[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: A volcanic eruption in the South
Pacific headlines today's show.
I'm Carl Azuz for CNN 10.
And we're taking you to an archipelago named Tonga.
Located about 1,100 miles Northeast of New Zealand,
Tonga is a small island nation.
Its land area is less than a third the size of Rhode Island.
Its population is around 105,000.
And most of them live on the main island of Tongatapu.
It's about 40 miles South of where the eruption took place.
The country's government declared a state of emergency
after Saturday's explosion.
Experts think it might have been the biggest
eruption in more than 30 years.
Satellite images and pictures from the air
show trees, homes, and fields covered in ash.
And on Tonga's main island, it looks like some buildings
have collapsed.
But all of this is only part of the problem.
The eruption caused a tsunami, sending massive ocean
waves across the Pacific.
Tonga's prime minister says some of these waves
were almost 50 feet high.
These are tremendous forces of water
they reportedly destroyed all the houses
on at least one Tongan island.
Other areas look like they've been devastated as well.
It's just impossible to know how bad
the damage is because communication
lines were cut off.
Getting help to Tonga has been hampered by damage
to the capital's airport.
But officials say, cleanup crews are making
progress and fixing that.
New Zealand has sent two Royal Navy ships to the islands.
They're carrying relief supplies and a helicopter.
And they're expected to arrive by the end of the week.
All of Tonga's Western islands are volcanic.
So this kind of activity is relatively common here.
But an eruption and tsunami on this scale
have caused major problems on Tonga and far beyond.
TOM SATER: A first look at the damage, surveillance planes
from Australia and New Zealand take to the skies
to try to assess just how bad the damage is in Tonga,
after an underwater volcano erupted over the weekend,
triggering tsunami warnings throughout the Pacific,
with some waves reaching as far as Peru and the United States.
- We know water is an immediate need.
TOM SATER: Countries like New Zealand,
Australia, and China say, they are standing by to send aid.
But the scale of the devastation in Tonga is still unknown.
Scientists say, Saturday's eruption
could be the worst volcanic eruption the Pacific
has experienced in decades.
Just a day before, the volcano belted out an anonymous warning
of what was to come, shooting ash
and smoke some 20 kilometers in the air.
But it was the ferocity of the next day's eruption
that unleashed waves of water around the world.
In Tonga, the swells, at time, reached heights
of more than a meter high.
No mass casualties have been reported so far.
One British woman is reported dead.
But the full impact of the volcanic blast
is yet to be seen, since the country has been largely
cut off from the outside world.
The government says phone networks are working again,
but international communication is limited because of damage
to an undersea cable, which could take more than a
week to repair.
That's making it hard for some aid agencies
to plan their next move.
ALEXANDER MATHEOU: We're roughly thinking up to 80,000
people could be affected.
But how many of them are seriously affected?
We don't know.
TOM SATER: Over the weekend large waves
also hit the coast of Fiji, some 800 kilometers away.
Tsunami warnings and advisories were
issued in parts of New Zealand, Japan, Canada,
and the West Coast of the US.
Coastal cities in Peru were inundated with knee-deep water
trapping people on the streets.
Police say, two people died due to the abnormally high waves.
A force of nature felt for thousands of kilometers.
Officials say, they hope they'll soon get a better picture
of what happened in Tonga, where not even the volcanic island
itself was spared.
Satellite imagery shows it has now largely sunk into the sea.
Tom Sater, CNN.
CARL AZUZ: 10 second trivia.
Who is the current US Secretary of Labor?
Marty Walsh, Eugene Scalia, Elaine Chao, or Janet Yellen.
On March 22nd of last year, the Senate confirmed Marty
Walsh as Secretary of Labor.
The US economy is in a strange place.
Wages have gone up, especially in lower paying jobs like those
in hotels or restaurants.
But in many cases, what people get
paid is not keeping up with inflation.
The rise in prices and drop in buying power that's
at its highest rate in decades.
The US unemployment rate, a percentage of American workers
who don't have a job, that's at 3.9%,
its lowest point since the pandemic hit.
And that would normally be a good thing
but America still has a shortage of workers.
