 Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. Coming up on the program, Gregory Stockle reports on labor shortages in the U.S. caused by an aging population. John Russell has a story on how businesses are offering fewer products. Brian Lin has the technology report on President Biden's appearance on TikTok as a part of his reelection campaign. Later, Jill Robbins and Andrew Smith present the lesson of the day, but first... Each day, about 10,000 baby boomers leave the U.S. workforce. Baby boomers are the generation of people born between 1946 and 1964. The COVID-19 pandemic only increased the amount of people retiring as older workers decided to retire early rather than risk getting sick. We're running out of workers. Why? Because baby boomers are retiring and you don't have enough younger workers who are skilled to fill their spots, said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the conference board, a research group. She said the U.S. is going to have labor shortages and she added that the pandemic quickened retirements and made labor shortages more intense. Seljuk Aeron is a senior economist at the conference board. He said the problem is that for every person leaving, only one person is coming into the labor force and a slowed down labor force means limited growth. He said, so one-on-one means that your labor force is not growing, which is going to slow down economic growth as well. The federal government workforce is also expected to be hit hard as more boomers retire. 40% of the federal government is aged 55 or more as of now, so that means that this huge wave of retirements is coming, Aeron says, and you're going to have a difficult time to replace them because there's not enough younger people, especially with the educational requirements that those jobs require. A conference board report looks at industries that are likely to have shortages as older Americans leave the workforce. They include physical labor jobs like personal care, food services, cleaning, and jobs involving repairs and building, among others. Production and transportation jobs will also be affected by retiring baby boomers, but less so. The report finds that the most severe labor shortages will be in health-related jobs as more aging boomers will require personal care. The possibility for labor shortages is mostly lower in jobs that require a college degree. STEM professionals or those working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are at a lower risk of shortages. Jobs that permit remote work will have less intense labor shortages, the report says. Immigration could be a way to lessen the effects of boomers leaving their jobs, Aeron says. Aeron said, that's probably the fastest solution because it takes time to educate a younger person to bring them to that skill level. He said, the fastest solution is just immigration and giving priority to immigrants with those skills that we are going to be lacking. That's number one. He said, number two is to keep baby boomers working by giving them incentives to stay in the workforce. Incentives could include tax and social security policies that do not punish someone who works into their 70s and offering increased freedoms like remote or part-time work to people nearing retirement age. For Chicago-based college professor, Kristen Mariani, retiring baby boomers mean increased opportunities for her students. She said the effect is, it's giving younger people the generations that came after them to become the change makers, the decision makers. Mariani is a professor at the School of the SCART Institute of Chicago. She added that it is important to make sure that the education and the knowledge that is given to these individuals, that they will be able to move forward with these responsibilities. I'm Gregory Stockle. American businesses are reducing the number of products that they offer. The change began before the COVID-19 pandemic. It has only increased in recent months. Coca-Cola used to offer around 400 different kinds of drinks. The beverage company recently decided to discontinue half of them. Among the products cut were Tab, Zico coconut water, Diet Coke feisty cherry, and Odwalla juices. Other American businesses are reducing food offerings from mayonnaise to cereals. Car companies, too, are offering fewer kinds of cars and instead putting more effort into what they think will sell best. Stu Leonard's, a company that operates food stores in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, has cut the number of cereals it offers from 49 in 2019 to 24. Edgewell Personal Care Company, the maker of Chick-Raisers and Banana Boat Sundhand Lotion, has cut some kinds of its antibacterial wipes, called wet ones, among other products. Dollar General, based in Goodlitzville, Tennessee, used to offer six different kinds of mayonnaise. Now it offers two. The consumer is not going to know the difference. Todd J. Vassos, chief of Dollar General, told experts in December. Actually, it's going to make her life a little simpler when she goes to the shelf. Shoppers looking for cars are finding fewer choices as well. Both General Motors and Ford have announced they are limiting the number of option combinations customers can get on their vehicles to reduce manufacturing and purchasing complexity. That is a change of direction from a few years ago when companies aimed to offer more choices. Online shopping caused some to think that more choices lead to better sales, but more choices often do not. Companies started reducing the number of products they offer a year or two before the pandemic. During the pandemic, the reductions increased with companies focusing on necessities as they faced supply problems. After the pandemic, when goods began moving freely again, many businesses discovered less was better. New offerings made up about two percent of products in stores