Employment Pros Say Holiday Worker Shortage Exacerbates Inventory Issues
Recruitment firms, such as Bend-based Express Employment Professionals, are stepping up efforts to secure employees as the weeks leading up to the holidays see businesses continue to contend with increased demand, fewer workers and a major supply chain crunch.
Shoppers are eager to hit the stores in-person and online this year with a recent survey from The Harris Poll and Roku finding that holiday spending for consumers is expected to increase five percent year-over-year, and some 86 percent plan to spend the same or more than they did in 2020.
While this should be good news for the American economic recovery after the forced COVID-19 closures of 2020, many retailers are urging shoppers to start purchasing earlier than ever to circumvent supply chain issues currently plaguing businesses, as a shortage of workers and materials causes continued frustration.
Eighty-seven percent of people report being negatively impacted by supply chain issues over the past year, according to findings from Oracle, which has left many concerned about how this will affect the upcoming holiday season.
Companies around the world are battling bottlenecks in the supply chain — the usually invisible pathway of manufacturing, transportation and logistics that gets goods from where they are manufactured, mined or grown to where they are going — as a post-pandemic spike in demand converges with industrial production struggling to catch up after lengthy COVID-induced shutdowns.
The volatility in demand has shifted faster than the supply chain can adjust, coming on top of decades of very lean inventories kept by companies to limit their costs.
The steep surge in demand clogged the system for transporting goods to the factories that needed them. At the same time, finished products — many of them made in China — piled up in warehouses and at ports throughout Asia because of a profound shortage of shipping containers that carry goods on enormous vessels.
The scarcity of containers combined with an intense demand for shipping has seen the cost of moving cargo skyrocket. Before the pandemic, sending a container from Shanghai to Los Angeles may have cost around $2,000, but by early 2021, the same journey was fetching as much as $25,000. And many containers were getting bumped off ships and forced to wait, adding to delays throughout the supply chain.
Across the U.S., Express Employment Professionals franchise owners say this is the perfect storm of high demand for the holiday season at a time when millions of employees retired from the workforce and others left for better opportunities or other obligations, increasing supply chain issues that further delay the creation and delivery of goods.
“The only solution to easing the supply chain issues this holiday season is to hire more workers” said Chris Petty, franchise manager of the Central Oregon Express franchise office. “To meet product demands here in Central Oregon, many companies have increased wages, adopted more flexible schedules and reduced the onboarding and interview times when hiring.”
Bringing those on the sidelines back into the workforce is critical to easing the backlog of materials and goods, Express CEO Bill Stoller added.
“We saw healthy organic economic growth in the third quarter, and Americans are eager to spend their extra funds on loved ones over the next few months,” Stoller said. “While the demand for goods is exciting after the downturn of 2020, we need more workers to realize the full fiscal potential of the fourth quarter of 2021.”
About Express Employment Professionals
From job seekers to client companies, Express Employment Professionals helps people thrive and businesses grow. Its international network of franchises offers localized staffing solutions to the communities they serve across the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, employing 526,000 people globally in 2020. For more information, visit ExpressPros.com.
The Central Oregon Express office is located at 61379 S Hwy. 97 in Bend and serves the entire region. Local businesses and applicants are encouraged to stop by, visit expresspros.com/bendor or call 541-389-1505.