In some cases, the jobs that are available
are different than the ones people are seeking
or they don't pay as much.
Critics of vaccine requirements say,
they're keeping workers away.
And some people only want jobs with a work-from-home option.
Here are some other reasons.
JON SARLIN: Where have the workers gone?
It's a question that politicians,
economists, journalists, all have been asking.
Right now, the unemployment rate is low.
People are quitting their jobs in record numbers.
The time that it takes to fill an open position
is the highest that it's been in decades.
So what's really going on?
Here are four reasons behind the labor shortage.
The first reason, daycare.
If you have younger kids, right now,
there's a shortage of daycare workers.
And that's even if you can afford it with costs
rising across the board.
Older kids were stuck at home during the beginning
of the pandemic, learning remotely.
Even now, some schools are adopting
a hybrid model, which requires students to stay
at home some of the time.
If kids aren't in school, someone has to be
at home looking after them.
Inevitably, the burden of child care falls more on women.
In one survey, women cited as the second highest reason
for not getting a job as having to take care of someone,
a child or a parent.
The same survey, men cited it as nearly the last.
The cost and complications of being
a parent during a pandemic has led people
to weigh the pros and cons of getting
a job for staying at home.
For many, getting a job just isn't worth it.
The next reason, immigration.
So in the US, we've seen immigration
rates plummet due to COVID restrictions
and processing delays.
With fewer immigrants coming into the country,
there are fewer immigrants able to enter the workforce.
And in some industries, that's had a profound effect.
Take agriculture.
In the US, immigrants make up about 13% of the population,
but 73% of the agriculture industry.
Fewer immigrants, fewer workers.
The next reason, benefits.
Now, this is by far the most controversial
of all the various reasons.
There's a huge debate going on right now amongst politicians,
economists, policymakers, all about what kind of in effect
the various COVID government benefits have had
on the workforce, things like extended unemployment benefits,
the stimulus checks, the child tax credits.
Now, if you ask a business owner,
they will say, yes, it's had a huge effect.
We just can't compete with the government
sending out checks, especially with low wage workers.
But on the other hand, many of those emergency benefits
have already ended.
The stimulus checks were worn off.
They've already been spent by people.
The extended unemployment benefits, in many states,
have been unextended.
And yet, we're still seeing many workers decide to stay at home.
The next reason, retirements.
Baby boomers are trading in their desk chairs
for beach chairs.
Our labor force is getting older.
Over the last two decades, the average age of the worker
has gone up three years.
And population growth, immigration,
all haven't worked fast enough to counterbalance that trend.
So we're left with fewer workers in the workforce.
So in some ways, this was a trend that's
been going on for a long time.
But COVID has supercharged it.
In the third quarter of 2021, more than half
of the population aged 55 and older are retired.
And unlike the last recession, where
we saw housing prices plummet, now,
we're seeing housing prices boom,
alongside the stock market.
And old people are statistically more
likely to own these stocks and houses
that are now worth more money.
So more money means more retirement.
CARL AZUZ: On December 6, 1945, in the aftermath of World War
II, a US Army Sergeant stationed in Germany
wrote a letter to his mother in the states.
Nothing unique about that, except that his letter got
lost in the mail.
And it didn't turn up until 2021 at a US postal facility
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The man who wrote it, John Gonsalves,
had passed away six years before that.
But the Postal Service tracked down
his widow Angelina, who'd shared 61 years of marriage
to John after the war.
And the letter was delivered to her home in Massachusetts
76 years after Sergeant Gonsalves wrote it.
ANGELINA GONSALVES: I couldn't believe it.
And then just his handwriting and everything, you know,
it was just so amazing.
CARL AZUZ: You can't say we mailed that in.
It's an amazing story to the letter.
As it unfolded, you could read how it was signed in history,
sealed with sincerity, delivered decades later, yet still
by hand, just like it was written,
and still stamped for the low price
of $0.06, an extraordinarily special delivery.
I'm Carl Azuz, delivering today's show to Barnegat High
School in Barnegat, New Jersey.
Our YouTube channel is the only place we look
for the schools we mentioned.
That's youtube.com/cnn10.