When the flow of customers at the Pineapple Grill family restaurant in Texas increased, Pomai Uyehara found himself in serious trouble: he could not get enough workers.
That’s when it occurred to him to offer a $ 300 bonus for the chef job and a $ 150 bonus for the waiters, in addition to other monetary incentives depending on job performance.
These same types of deals to attract employees are everywhere.
Not only have wages had to go up, but companies are also offering to pay for college degrees, health insurance, more flexible hours, bonuses and even money just to attend an interview.
Is that as the economic recovery progresses, businesses need more workers.
So much so that job vacancies in June reached a record 10.1 million, according to figures from the Department of Labor.
The most urgent to get labor are restaurants, hotels, food chains, supermarkets, retail businesses and the entertainment industry.
Goodbye to the old occupation
At 21, Addison Bueide says she will not return to work as a waitress at a private club in Austin City.
“The pandemic was really tough, especially because my bosses didn’t take the use of masks very seriously and let people go without them.”
Like her, there are many other people whose job forces them to work indoors or in constant contact with clients, leaving them exposed to a higher level of contagion.
And as the delta variant of the coronavirus has caused a rise in cases in the country, the labor market is moving in quite unpredictable terrain.
“All my employees are working 6 or 7 days a week because we lack staff,” Carlos Gazitua, president of restaurant chain Sergio ‘sa Florida, told BBC World.
The dishwasher he has managed to hire for the kitchens of his restaurants is being paid $ 19 an hour, when before the pandemic employees with this function used to receive no more than $ 12.
The phenomenon has the authorities with the radar on.
“We are now lagging behind our peers in labor force participation, which is not where we want to be as a country,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said at a Senate banking committee hearing in mid-July.
“We need to work as a society to make sure people find their way back into the workforce.”
At the heart of the debate over the reasons for the phenomenon are two major positions.
Those who believe that people do not want to work because they prefer to live on the social benefits that the government gives to the unemployed as a result of the pandemic ($ 300 a week).
And those who argue that the issue is much more complex.
Although most of the vacant jobs are those that have traditionally paid the lowest wages, the shortage of workers has certainly permeated wider sectors of society.
Precisely because it is not a homogeneous mass of people, the reasons for understanding this phenomenon are as different as the people who are experiencing it.
These are some of the keys behind the pronounced shortage of employees in the United States, according to experts consulted by BBC World.
1. Wages and working conditions
With so many vacancies available workers are clear that this is the time to get a better salary for the same type of work they did before.
While there is no federal law that sets a minimum payment of $ 15 an hour, more and more companies are approaching this threshold in the face of labor shortages.
But money is not everything.
“The shortage is mainly due to the fact that workers do not want to return to jobs where they are not respected, they are not given security, they are not given any benefits and they are paid low wages,” Victor Narro, director, tells BBC World of Projects and Professor of Labor Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
“This has more to do with a shortage of good jobs than a shortage of workers.”
2. Unemployment benefits
Many employers claim that they cannot fill their vacancies because the $ 300 they receive a week off as a government benefit to deal with the pandemic encourages them to live on welfare instead of working.
That’s why some Republican states have begun stopping the payment of the benefit in order to stimulate a return to work.
As is a recent measure, there is still no data to assess the effects of this policy in recent weeks.
However, a study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau and Robert G. Valletta, notes that aid delivered since last year has had a minimal deterrent effect in the search for work, except in the lowest paid places ($ 11.12 an hour), such as food services.
Beyond the political debate generated by the issue of social assistance, most economists agree that it is one of the factors at stake.
“It cannot be ignored that the benefits have contributed, although it is also true that it influences the perception of risk on the pandemic or the childcare situation,” says Timothy Bond, a professor in the Department of Economics at Purdue University. in dialogue with BBC World.
3. Child care
The lack of an adequate child care network is one of the reasons mentioned by all the experts when solving the puzzle of absent workers.
“Physical distancing completely disrupted routines and structures, closing schools and crèches. This limited childcare options,” Kent Mahoney, executive vice-president of analysis and consulting firm Proxima, told BBC World.
