Employers seek workers as jobless boost ends
Retailers hope to fill jobs as more than 300,000 lose unemployment benefits
As nearly 304,000 Bay Staters lose $300 in weekly federal unemployment benefits — a “lifeline” for many Massachusetts residents — local retailers hope this expiration of benefits will help small businesses fill jobs.
“We’ve already seen a number of small businesses close their doors permanently,” said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, of the labor shortage’s effects. “What happens over the course of the next four months through the holidays will determine whether there’ll be more small business closures come January and February.”
The situation for small businesses began improving in June when Massachusetts implemented a job search requirement for folks to continue collecting unemployment, Hurst said, but the labor shortage from multiple COVID-related factors put strain on businesses from end to end.
“That’s also hurting the seller at the consumer level because the choices are less, prices are higher, and service is not at an optimum level,” he said. “All those factors are making it, frankly, a bit of a tenuous situation.”
Data from the state’s Executive Office of Labor and
Workforce Development has shown that while the state unemployment rate hovers just under 5% as of July, the distribution of the unemployed is uneven.
While the number of those seeking employment in food preparation exceeds the number of jobs threefold, for example, the inverse is true in sectors like health care and computerand mathematical-related jobs.
The unemployment rate also varies widely by race: It’s 12.5% for Latinos, and 11.1% for Black Bay Staters.
A study by Harvard-run Opportunity Insights showed that while those earning over $60,000 in Massachusetts saw a 2% drop in employment since the pandemic began through November, those
earning under $27,000 saw a 29% drop.
A spokesperson from the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development said that the number of people collecting unemployment plateaued around mid-summer, and speculated that job seekers could be waiting until benefits expire, until children go back to school, or until the impact of the delta variant of COVID-19 subsides to go back to work.
Now that these are becoming realities, Hurst said, “I think there’ll be more people looking and feeling more comfortable and back into the workforce.”
The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development began preemptively addressing the stoppage of unemployment benefits last
month by holding a historically large job fair with over 17,000 attendees.
The Baker administration also announced a $240 million workforce development program to address the longer-term challenges of matching the workforce’s skills to the jobs needed. The program aims to train over 52,000 unemployed and underemployed workers in in-demand fields over the next three years.
Despite the skills gap, Hurst is optimistic that those soon to lose their benefits can find work.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find any industry that is fully staffed right now,” he said. “Anybody that really wants to find work and is serious about it, there are opportunities out there for them.”