Today’s Hiring Challenges
The International Labor Organization (ILO) states:
- The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown caused 114 million people to lose their jobs over 2020.
- Estimated working hours lost in 2020 were equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs, leading to $3.7 trillion in lost labor income.
- Although millions have returned to work, the ILO does not expect global working hours to return to pre-COVID levels in 2021.
- As the job market recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, employers are struggling to find employees.
Are you also struggling to find employees? Where are they?
1. The American Rescue Plan Act
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) went into effect on March 11, 2021, and their plan to act included the following:
- Increasing Direct Payments to $1,400 for working class Americans
- Cut childhood poverty in half
- Housing assistance for 12 million Americans struggling to pay their rent
- Unemployment benefits boosted
- Safely reopen schools
- Funding for vaccine distribution
- Relief for businesses
Fast forward to September 6, 2021, and the ARPA has extended their critical employment benefits that help unemployed people pay their bills and care for their families.
The ARPA also extended their $300-per-week federal supplement to weekly benefits that provides enough additional weeks of federally funded benefits to ensure unemployed individuals will continue to receive benefits while the nation is recovering from the global pandemic. For the tens of millions of workers who have been available to work because their jobs were gone, or because of family obligations, health care concerns, or unsafe workplaces, the ARPA focus has been to help the unemployed stay afloat.
Research conducted by Bank of America’s, Global Research organization, states that nationwide, workers who earn less than $32,000 annually could make more money on unemployment than they can earn from work.
To put it plain and simple, why work when you can make more from unemployment insurance?
2. Afraid They Might Get Sick
There is evidence that shows a relationship between the number of people who have been vaccinated and a rise in employment rates.
A study conducted by Aaron Sojourner (an American economist) said,
“Every 10-percentage point increase in cell’s share fully vaccinated is associated with a 1.1- percentage point increase in employment. The first-order issue is the virus, and if that’s what caused the crisis, then it is also the path out of the crisis. Crushing the virus is the solution to both the supply problem and the demand problem.”
The bottom line is there’s not one single person who wants to contact a deadly disease while doing their job.
3. Family Care Concerns
Based on a survey taken in late March by The Census Household Pulse, 6.3 million people were not working because of a need to care for a child not in school or daycare, and another 2.1 million people were caring for an elderly person. Combined, those numbers amount to nearly 14 percent of the adults not working for reasons other than being retired. (NY Times)
If daycare centers, schools and elderly care remain limited, as the businesses start to re-open, there will still be challenges in finding employees.
4. Higher Salaries
While businesses are scrambling to save funds by cutting hours and changing operations, some experts also recommend raising wages. Saying that it could provide for a more permanent solution to the worker shortage.
“It’s going to be a shock to companies that are paying low wages,” said Marc Wulfraat, the president of Logistics Consulting Firm. “ They’re going to be the ones that are hit the worst, because all that low-wage labor is going to find a home elsewhere-where there’s more money to be made.”
As companies scramble to address labor shortages, experts say higher pay is the only real solution (Business Insider).
Whatever the reason is your company is facing hiring challenges, Staff Boom is always at the ready to help you with your unique staffing needs. Leave the staffing work to us and focus on growing your business! Contact Staff Boom now!
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Originally published at https://www.staffboom.com on April 17, 2021.
