Staffing shortages: Who wants to work?

It’s no secret that, around the nation, many businesses are struggling to find staff.

And while the reasons are multifaceted — a quick look at the comments you’ll likely see under this article on our website will show some believe it’s because “nobody wants to work anymore,” while others will argue it’s being caused by a reevaluation of American labor — the problem remains: many positions are going unfilled.

Joe Fasula, co-owner of the Scranton-based Gerrity’s Supermarket chain, said it’s a problem all of his stores are experiencing.

“The only comfort is knowing that we’re not alone,” he said during a phone interview this week.

As an Associated Press report pointed out, employers last month added 559,000 jobs on top of 278,000 in April.

Those would ordinarily be seen as quite healthy numbers, the AP added. Yet against the backdrop of record-high job openings and free-spending consumers, some economists had envisioned the recovery from the pandemic recession driving monthly job growth of 800,000, 900,000, even 1 million or more.

And that comes as businesses of all kinds are working to meet a burst of customer demand from Americans who are no longer cooped up at home and who, in many cases, still have stimulus cash to spend.

Gerrity’s: Sign-on bonuses

Fasula believes that as of right now at least, the staffing issues won’t be noticeable to customers, but he’s concerned that they could be soon, especially as we approach the time of year where people take vacations.

Fasula said that his company is looking largely for skilled positions, such as butchers, bakers, cake decorators and other more specific workers, with less of a focus on more generalized positions a grocery store has.

“We could probably hire about 100 people today,” he said. “Thankfully, it’s not affecting what the customer sees in terms of service; everyone is working very hard. We just want to stay ahead of it.”

(At this point in the conversation, Fasula took a moment away from the phone call to help a customer find an item on the store shelves.)

The solution, then, is a sign-on bonus.

It’s a technique that a lot of businesses, both here locally and nationwide, have begun to employ, hoping to attract workers by offering a bit of a bonus for joining the team.

At Gerrity’s, anyone who signs on between May 31 and Sept. 12 will be eligible for up to $600 in bonuses. Anyone hired in that time will receive $500 as a bonus after the completion of their first 90 days on the job, and they’ll be eligible for an extra $100 bonus should they have perfect attendance at the end of those 90 days.

Fasula said that these bonuses are available at all of his stores, especially considering there’s need at all of them.

“Every single store has needs in every department,” he said, but he did acknowledge that the West Pittston store is especially hurting for help.

Wages rising

Gerrity’s is not alone in offering incentives to potential employees: Average hourly wages rose solidly over the past two months, the AP noted: 0.5% in May, on top of a 0.7% increase in April.

Last month’s wage growth was especially impressive considering that 52% of the added jobs came from the traditionally low-wage leisure and hospitality sector, the AP added, noting that large chains, including Amazon, Walmart, Costco and Chipotle have begun raising pay.

So, too, have local and regional employers.

Consider Gina Schaefer, who owns 13 Ace hardware stores in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., and who has been rapidly staffing up for the spring and summer, when her sales typically hit highs.

Schaefer has hired nearly 120 people since March, both seasonal workers and long-delayed replacements for people who left last year when COVID ravaged the economy, the AP pointed out. Her company pays a minimum of $15.50 an hour, to compete with larger chains that now pay $15, and provides health insurance, paid vacation, sick leave and a 401(k) plan after employees have been on the job for about six months.

“We firmly believe that better workplaces do not have a problem finding employees,” Schaefer told the AP.

Rising wages have been seen in several sectors:

• For nonsupervisory workers in leisure and hospitality — including restaurants and hotel employees — hourly wages rose 1.2% last month from April and 8.8% from a year ago

• Construction workers, benefiting from a housing boom, enjoyed a 4.4% wage increase in May compared with a year earlier.

• Amid a surge in online shopping and deliveries, transportation and warehouse workers received an average 3.5% hourly wage increase over the previous 12 months.

