Were you short on people to work after World War 2?

Answer 1

Not really, at least not in the United States. America is a big, populous nation, and there had been high unemployment before the war - BETWEEN the wars, we should say. And while there were over a million casualties (300K killed in action, 800K wounded) that was actually a small part of the 150 million total population in the USA. The troops came home, mustered out, and took over the manufacturing jobs that the women had been doing in building aircraft, cars, tanks, and agricultural machinery.

Other nations had it much worse. Germany had been bombed back into the stone age and without American "Marshall Plan" aid, would have suffered horribly in trying to rebuild. There were, in square mile after square mile, no stones standing one upon another. Look at the difference that 50 years of separation made, between prosperous West Germany and impoverished East Germany.

Japan was bombed even more heavily; TWO nuclear weapons, and even worse, the incendiary raids of a thousand enormous B-29 bombers, intent in burning Tokyo to the ground. Japanese soldiers generally did not surrender; they fought often to the last man. Only the American occupation troops providing relief food and building material saved Japan from starvation and extinction. So in the vanquished nations, there were too few people to try to rebuild. There's the American influence for you; we broke it, we helped to fix it.

Answer 2

After World War II, there was a shortage of labor in many countries due to the large number of people who had been killed or injured during the war. Additionally, the return of soldiers to civilian life meant that industries had to compete for workers who were seeking employment. As a result, some countries encouraged Immigration and implemented policies to attract labor from other countries to address the shortage.