The rearview mirror held up to the 1918 influenza pandemic by a definitive historical account offers unexpected but valuable insights into a problem plaguing the modern era — an alarming workforce shortage.
"Pale Rider," a book by Laura Spinney, debuted in 2017, 99 years after the "Spanish flu" encircled the globe and three years before COVID-19 would bring the world to a halt in 2020. The most intriguing chapters are those that examine the 1918 pandemic's short- and long-term ripple effects.
If the past is prologue, expect a baby boom as we pull out of the current pandemic. Fertility rates rebounded "spectacularly'' as influenza ebbed a century ago, Spinney writes. Another implication if past patterns hold: The labor pool will be shallower than it should be for some time.
