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The writer is a columnist who contributes to FT
I’ve learned an invaluable lesson from the coronavirus pandemic: don’t waste time trying to predict the future.
Just as I never thought I would spend a year of my life trapped at home, nor would I have predicted what would happen as pandemic restrictions in the U.S. were reduced. I assumed that many Americans would struggle to find work after closure; instead, jobs struggle to find people. All aspects of life and post-pandemic death are affected by labor shortages.
The cemetery where my late mother and brother are buried, and where I will also lie one day, sent emails last week apologizing for the tall grass and weeds that soiled the graves, saying no they could hire enough workers to mow the lawns.
When my family ventured to one of our first maskless meals, at a Korean barbecue restaurant, we only found two employees serving dozens of diners (note to the chef: we never got the garlic pork chops). ).
Some municipal swimming pools throughout the Midwest had to delay opening or reduce hours due to a shortage of lifeguards. And the Midwest’s main amusement park, Cedar Point, had to close two days a week for most of June due to lack of staff. Cedar Point doubled seasonal wages by up to $ 20 an hour and offered a $ 500 bonus to get its roller coasters rolling and dodgem cars falling full time again.
Julio Cano, commercial director of the Bien Trucha group, which owns Mexican-inspired restaurants outside of Chicago, offers $ 700 to employees who refer anyone for “home-based” work, such as a line cook or dishwasher. They now start at $ 15 an hour, compared to $ 12.50 or $ 13 pre-pandemics.
Cano, who has to close his restaurants for an hour on weekend afternoons so employees can rest, says other companies also suffer: local banks have no employees and “people who take care of the plants in a some of our restaurants are sending a senior management to do it, instead of hourly workers ”.
He worries about the long-term impact of this “bidding war”. “We are fighting for the same limited number of people, competing against Amazon and targeting and losing our workforce to other industries, ”he says.
Jeffrey Korzenik, chief investment strategist at Fifth Third Bank, says he is “surprised” by how quickly the shortage appeared. “I thought it would have taken until at least the end of this year,” he says, adding that the additional unemployment insurance paid to unemployed workers during the pandemic “has clearly played a role” in the shortage.
Economists say many low-wage workers can earn both by raising an increased state and federal pandemic unemployment insurance how they can work. (Full disclosure: Some members of my family get extended benefits). Many states early cancel increased unemployment benefits.
But there are other reasons for labor shortages, Korzenik says. “If you’ve lost a job working in a department store on the magnificent mile of Chicago and the new jobs available are at Joliet [a suburb an hour away], that’s not always right. ”He adds that workers over the age of 65 are also reluctant to re-enter the workforce or retire during the pandemic, and this plays a role in scarcity.
“But it’s been a great year for teen unemployment,” he notes, noting that teens often don’t have unemployment benefits to care for, are less concerned about getting sick with Covid-19 than older workers and rarely have. to pay for daycare. The participation of young people aged 16 to 19 in the US workforce went from an all-time low of 20.9% in April 2020 to 33.2% last month.
But Cano says the teenagers he hires mostly don’t want “homework” like dishwashing, and cemetery staff say jobs in cemeteries aren’t on the list for many young people either. Therefore, adolescents cannot solve the labor shortage on their own.
“I’m afraid where this will end up,” Cano says. There may be more workers returning 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. Certainly, it has already happened.
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