The signs of the times are everywhere: “We're hiring!”
Everywhere you go and in every profession there are job opportunities unlike I can ever remember.
This is especially true in the hospitality industry. Restaurants seem to be hit especially hard. Almost every single restaurant owner is complaining about the same thing, “I can’t find people to work.”
So the million dollar question is, or should I say trillion dollar question is, why?
After the Covid shutdowns which crippled so many businesses it seems that the financial bailout from the Federal government and the States, meant to keep people afloat, has left employers adrift without enough people to staff their post Covid-19 revival.
Kevin Battle and I asked Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf this week if he planned on changing the additional unemployment compensation schedule to run to September. He said flatly, “No.”
It has been suggested that people are getting enough money to not work right now so they are slow to jump back into their previous jobs.
One restaurateur told me that he believes that some workers have decided that they are not ever going to return to the hospitality industry because of lower wages and the way some patrons treat them.
There does seem to be a tendency for more people snapping out at others due to their own anxieties that were ratcheted up by the past 15 months of “hell.”
I think it’s easy for everyone else to suggest that people in that position get back into the work force but ask yourself what you would do faced with the same dilemma?
This current crisis may have a lingering effect on wages since employers are now forced to up the ante on attracting new employees. Where is everybody?
This week we will explore the reasons that people are now NOT eager to take the leap back into the job pool. (speaking of pools, we don’t have enough lifeguards either.)