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YOUR MONEY with Mark: How COVID-19 vaccine mandates impact the supply chain crisis

If you thought the supply chain crisis was bad, it might soon get worse.

There is a lot of debate surrounding if the COVID-19 vaccine should be required. While many argue this is an issue that impacts YOUR HEALTH, some say it also impacts YOUR MONEY.

When it comes to the federal mandate, the rules recently released state that if an employee is exempt from getting vaccinated, they can undergo weekly testing for the virus. However, that is not an option for everyone.

"For most health care workers and federal employees, there is no testing option - they must get fully vaccinated," Mark Grywacheski with the Quad Cities Investment Group explained during Good Morning Quad Cities' "Your Money with Mark" on Monday, Nov. 8. "For workers that don’t comply, they risk being fired or do many simply choose to retire. What we don’t know is if this number of workers forced to leave their job is in the hundreds of thousands or could it be in the millions? And that could potentially have a massive impact on the labor market that, for most of the year, has been struggling to meet expectations."

In fact, from April through September, the economy added a combined 735,000 fewer jobs than expected by Wall Street. 

Grywacheski said this vaccination mandate could place further strains on the jobs market, which will impact the supply chain issues we're already dealing with:

"We’re already in the most severe labor shortage in U.S. history with over 10.4 million unfilled job openings. Does this mandate suddenly add millions more to this total? This labor shortage has really contributed to these supply chain issues. There’s a lack of workers in the manufacture and transportation of raw materials, component parts and finished goods. This has caused consumer prices to soar and while limiting the availability of goods and services. If this labor shortage does get worse, it could drive prices even higher and further limit the availability of consumer goods and services."

There is some good news, though. In October, 531,000 new jobs were added to the economy, which beat Wall Street's expectations of a 450,000 gain. 

To hear what Mark thinks of that report, watch the video above.

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