(Photo | by Waseem Farooq from PxHere)
As we move out of the pandemic crisis and into recovery mode, one of the biggest fallouts that has occurred is a severe labor shortage. Businesses are back open again, but are having extreme difficulties bringing in enough staff to run them.
“It’s a perfect storm of factors: There is uncertainty around child-care solutions with day cares opening and closing due to COVID, so there is ambiguity in childcare,” says Quinn Hanson, division manager of PrideStaff/G.A. Rogers & Associates in Bend. “There is a certain level of fear of returning to the workplace because of fear about getting sick. And unemployment can pay $23-$24 per hour, so people don’t want to consider a job for under $25 per hour.”
“The big question for everyone is what’s going on in the labor market,” agrees Sam Lambert, vice president of Mid Oregon Personnel Services, Inc. “There are multiple factors. The school situation is creating difficulty for some people trying to get into the work force. But the primary cause is simply that people are making more on unemployment than they would make going back to work. This has been the case since the beginning of the shutdowns. Initially, it was an extra $600 per week, and now it has been an extra $300 per week for a while.” He continues, “We have a tremendous workforce shortage. A big section of the workforce is currently on unemployment. We regularly have people turn down jobs because they are making more on employment. Many of these jobs are offering them more than they were getting paid last year when they lost their jobs, but they are still making more on unemployment.
When you factor in health care and childcare, these are all driving issues. The childcare piece with the school closures has been a major factor.”
Hanson says that he has heard of a couple of instances where if people have jobs, even if they are unhappy, they are still not willing to change if there is a lapse in healthcare coverage at the new job. “If a company has a 60- to 90-day probationary window for health-care benefits, people won’t leave their existing job because they don’t want to lose insurance benefits,” he says.
At PrideStaff, the team works with entry-level through senior-level positions. “At entry-level, we’ve seen the most challenges, for those jobs that pay $15 or under per hour. Even getting up into the $18-19 positions, we are seeing a decline in applications and attendance,” says Hanson. “When you start looking at more mid-level positions, there is much greater demand for a higher level of compensation. For example, Sunriver Resort is paying housekeeping positions at $25 per hour. That really puts the pressure on the mid-level employers. The risk is that businesses still want to pay what was a good salary nine months ago. They haven’t adjusted yet to today’s demands.”
In May, PrideStaff launched a professional recruiting division called G.A. Rogers & Associates, which exists specifically to recruit executives, managers and supervisors. “At the senior level, if you are looking to hire from out of town, it’s almost impossible. People look at the cost of houses here, and if it’s a salary of $80,000 to $100,000, people are not moving here for those salaries,” says Hanson, adding that G.A. Rogers & Associates is looking for staff internally as well. “It’s still possible, but its challenging. People can’t buy a house here on that salary, especially if it’s a single-income family.” He adds, “This new division was in the works long before the labor shortage, but adding it has increased our bandwidth to find people and get them interviews for onboarding.”
To help address the hiring challenge, PrideStaff is asking everybody they talk to for referrals, Hanson says, and is offering up to $250 in referral bonuses for people if the person is hired. “We are also talking to anyone who we met a couple of years ago whose number we might still have. We are calling everybody. We are peppering social media with job ads on all the sites. We are putting out as many ads as we can.”
Nelson says one of the biggest challenges his team is having is with customer service. “You may call and get a voicemail, or get transferred. There is a general lack of customer service, which is office administrative type of work. We are seeing a big struggle there,” he says. “A lot of those jobs are in the entry-level workforce; but when those employees can make $25 per hour in Sunriver, they aren’t going to go into an office job for $16.50. Skilled technical employees, such as welders, are really hard to find right now too. There are shortages of those with more technical and manufacturing skills.”
Yet another factor in the labor crunch is the increase in flexible work options such as driving for Lyft, DoorDash, Uber or Instacart, Nelson says. “These are attracting people who want more flexibility in their work lives and schedules. Those gigs tend to average out around $20 per hour, and can be even higher during busy times like weekends.”
A recent article by Jessica Nelson at the Oregon Employment Department stated, “Employers are facing the added complication of simultaneous recruitment alongside every other employer on the block as capacity restraints are lifted on particular dates. This short-term labor crunch produces a dilemma. In order to serve more customers, businesses need more staff, and in order to get applicants, they need to offer higher wages. This has to introduce complications in terms of retaining current workers as well if higher-paying opportunities are available doing the same work just a few doors down the road. Once recruitment is happening at higher wages, employers might find it necessary to increase the wages of other staff in order to keep them on board. These problems are piling onto businesses that have spent the last year clinging to the hope of recovery, only to find it’s a job-seeker’s market on the other side of the pandemic. While driven by temporary circumstances, these employer concerns are very real and could suppress the job recovery to some degree until additional workers are available to fill jobs.”