Supply chain issues

Labor shortages affect businesses at almost every level of operation.

“Things exploded — it was like a light switch,” said Kirby Mallon, president of Elmer Schultz Services, a family-owned Philadelphia firm that repairs and maintains kitchen equipment for restaurants and other clients.

“The labor market is just out of control. We literally cannot hire technicians … We ramped up so quickly, the supply chain wasn’t ready for it,’ Mallon told the Associated Press.

Here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Fasula feels the pinch of the labor shortage when the store is making orders.

“There are a lot of items that are consistently out of stock,” he said. “On any given week, 10 to 20% of our orders are out of stock.”

Fasula said that these difficulties in the stores getting goods are also caused by the consistent struggles to find workers; there are simply holes in the supply chain, he explained. As of right now, he said that the shortages are far away from being a crisis — if your preferred brand or variety of a certain item is out of stock, there is almost always something you can swap it out with — but it is still a problem.

Unemployment benefits an issue?

During the phone conversation this week, Fasula echoed a frequently cited concern, that the cause of the labor shortage is being caused by the increased unemployment benefits that have been offered since the beginning of the pandemic — benefits that are largely coming to an end, nationwide.

It does appear to be more complicated than that, though, with recent reporting from the New York Times going so far as to call the labor shortage largely a “myth.”

“When a company is struggling to find enough labor, it can solve the problem by offering to pay a higher price for the labor — also known as higher wages,” writes Times reporter David Leonhardt. “More workers will then enter the labor market. Suddenly, the labor shortage will be no more.”

In fact, wages are historically low, nationwide, the New York Times says, with worker compensation for their labor being lower than at any other point in the second half of the 20th century. Meanwhile, company profits nationwide continue to skyrocket.

“That so many are complaining about the situation is not a sign that something is wrong with the American economy,” the Times piece ends. “It is a sign that corporate executive have grown so accustomed to a low-wage economy that many believe anything else is unnatural.”

Regardless of the root cause of the labor shortage, two distinct facts remain: many companies need workers, and many people don’t have a job.

Experts also advise patience, however, as supply and demand catch up with each other in a growing economy.

“All these employers put up help-wanted signs at the same time,” noted Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “It’s taking a few weeks for workers to take the jobs.’’

In May, the number of Americans on temporary layoff dropped by an additional 291,000 to 1.8 million — down 90% from a staggering 18 million in April 2020, the AP explained.

Even people who lost their old jobs permanently made progress last month: The number of such people dropped by 295,000 in May to 3.2 million. But that is still up 59% from 2 million in April 2020. Nearly 3.8 million Americans — about 41% of the jobless — have been out of work for six months or more, the AP added.

CareerLink’s role

The Times Leader spoke with Christine M. Jensen, administrator of the Wilkes-Barre office of PA CareerLink, about what could be done, regardless of which of those two broad groups you might fall into. Jensen believes that CareerLink can be a great help, whether you need employees or employment.

“I think employers need to be using all of their resources to recruit, and, quite frankly, this was true before the pandemic,” she said.

According to her, CareerLink can help employers out with on-the-job training for their prospective employees, along with even reimbursement of training in some of those positions. Additionally, CareerLink can help people seeking jobs identify where they might be the best fit.

“We can work with them to help them find where those high priority jobs are,” she said, explaining that CareerLink can also provide assistance for tuition for job seekers who need training.

And Jensen acknowledged that, right now, it might be a good time for employers to craft their salaries to be a bit more competitive.

“We do have labor market information available to employers if they want to see what the average rate is for the job,” she said. “If an employer is concerned, ‘Am I competitive? Am I paying a competitive rate?’ They could ask us.

“You wanna be competitive,” she said. “You need to know what the average wage is so you can be competitive.”

Jensen said that she thinks a lot of people aren’t aware of just how much PA CareerLink can help, so she suggested that both job-seekers and those seeking job-seekers contact their local office.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.