Businesses luring employees along with customers

FOLSOM » The Hampton Inn in Folsom has 147 rooms, but General Manager Enid Baldock could only rent 117 of them recently because she did not have enough workers to clean them.

“I was turning people away with 30 rooms (available). Ridiculous,” she said while stuffing bedsheets down a laundry chute to help our her skeleton housekeeping staff.

At the Palladio, a nearby shopping center with 85 stores and restaurants just off a busy highway, businesses appeared more focused on attracting workers than customers as “now hiring” signs outnumbered Black Friday fliers. Mac, a cosmetic retailer, was advertising a $1,500 bonus for anyone who would agree to work full time.

Businesses struggled to get through the Great Recession more than a decade ago with minimal staff because low demand forced them to lay off workers. But the opposite is playing out in the pandemic, this time with lots of demand but fewer workers willing to return following governmentimposed lockdowns.

Experts point to a number of factors, including the high cost of child care, more generous government benefits and lifestyle changes that have made workers less willing to accept the salaries and conditions of their old jobs. That has pushed up wages for some retail and restaurant jobs, but not enough to overcome the gap.

“It changes people’s behavior the longer that COVID persists,” said Roy Kim, deputy director for workforce development with the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency. “The longer people can survive and make adjustments that way, it becomes life altering.”

The labor shortage has played out in surprising ways across California, the nation’s most populous state with nearly 40 million residents that, were it an independent nation, would have the fifth largest economy in the world.

Folsom, an affluent suburb of Sacramento, has a mix of big-name retailers that cater to upper middle class consumers and locally-owned restaurants and shops that line a traditional downtown corridor to create a cozy atmosphere for a town with roots stretching back to the Gold Rush.

The city is filled with young tech workers for companies like Intel, Micron and PowerSchool. Many of those workers switched to working from home during the pandemic, keeping their jobs and paying taxes that contributed to the record state budget surpluses.

Sarah Aquino, the city’s vice mayor, had been focused on telling residents to spend money at local businesses. But now she’s telling them to take part time jobs at their favorite businesses, going on local TV comparing it to Uncle Sam recruitment posters during World War I and the “Rosie the Riveter” icon representing women who went to work during World War II.

For her part, Aquino — an insurance broker with a flexible schedule — has