yet they are definitely not happy with the way things are.
Also not included in the unemployment figures are the recently retired and the people who have dropped out of the statistics because they stopped actively looking for a job and are not receiving benefits.
The boomers retiring has another effect: The people retiring are highly experienced, and the people replacing them are not. So while the absolute numbers of workers might not change, their suitability for various jobs has.
Also, the unemployment numbers are driven down by massive government hiring and expenditure. In the private sector, things aren’t going as well. This is especially true in Canada, which is becoming a bifurcated country. The people connected to power and the ‘elite’ class (academics, CEOS, white collar gov’t workers) are doing great, while the working class is suffering. Just like during the pandemic. This might be why the working class is shifting to the right while the Left becomes the party of the elites and the protected classes they favor.
One last factor: The younger generations are nowhere near as materialist as the Boomers, so they may settle for jobs with lower pay but better conditions, or settle for part-time or gig work. If so, it may be hard to fulfill positions for difficult or uncomfortable jobs, even for high pay. That’s another form of mismatch between what the market needs and what people will do, which could help explain full employment while the economy suffers.