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The writer is an assistant columnist for FT
I learned a unique lesson from the coronavirus pandemic: don’t waste time trying to predict the future.
As I never thought I would spend a year of my life stuck at home, nor did I anticipate what would happen as the US pandemic cuts eased. I assumed that many Americans would be locked up after finding work; instead, the job is making an effort to find people. It is caused by labor shortages in all aspects of life and death after the pandemic.
My mother and brother are buried in the cemetery, and when I lie down one day, they sent emails last week apologizing for the tall weeds and weeds that confused the graves, saying they couldn’t hire enough staff to mow the weeds.
When my family dared to make one of the first meals without a mask, at a local barbecue restaurant in Korea, we found only two staff members serving dozens of diners (note to the chef: we never got our garlic pork chops).
Some municipal swimming pools in the Midwest had to be opened or cut off due to poor lifeguards. Cedar Point Midwest’s main amusement park had to close two days a week during June because there were few staff. Cedar Point doubled their seasonal salaries to $ 20 an hour and offered a $ 500 signing bonus for their mountain hiking coasters and dodgem cars to fall all the time.
On the outskirts of Chicago, which owns Mexican-inspired restaurants, Tru Tru Bien’s Julio Cano offers $ 700 for anyone to work on the “back of the house” as an online cook or dishwasher. ”These now start at $ 15 an hour, $ 12.50 or $ 13. compared to the previous pandemic.
Cano, who has to close his restaurants on weekend evenings to allow staff to rest on weekend evenings, says other businesses are also suffering: local banks have no offices and “those who take care of plants in one of our restaurants.” they’re doing top management for that, instead of the hourly staff. ”
He is concerned about the long-term impact of this “bidding war”. “We’re fighting for the same very limited people, competing Amazon and targeting and losing our workforce to other industries, ”he says.
Jeffrey Korzeni, the chief investment strategist for the Fifth Third Bank, said he was “surprised” at how quickly the shortage appeared. “I thought it would have to be at least until the end of this year,” he says, noting that the additional unemployment insurance paid to workers unemployed in the pandemic has “clearly” played into shortages.
Economists say many low-wage workers can earn as much from the increased state and federal pandemic unemployment insurance working as best they can. (Full disclosure: Some members of my family are reaping greater benefits). Many states are initially breaking the high unemployment benefits.
Korzenik says there are other reasons for the shortage of labor. “If you’ve lost a job at Chicago’s Magnificent Mile department store and the new jobs available are at Joliet [a suburb an hour away], that is not always appropriate. “He added that even workers over the age of 65 are not favorites to re-enter or have retired in a pandemic, which is important in the shortcomings.
“But it’s been a great year for teen unemployment,” he noted, noting that teens often don’t have unemployment benefits to fall back on, that they care less about older workers than being sick with Covid-19 and that they rarely have to pay for child care. The participation of young people between the ages of 16 and 19 among U.S. workers rose from a historic low of 20.9 percent in April 2020 to 33.2 percent last month.
Cano says most of the teens he hires don’t want jobs that can clean dishes “at the back of the house,” and cemetery workers say cemetery jobs aren’t the top spots on many young people’s lists either. So teenagers can’t fix staff shortages on their own.
“I’m afraid where it’s going to end,” Cano says. More workers may return to the market when federal unemployment benefits end in September, “but I’m afraid we’re creating a bubble… That’s not sustainable.”
Once again the future may surprise us. It has certainly happened before.
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