Help Wanted: Labor Shortage Brings New Business Hiring Tactics

ACROSS AMERICA — Businesses across a wide range of industries are still grappling with a common struggle 17 months into the coronavirus pandemic: finding people to work.

It’s a multi-front battle in the restaurant industry, and one few saw coming earlier this year, according to Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association.

“When it comes to recruiting workforce, in January, 8 percent of restaurant operators rated recruitment and retention of workforce as their top challenge. By June, that number had risen to 75 percent,” Riehle said in a statement to Patch.

Chicken-N-Spice, a local favorite in Joliet, Illinois, had to significantly cut its hours despite people flocking there in droves in the months after coronavirus restrictions were lifted.

“It’s been out of necessity,” owner Pat Remier told Joliet Patch’s John Ferak. “We just can’t find people that want to work. It’s just crazy.”

At The Neighbors Bar and Grille in Waukesha, Wisconsin, kitchen hours were also limited earlier in the summer, closing every day at 9 p.m., due to the hiring shortage.

Chris Potratz, general manager of the restaurant, told Waukesha Patch’s Karen Pilarski that he has “basically been looking since we reopened for full service after the shutdown was lifted.” He had bad luck with recruiting sites, and applicants who set up interviews did not show up.

“The extra benefit from the unemployment has impacted this industry dramatically,” Potratz said. “Probably more than any other industry. With the extra benefit, people are being paid more to stay home instead of go to work."

Potratz is referring to the additional $300 a week some on unemployment receive as a result of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Riehle cited it as one of the reasons restaurants in particular are struggling to hire.

“With fewer people in the workforce, the stimulus supports still in place, worker safety concerns, the need for caregivers to remain at home, and much greater competition with other industries for workers, operators are returning to pre-pandemic recruitment techniques for hiring,” he told Patch.

Recruitment techniques include one in Framingham, Massachusetts, where the Neko's of New York restaurant has offered $1,000 bonuses to new hires.

And in Salem, Massachusetts, a hiring incentive program for hospitality workers gives them a $400 gift card after six weeks of starting a new job and another $400 gift card if they keep it through the town’s busy Halloween season.

Mary Sarris, executive director of the Salem-based MassHire North Shore Workforce Board, told Salem Patch’s Scott Souza, “it’s a good time to be a worker.”

“You will have lots and lots of opportunities and can decide where you want to work,” Sarris said.
It’s in part due to the economy surpassing its pre-pandemic level.

Pent-up demand from consumers driving growth after a year of lockdowns has led to robust consumer spending, according to The Associated Press.

Consumer spending advanced at an 11.8 percent annual rate last quarter. Spending on services, including restaurant meals and airline tickets, expanded at a 12 percent rate, up from a 3.9 percent gain in the January-March period as vaccinations encouraged more Americans to shop, travel and eat out.

Yet unemployment, at 5.9 percent, is still well above the 3.5 percent rate just before the pandemic struck.

Hiring struggles are seen well beyond the restaurant industry. They are apparent among family-owned businesses and public entities alike.

The overall economy remains about 6.8 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic total, according to Bureau of Labor and Statistics data.

At the end of May, 92.1 million jobs were vacant across America. That’s nearly as many job openings as people living in New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C., combined.

In northwest suburban Chicago, area pools and park districts are struggling to find lifeguards to safely reopen with pre-COVID-19 hours.

Dolphin Cove Family Aquatic Center in Carpentersville, Illinois, opened with shorter weekday hours due to the shortage, with hopes of hiring more throughout the season.

"Some parents are concerned about COVID in general and are trying to protect their families from it, and there does seem to be a level of our anxiety out there in the teenage population," Mike Eschenbach, of the three-pool Dundee Township Park District, told the Chicago Tribune.

And trash service could soon be affected in Bradenton, Florida.

The city had to reorganize its solid waste collection schedule due to a CDL driver shortage. Instead of collecting yard waste and recycling every week, the same crews will handle both, as service gets cut in half to every other week.

Trash is already piling up in Baltimore County, Maryland.

Michael Beichler, bureau chief of the county’s solid waste management department, told FOX-45 the county’s trash hauler is “having a rather common issue at this time.”

“Lack of staffing,” he said. “From unemployment compensation to people just who don’t want to do the work anymore.”

Baltimore County’s school bus service needs to find 200 more people before kids head back to the classrooms later this month.

Rudy Saunders, director of transportation for Baltimore County’s public school system, said the pandemic has further worsened a bus driver shortage that has been prevalent since 2019.

Schools in nearby Anne Arundel, Howard and Carroll counties in Maryland are facing similar challenges.

"This is probably the most significant job in the school system,” Saunders told WTOP. “Teachers do great lessons, and you know principals put together great schools, but if we don't get them there, no one will know."