Where Are the Workers?
Finding and hiring great new employees has always been difficult.
Right now, it seems to be even harder than usual. Restaurants are regularly short-staffed. Schools don’t have enough substitutes to cover for teacher absences. And storefronts are covered in “We’re hiring” and “Apply now” signs.
So, where are all the prospective employees?
From my point of view, we should be swimming in candidates. Because of the impacts of Covid and its necessary lockdowns, many small businesses failed and closed their doors. Larger ones downsized and cut their spending. And workers were laid-off or couldn’t get enough hours to earn a living wage. One would think these people would need (and even want) to find a new job.
And yet… we have all these employment opportunities – more than 10 million job openings in the United States alone (source: NCRC article linked below). So, I ask again: where are all our applicants?
Some claim workers haven’t been motivated to take low-paying positions because the government provided a safety net through increased unemployment funds and even eviction moratoriums and renters’ assistance. But I argue that those bare minimums aren’t the cause.
For one, people don’t just work because they have to; they often do it because they want to. Our society puts a great deal of status on working (think about those who brag about how many hours they put in each week) – and a great deal of shame on those who don’t (think “welfare queen” or the housewives and stay-at-home parents who answer the question of “What do you do?” – a very American notion in itself – with “Nothing. I don’t work.”) And many of us like having jobs – seeing our work friends, gossiping around the water cooler, learning new skills, and showing off our talents. We enjoy being productive, useful, and contributing members of society—we want to be seen as essential, needed, and important.
Not to mention, those safety-net benefits were temporary and have largely run out (or will in the very near term).
So, again: Where are all the workers?
I posit that many of them may have found other ways to get their needs met. Families with children (who were no longer attending school in person) discovered they couldn’t get the child-care they needed in order to have both parents work out of the home (as more than 65% of workers did, even at the height of the pandemic (source: The Atlantic, article linked below)), so one stayed home with the kids. They went out less often, spent less, and generally made it work. Even as things slowly return towards normal, the effort of rejoining the workforce – at the cost of less time with their family, decreased flexibility when students need to quarantine due to close contacts with infected persons, and reduced capacity (and potentially increased costs) at childcare facilities – isn’t immediately compelling.
What this means for you is that if you need workers, you’re going to need to make a compelling case for them. It’s not just enough to say you have a job opening. Employment is not a one-way offer. It’s a two-way relationship.
How are you letting prospective employees know what you have to offer them? In what ways are you telling them? What are the words and phrases you are using?
How do you know the specifics of the position/offer what they’re looking for? Who have you asked? Who else could you ask?
Where are the right places to look for the people you want? How else can you find them? (Are you even sure of what you want? How can you gain better clarity?)