I’m seeing places that say they’re short on coins, how does this happen? I looked it up and I’m still confused.
In: Economics
There is a pretty significant coin shortage in the US.
During COVID, people cut way back on using change, because coins are always sorta germy. They took change from purchases, and just tossed it in a jar at home.
As the economy has started up, those jars aren’t making it to the bank at a sufficient rate. Coins last many years, the mint plans on 30 years, which makes them much better than paper money (about 1-2 years). So if 10% of the coins go into a drawer, that’s 3 years worth of extra production. The mint would need 5 years to replace those coins, so they really, really hope that people will start returning them to the bank.
For the past 10 years there has been a penny problem, because people are apparently throwing pennies in the trash. The mint doesn’t like that, as it costs much more than a penny to make one and that doesn’t count the cost of additional penny-making machines.
Please give your coins another chance to get to the bank, or spent, please.
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