Across the US, small and large employers in nearly every industry are asking the same question: where are all the workers?

Desperate to hire as the US economy has rebounded at a historic pace from one of its worst economic contractions, companies are struggling to find enough qualified people to fill a record number of job openings. According to Goldman Sachs, they are contending with the most severe imbalance between labour demand and supply since the second world war. For every unemployed worker, there are 1.9 vacant positions.

The worker shortage is a nationwide phenomenon, but a Financial Times analysis shows it is more acute in some states and industries than others, and that it varies across different segments of the population. Those differences pose an additional threat to US central bankers who already face a fiendishly difficult task: cooling down the “overheated” labour market by raising interest rates without causing substantial economic hardship.