Page 210 - Psychology of Money - Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

And then what?

COBACOBA
What were they going to do next?

Where were they going to work?

Where were they going to live?

Those were the most important questions of the day, for two reasons. One,
no one knew the answers. Two, if they couldn’t be answered quickly, the
most likely scenario—in the eyes of many economists—was that the
economy would slip back into the depths of the Great Depression.

Three forces had built up during the war:

Housing construction ground to a halt, as virtually all production capacity
was shifted to building war supplies. Fewer than 12,000 homes per month
were built in 1943, equivalent to less than one new home per American city.
Returning soldiers faced a severe housing shortage.

The specific jobs created during the war—building ships, tanks, and planes
—were very suddenly not necessary after it, stopping with a speed and
magnitude rarely seen in private business. It was unclear where soldiers
could work.

The marriage rate spiked during and immediately after the war. Soldiers
didn’t want to return to their mother’s basement. They wanted to start a
family, in their own home, with a good job, right away.

This worried policymakers, especially since the Great Depression was still a
recent memory, having ended just five years prior.