in 2023. That includes products for beauty, footwear, technology, and toys. Market research company Cercana said that number is down from five percent in 2019. Many think the companies are also helping shoppers. Some studies show that fewer choices result in shoppers buying more. In 2000, psychologists Sheena Langer and Mark Lepper published a study that showed limited selection is better for people who are buying things. In their experiment, the researchers found consumers were ten times more likely to purchase jam when the number of jams available was cut down from 24 to 6. Later studies have produced similar findings. Retailers are recognizing that they have to be respectful of shoppers' time, said Paco Underhill, whose company, Enviracell, studies consumer behavior. But retailers cannot just reduce offerings without a plan, said David Berliner of BDO, a business services company. You want to make these cuts so they're not even aware of it, and you want the store to still look full, Berliner said. If you do it too much, you might scare some away. I'm John Russell. U.S. President Joe Biden officially has a presence on TikTok, but his re-election campaign is having to defend its decision to put him on the video-sharing app. That is because his administration has repeatedly warned of national security concerns linked to TikTok. Biden, a Democrat, first appeared on TikTok in a video published Sunday night. The 32nd video showed him answering a series of questions, mostly about Sunday's Super Bowl. U.S. officials have said the decision to put the president on TikTok came from Biden's campaign organization, not the White House. Campaign officials have explained that they see TikTok as a way for Biden, age 81, to connect with younger voters. Last month, a TikTok representative told U.S. lawmakers the app currently had an estimated 170 million active users in the United States. That was up from 150 million a year earlier. Online data company Statista has estimated about 70% of American teenagers are users of TikTok. U.S. officials have long warned that TikTok presents national security concerns. The government has accused TikTok's owner, Chinese company ByteDance, of sharing user data with China's government. Critics have said China could also use TikTok to spread misinformation and that material published on the service can harm the mental health of young users. TikTok denies the accusations. President Biden approved a limited ban on TikTok in December 2022. The ban made it unlawful for most of the federal government's 4 million employees to use the app on devices owned by agencies. On Monday, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. government's position and policies concerning TikTok had not changed. There are still national security concerns about the use of TikTok on government devices and there's been no change to our policy not to allow that. Kirby said White House Press Secretary Kareen Jean-Pierre told reporters election rules barred her from commenting on campaign matters. But when asked about worries that TikTok and similar apps can help spread disinformation, she said it's a concern that we have. A spokesman for Biden's re-election campaign defended the use of TikTok to help get the president's message out. Deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty noted that by Monday afternoon Biden's TikTok video had been watched more than 5 million times. The video, Flaherty said in a statement, demonstrates the campaign's continuing efforts to reach voters in an evolving, fragmented and increasingly personalized media environment. Attempts in Congress to restrict TikTok have not resulted in approved legislation. A number of U.S. states and some universities have banned TikTok on state-issued devices. Several lawmakers criticized the Biden campaign's decision. Among them was Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. He wrote on X that Biden's campaign was bragging about using a Chinese spy app even though Biden signed a law banning it on all federal devices. Republican Senator Joni Ernst also reacted on X expressing concern that the campaign had decided to put Biden on what she described as a dangerous propaganda app. Republican Representative Daryl Issa said, The panic is when the Biden campaign joins TikTok after the White House banned the app from devices a year ago. Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, also expressed his national security concerns about TikTok and criticized the campaign's decision to put Biden on the app. I think that we still need to find a way to follow India, which has prohibited TikTok, Warner said. He added, I'm a little worried about a mixed message. I'm Brian Lin. Brian Lin joins us now to talk more about his technology report. Thanks for being here, Brian. Of course, Dan. Thanks for having me. Your report was about a decision by President Joe Biden's reelection campaign to put him on TikTok in an effort to appeal to younger voters. But the decision has been criticized by many. Are there any signs the campaign might reconsider? So at this point, there has not been any indication of that. The campaign did put out a few statements about the TikTok launch and praised the amount of attention Biden's video was getting. But some political experts have said the decision to put the president on TikTok might have to be reconsidered at some point, especially if criticism of it does not die down. In the end, the campaign will have to weigh whether having Biden on TikTok helps him more than any lasting criticism is hurting him. A lot of the criticism seems to be centered on the campaign's decision being related to an investigative report that suggested Biden suffers from age-related memory issues. Have campaign officials addressed this? So none of the campaign statements I've seen directly link Biden's appearance on TikTok with the