- American employers are desperate for workers and sometimes hire employees without doing a full overhaul.
- Recently, some new hires are appearing long enough to charge before disappearing.
- According to the Atlanta Federal Reserve, a source called the practice “ghosting coasting.”
Disappeared. It is left in reading. He stood up. Phantasmagoric.
It has become a fact of modern social life that someone will, at some point, leave you hanging without any explanation. You probably did the same thing with someone else.
Now, this act of social disappearance has come to the workplace in a new way as American employers struggle to find staff, sometimes hiring candidates without fully verifying their qualifications.
Ghosting has become such an important issue for entrepreneurs that it is none other than the
Federal Reserve
of Atlanta mentioned it in the latest summary of Fed economic trends in its 12 districts.
“Retention continued to be a growing problem for businesses,” the Atlanta Fed reported. “The restaurateurs pointed out concerns about the ‘ghostly coastline,’ where a new rental works for a few days and is moved to the next restaurant without notice before they are released for lack of skills.”
The trend can be even more costly when employers offer initial bonuses and incentives, such as free food and discounts, to apply for or accept a job.
As disruptive as the trend of employers is, Adrienne
Flow
, the regional executive of the New Orleans branch of the Atlanta Fed, would give workers the advantage of the doubt here.
“The restaurant industry in particular can be a tough place to work,” he told NPR’s Robert Smith and Adrian Ma on the “Planet Money” podcast. “It’s very demanding. And because people who haven’t necessarily worked in this industry before realize this, they realize that they may not want to work in this particular job for a long time.”
“I’m hearing this from various contacts,” he added, “not only in the catering industry, but I also feel it in manufacturing.”
Billing and retention rates have long been a significant fact of life in the fast food business. Two years ago, the industry’s average monthly turnover rate was 135%, which basically meant that four people were hired each month for every three who continued to work. This summer, the turnover rate reached 144%.
In addition, data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that restaurant workers are leaving their jobs at the highest rate in two decades. Within the housing and food services sector, the dropout rate was 5.7% in June 2021, more than double the national average dropout rate of 2.7%.
“What restaurants and manufacturers think is, how can we make our industries more attractive to the workforce?
If you are a worker who has created an employer or an employer who has been a ghost, please contact Dominick Reuter by email. Responses to this story will be kept confidential.