Businesses ask where’s the help?
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — For more than a year, New Jersey restaurateur Marilyn Schlossbach has been waiting for this moment: The U.S. Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of the Jersey Shore’s summer season, and the state is finally lifting indoor capacity limits as the coronavirus pandemic eases.
But the 56-year-old is pulling tables off the dining room floor, closing one of her restaurants an extra day a week and postponing the seasonal opening of another – all because she cannot find enough workers to operate her eateries.
“On Friday night, I left one of the venues and cried for 24 hours,” said Schlossbach, who estimated she is still down about 50 per cent from her normal staffing level at this time of year. “I’m just so overwhelmed – I feel like I’m underwater.”
Half a world away, the state government in Queensland, Australia, is offering $1,500 bonuses, free travel vouchers and discounted accommodation to entice people to go “Work in Paradise.”
“From chefs, waiters and bartenders through to tour guides and deckhands on the Great Barrier Reef, there are plenty of great jobs up for grabs,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said in launching the program.
Many of the world’s major economies are shaking off the cobwebs from more than a year of hibernation as the COVID-19 pandemic raged. But the sector hit hardest by all the lockdowns - leisure and hospitality - is running into a new problem just as it gets the government greenlight to reopen: not enough workers.
Exactly what is driving the phenomenon is a matter of intense debate among economists, policymakers and politicians. Some point to ongoing health worries about returning to work in high-touch businesses, but other explanations include generous unemployment benefits, child care constraints, fewer international workers and competition from other sectors like construction that have held up well throughout the pandemic.
‘REAL SKILL SHORTAGE’
The latest government data showed U.S. job openings in leisure and hospitality totaled a record 1.2 million in March, but employers in the sector added just 331,000 workers to their payrolls in April, signaling hundreds of thousands of positions went unfilled.
It’s a similar story Down Under. Overall job openings in Australia are at their highest in more than 12 years and roughly 45 per cent above PRE-COVID-19 levels.
Australia’s early success in curbing the coronavirus pandemic allowed authorities to open the economy, including pubs, bars and restaurants. But a smaller pool of foreign workers due to the closure of international borders means hospitality staff are highly sought. In fact, that segment recorded the largest increase in job ads in April, up nearly 10 per cent, government data showed.