For those looking to hire, Nelson says they are recommending a sub-24-hour response time for any type of communication. “We are responding to inquiries within a few minutes. When we are sending resumes to companies, we are trying to call them right away; we try to light a fire under the hiring managers to get people in for interviews. We are trying to impress a sense of urgency.” He says they also recommend that businesses try to remove as many steps as possible in the interview process. “If they can, we recommend they remove whatever is redundant or unnecessary. In a competitive market, any delay or lag is going to ruin your chances of recruiting.”
Retention is a key factor for employers to keep in mind, too, Nelson says. “In a market that is challenging to hire in, losing employees is a big punch in the gut. If you are looking to hire, you must also be thinking about retention.”
At the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council’s WorkSource program, Adult Programs Manager Dana Dunlap says they have had a record year in placing job seekers with employers through the agency’s On-the-Job Training Program. “We had a number of participants receiving unemployment insurance (primarily from retail, food service and hospitality positions) who sought a career change into other industries. We also connected recent college and/or trade school graduates to career opportunities to gain the hands-on experience that complimented their education.” The On-the-Job Training (OJT) program incentivize employers to hire employees who do not meet the technical skills requirements for the position, but who have the willingness to learn a new skill set and need additional training above and beyond the normal onboarding and training process, Dunlap explains. “We also created an Adult Work Experience (WE) program that focused on placing participants with little to no work experience and opportunity to receive a paid internship at a couple different employer sites. The employer provided the training, and we paid the employee. As a result of additional state and federal funding for education and training, we were able to place nearly 40 job seekers in either an OJT or WE program from July 1, 2020-June 30, 2021.” Of those, she says the top two industries in which they have placed workers are technology and construction.
The challenge they hear about from employers, Dunlap says, is often the lack of talent in the labor market pool or a lack of applicants, period. “However, the majority of clients we worked with over this past year were attending training and needed assistance in transitioning from receiving their education to securing a job in their new occupation.” She says that for some of those students, the state exams were delayed due to COVID, so the COIC team would assist them in finding short-term “survival jobs” until test sites reopened. “For our youth department, it was a challenge to schedule youth GED tests, so we got approved by Pearson testing to provide our current youth and adult GED students this service.”
During the closures, Dunlap says it was difficult to serve their customers because of the limited in-person services. “However, our employment counselors helped educate and assist customers with how to use technology for virtual appointments and interviews. At times, we had to get creative and provide curbside appointments. In these incidents, when a client didn’t have access to a computer or smart phone, we’d print out all of the paperwork and then meet them at a safe distance to exchange paperwork.”
Lambert says the bright spot for employers is that the market is going to shift over the course of the summer and into the fall. “The additional $300 per week unemployment is scheduled to end in September, and there are going to be an awful lot of people reentering the workforce. Schools are also expected to fully reopen in the fall.”
For those looking for work, the experts agree that this is an excellent time to be job hunting. “This is the strongest employees’ market I have ever seen for those looking to go to work. Employers who normally have not been open to training are now very open to training; it really is an opportunity for those looking to find the job they want. Pretty much everyone is hiring right now.” He adds, “I know we have more than 250 openings in Central Oregon right now between our four offices, everything from medical to manufacturing and office work to landscaping. Everyone across the board is hiring.” Nelson adds, “For people who want to work, this is certainly a good time to be looking. Almost every business is trying to hire at least one person, if not lots of people. There is probably more opportunity now than ever before.”
A piece of advice for job hunters? Apply right now. “We are seeing that people who have been on unemployment recognize that this will end soon,” says Lambert. “They are looking for work now because they don’t want get to caught along with everyone else looking for work in three months. Now is an excellent time to get a job, or even change careers, because many employers are offering record salaries and training opportunities.”
For those questioning whether or not to be vaccinated against COVID in order to get a job, that piece is still somewhat up in the air. “Out of all the companies we have worked with, I have a couple that require vaccinations, but those that do are frontline healthcare workers. We are not seeing it with all healthcare workers, but some are requiring vaccination. Most employers are not,” says Lambert.
Nelson says PrideStaff has seen a couple of companies set a date of August or September to be vaccinated by, but that no one has been fired for lack of vaccination. “There will likely be a form of requirement for vaccination unless a medical condition prevents it. But usually, there is a two- to four-month lead time for it. Companies are working toward it; and also incentivizing vaccination by saying they can go mask-free if everyone gets vaccinated.” He adds, “This is not so much the case right now, but I suspect more and more companies will go this route over the next two months.”
midoregonpersonnel.com • pridestaff.com • oregon.gov/EMPLOY • coic.org