observations made by investigators that the president has problems with his memory. But campaign officials have said repeatedly that putting Biden on TikTok, of course, is an attempt to get him to connect with a younger audience. They have made no secret of that and say they hope the move will in fact introduce the president to young people who might not go out and do their own research. Thanks for answering my questions, Brian, and thanks for your report. You're welcome. Thank you, Dan. And now it's time for the lesson of the day on the Learning English podcast. My name is Jill Robbins and I'm joined by Andrew Smith. Hi, Andrew. Hi, Jill. Our lesson is based on our video series Let's Learn English. The series shows Anna Mateo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. Here's Anna introducing herself. Hello, my name is Anna Mateo. In a recent lesson of the day, we explained the differences between the verbs talk and speak. Today, we compare the verbs tell and say. We'll be listening to some of lesson 22, level two of Let's Learn English, to give some examples of these verbs. You know, we often get emails from our audience asking about how to use these two verbs. At first glance, it seems they should work the same way as they have the same meaning. That's not the case, so I'm sure this will be very helpful. Tell us more, Andrew. Okay. Here's the main idea to help your English. We put indirect object pronouns or nouns directly after the verb tell. Here's some examples. Tell me the truth. Tell me the truth. Tell her the answer. Tell them what we said. Tell them what we said. But with the verb say, we can't put those pronouns directly after the verb. Listen to Andrew give these examples. She said to me. What did he say to her? Say to them. Say to them. Did you hear the difference between tell and say? With the verb say, we must use the preposition to before the pronoun. And most of the time, we don't even use indirect object pronouns like in this example. He said that I need to finish the job by tomorrow. Just to be clear. The pronoun I is a subject pronoun. The pronoun me can be either an indirect object pronoun or an object pronoun. Now let's listen to the beginning of lesson 22 of level two. In lesson 21, Anna visited a store that sells art and objects found in the trash or garbage. Now Anna has tried to make art or special objects from the things she found. Try to listen for the difference between the verbs tell and say. Welcome to class, Anna. I can't wait to see your trash. Okay. All right. This net with the, oh, that's got a hole in it. Tell me about that. This net said to me, Anna, I used to catch stuff. I don't anymore. So use me, Anna, that's what it said. It said use me, Anna. Okay. So it's a plastic helmet. This plastic helmet said, Anna, hey, Anna, find me a head. Okay. And a broken toy. This broken toy, this broken toy said to me, it said, Anna, help me find fun. Help me, Anna, is what it said. Anna, this stuff is not saying anything to you or me or anyone. It's what we like to call in the business garbage. We heard Sue say, tell me about that. And we heard Anna say, this broken toy said to me, it said, Anna, you can hear how Anna used the preposition to after the verb say. And of course, the objects don't really talk to Anna. Anna just means that she was interested in the objects in a special way. As we explained in our previous podcast lesson, we can say that the objects spoke to her. And notice that the past tense of say is pronounced said. You can remember this pronunciation by thinking of words that rhyme with said, such as red and head. And what about the past tense of tell? Let's listen to more of lesson 22 to hear that verb. Anna, what happened? I told you to wait for me. Actually, you told me not to start without you. The verb tell changes to told in the past tense. It sounds like Anna had some problems following directions in the class. She sure did. Our listeners should really watch the video to see just how badly Anna followed directions. Yeah, I think it's pretty funny. Anna ends up with pieces of paper glued all over her. Okay, now we're going to move to the last part of our lesson. To learn how to use the verbs tell and say correctly, it can be helpful to simply hear several examples. So Jill and I are going to read the following chant, which is kind of like a poem. Are you ready, Jill? Ready. Okay, here's the chant. I can tell you and you can tell her. She can tell them and they can tell him. He can tell us and then we will learn. If everyone said the same thing you did. But if he says something we did not say, then we will know that something's astray. Astray just means wrong or not really right. I can tell you and you can tell her. She can tell them and they can tell him. And if he tells us the same thing we said, what I told you is what you told her. And what she told them is what they told him. Isn't it great when everyone listens? That way you don't need to say it again. But maybe this poem's a little bit tricky. I think they just might need to hear it once more. And that's exactly what Rewind is for. Okay, okay, I get what you mean. Now let's continue before I turn to Gray. No comment on that, so take it away. Now we will tell you just what to say to family and friends and those who will listen. You can learn English by starting today with programs we make here at VOA. Our website is learningenglish.voanews.com. And remember, you can write to us at learningenglish at voanews.com. You can ask us questions or comment on our lessons. Tell us what you think about our programs. Or tell us something about yourself and what you enjoy. We hope you enjoyed today's lesson about the verbs say and tell. And Anna's effort to make treasure out of trash. Thanks for listening. Say goodbye, Andrew. Goodbye, Andrew. Very funny. I'm Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.