The messages can be found wherever you go throughout the United States. Signs on restaurants saying “Hiring now, starting wages $12 per hour”; billboards asking people to apply for openings; and online advertisements on local Facebook groups highlighting job benefits from neighboring companies all point to one thing: There is a noticeable shortage of workers.
“It’s everywhere. Restaurants, retail, industry, health care, education,” said Jennifer Green, director of the Center of Economic Development and Business Research at Jacksonville State University, “Every industry has job openings.”
“If left unchecked, today’s conditions could easily develop into one of the worst labor shortages of the last 50 years,” said The Conference Board, a nonprofit that works with different industries to prepare them for the future.
As of Aug. 9, The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a “series high” of job openings in the country, with a reported 10,100,000 jobs based on data gathered from the last business day in June. They also reported that 5,600,000 of those jobs were created from “separations.”
“Total separations include quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations,” they explained in the report, “Quits are generally voluntary separations initiated by the employee. Therefore, the quits rate can serve as a measure of workers’ willingness or ability to leave jobs. Layoffs and discharges are involuntary separations initiated
by the employer.”
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The state of Alabama itself is reporting a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country, at 3.2%, which is a 4.4% decrease since July 2020. Etowah County is reporting a 4% unemployment rate, down 5.9% over the same time frame. Gadsden is reporting a 4.3% unemployment rate, with no data reflected for last July.
If the labor shortage continues, there are many repercussions people will see in the economy and in the services they are used to seeing in everyday life.
“Definitely short-term effects will be the sales of things like automobiles and appliances because production will continue to get slower and slower,” said Andrew Ford, CEO of ZLA Solutions, a local employment agency in Rainbow City, “In the long term, it’s gonna be the price. Because of the extra costs of overtime and different things like that to get out the normal product that we are used to, the cost to make that product is skyrocketing.”
Green also echoed these concerns, saying the shortage could impact things such as supply and demand and gross domestic product. She said that this, in turn, affects inflation, which creates a cycle of increasing prices on goods and services for residents.
So, the questions remain: What is causing this labor shortage, and what will it take to bring people back?
Green said there are a variety of reasons for workers leaving their jobs, such as poor leadership, no room for advancement and other toxic working conditions.
“There are about three key things, and No. 1 right now is (wages),” said Ford, “because everyone right now is drastically increasing their wages just because of how many jobs there are and how hard it is to retain workers right now.”
Ford said another key complaint is work environments. He said his company helps employ people in the automotive industry, where some common complaints are the heat and the repetitiveness of the job.
Another factor is long work hours. Because of the worker shortage, Ford said, other people have had to work extra-long hours to keep up with the typical supply and demand
“Places are behind on these things, and unfortunately people are not wanting to work 70-hour weeks, and that can only go on for so long,” he said. “So people are tending to leave for a lesser-paying job, but it means that they are not having to work every single Saturday.”
Both said the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic bears some of the blame for people leaving their jobs; Green said it has “added a layer of stress to every factor of life.”
“It did not just affect one thing, it had ripple effects,” she said. “This type of financial (disruption) can lead to long-term financial issues, the mental stress which can lead to physical stress, and the cycle just continues.”
Ford said the pandemic has contributed both directly and indirectly to the labor shortage.
“That’s a two-fold answer, because the pandemic originally caused the amount of additional benefits and different things into the unemployment market because so many people lost their jobs,” Ford explained, “That was a good thing, of course, because it allowed people to keep on living, but because we let it go on for so long, it created a different type of demand because the amount given in multiple industries was as much or better than the entry-level starting wage for those 40-hour workweek jobs.”
He attributes this to the extra cash flow within the market from things such as stimulus checks and increased federal assistance.
“People have extra cash to buy more things, so there was, in a downturn … just as much sales,” he said. “So companies with less workers have just been crushed because they have a lower workforce.”
Greens said workers in local industries have suffered psychological blows. With the closure of the Goodyear plant in Gadsden, she said it was “tough for those that wish to stay in that area and not move.”
She added, “For those that are willing to move, there are enough industries needing workers that they should be able to find jobs in other locations. I do think that is why we saw the dip in population in the 2020 Census for Gadsden.”
Green said the population decline is because of workers who left the area after working at the Goodyear plant to find employment that matched their skill set.
“There are re-skill programs in place, but people have to maintain a certain level of income financially and it may be more advantageous to them financially to move with the skills they have than to stay where they are and try to learn new skills that take time,” she said.
However, Ford said workers looking for jobs in the area have a more positive mindset going into the recruitment and job application process, because they now have the ability to “shop jobs.” He believes that because of social media and the Internet, people can “pretty much know” which kind of job they want and go after it.
“People are not stupid. They are seeing all of these advertisements for employers that have jobs open,” he said. “So it’s very easy for people to look around and find a better fit for them, so it makes it more difficult for employers because they are having to retrain new workers more often.”
Ford said situations like the Goodyear plant closure don’t have an effect on the average worker.
“We see thousands a month for over 40 different locations within driving distance, and that rarely comes up when we are talking to people about opportunities,” he said. “The only main difference is that Goodyear was a unionized plant, and we don’t really have those anymore in Etowah County. So people are having to go through it. People who are used to a different pay scale are having to go out of the area to obtain it.”
Green and Ford had differing ideas as to what it will take for people to return to work, with Ford suggesting that it would take “a collaborative agreement” between the federal government and the states.
“I really think it will take, to get back to a level playing field for everything … a combination of the government with state representatives having a collaborative agreement on federal benefits and additional supplements given outside the workplace,” he said. “But further, there should be an incentive for employees to go back to work from the government.”
Ford gave a hypothetical example of the federal government continuing to give out unemployment benefits for people who return to work for the first 12 weeks, asking, “If the government is going to eat the cost of continuing to give people those benefits to stay unemployed and keep living, then why shouldn’t they continue to give them that benefit when they go back to work and incentives (for) them the opposite way?”
He added that other states were participating in this practice, and have had success with it.
Green said she thinks it will take the end of the COVID-19 pandemic to see workers return. She believes many are staying home because they simply cannot afford to find care for their children or to keep themselves from becoming sick and potentially dying from the coronavirus.
“I don’t think society understands how hard it is on people that live paycheck to paycheck with no extended family as a support system, or really no support system at all,” she said.
Green also believes workers can return to work faster if more people get vaccinated against COVID-19, and that local municipalities can help with this by encouraging people to get the shot.
“[Local municipalities] need to try to un-politicize vaccination ‘speech’ as much as possible and report true data and educate the public as best they can,” she added.
Ford added that local governments can help encourage people to return to work by continuing to advertise open positions to the public.
“There are jobs out there that are good paying with a good working environment,” he said, “We are aggressively advertising companies every day. It’s a continued effort to do this job. It also includes things like the job fair hosted by The Venue, because if people keep attending, we should continue to have them.”
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