Many women left the workforce and have not been reinstated.
In June their labor share reached 56.2%, well below the 60% they used to have in the last two decades.
Unlike other countries in the developed world, EE. UU. It does not have a child care system with extensive tax subsidies.
It is expected that when the school year begins in late August or early September, more women will return to work, as long as the delta variant does not change the current health situation too much.
4. Fear of contagion
Concern for new contagions in industries where employees are more exposed such as restaurants, hotels and other services related to tourism and entertainment, makes many unwilling to return to their old jobs.
Things have become even more complicated now that the delta variant is spreading across the country and more infections have been reported in children than in previous months.
Many employees who feel that they did not receive the necessary protective measures during the first waves of the pandemic, do not want to go back to their old jobs.
On the other hand, if pay and working conditions are not attractive enough, there are unemployed people who would rather lose their income than become infected.
5. A desire for greater job flexibility
Those professionals whose physical presence is not fundamental to the type of work they perform, are expressing their desire to have more job flexibility.
Although many of the large companies had planned to return to work from the office, things have not been so easy.
The pandemic showed many employees that they could do their job from home and now that the time has come to return, some prefer to look for a job elsewhere that gives them more flexibility.
That is, a company that allows telework or the hybrid work system, where employees have to attend the office only a few days a week.
It is that the gigantic changes that society has experienced with the pandemic, have also generated other transformations.
Some, having spent more time at home, have changed their priorities and are looking for jobs that will allow them to spend more time with family, Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at the School of Business, told BBC World Mays of Texas A&M University.
And others have made the decision to venture to change course or start an entrepreneurship.
6. Retirement boom
The working-age population, defined as those aged 15-64, declined in 2019 for the first time in decades, and then fell again last year.
The retirements of so-called baby boomers (those born after World War II) doubled in 2020 compared to the previous year, according to an analysis by Pew Research Center.
Some decided to retire earlier than planned, because they had lost their jobs and saw little prospect of getting a new one. Or because they didn’t want to be exposed to viruses in high-risk work conditions.
And a smaller segment decided to retire earlier than planned taking advantage of the good performance of investments in the stock market or the sale of their home.
The problem with early retirement of the workforce is that the economy is losing highly experienced skilled workers, which is difficult to replace quickly.
However, for some economists this is not such a crucial factor.
“Retirements could reinforce the feeling of scarcity, although automation will alleviate it,” Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, told BBC World.
There are so many elements at stake in deciphering the mystery of labor shortages that Holzer warns that there is still no evidence to know which of all the causes has the most weight or how long this situation could extend. .
To these keys are also added other causes that can help explain the phenomenon, such as the lack of skills required for certain types of work, the frustration and exhaustion of those who experienced too much workload during the pandemic and an increase in 30% in overdose deaths in 2020 amid the opioid crisis.
Economic problems, isolation and difficulty in accessing health services contributed to this situation worsening and, some studies point out that the higher the levels of addiction, the lower the permanence of young people in the labor force.
What does history tell us?
From a historical perspective, Guido Menzio, a professor in the Department of Economics at New York University and an associate researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), argues that this is not the case. first time a situation with these characteristics occurs.
“It is not an exclusive phenomenon of the current (economic) recovery, but of the most recent recoveries,” he tells BBC World, such as those that occurred after the 1991 or 2008-2009 recession.
According to his research, a constant cause of labor shortages after a recession is related to the fact that there is a group of workers (around 15% of the active population) who are disproportionately affected by the economic situation.
For this group, Menzio explains, “the process of reinstatement in employment is slow and full of obstacles.”
For now, the future of the labor market continues to traverse stony ground.
“The delta variant, highly contagious, casts a shadow over the recovery of the labor market in the coming months, threatening to delay the return of workers who are still on the sidelines due to childcare or health problems.” , said a few days ago Kathy Bostjancic, chief financial economist at Oxford Economics in the US
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-58181006, IMPORT DATE: 2021-08-23 17:00:09