Restaurants and other businesses are closing early some days.
Other businesses are having to limit how many customers they can serve in a certain period of time.
Manufacturers are casting wide nets to try to bring in people to fill roles in their factories to make sure they complete jobs in the time desired by their customers.
The Jackson Chamber and elected officials are posting on social media letting people know about job openings and how plentiful they are right now.
But there’s a problem.
“It seems like no one wants to show up for work,” said Tim Armstrong, owner of Reliable Lawncare and Landscaping. “Or not many of us at least.”
Open positions nearly everywhere
There’s a shortage of available workers in the area that’s affected various businesses including Reliable, Jackson Pride Commercial and Residential Cleaning and restaurants like the Old Country Store. And leaders of all three business are among those worried about what will happen in the short- and long-term future regarding the economy with so many people not working.
Diana Cotten first opened Jackson Pride in 2015 and has slowly grown her business to where it employed 23 people in February. Since then, that number has dropped to 16 with typically about three workers calling in on most days for various reasons.
“We try to work with our employees because a lot of them are mothers who have to take care of doctors visits or dental appointments or take care of sick kids at different times, but that’s not the problem,” Cotton said. “The problem is I’m trying to fill seven positions and can’t because I can’t get a lot of applications, and the ones that I do get, they may or may not show up for an interview.”
Armstrong has similar experiences where Reliable has a staff of six right now when normally they’re running with 16 employees if they’re fully staffed.
“It started about the middle of last year where it first became hard to either hire people or keep the ones we did hire,” Armstrong said. “I think we had about 27 or 28 people who worked here at some point last year based on the number of W2 forms I sent out at the beginning of this year.”
Few applicants
Thomas Media hosted its annual job fair this past week at the Carl Perkins Civic Center, and the event that would typically draw more than 1,000 job seekers to talk to the 60 establishments looking for workers had about 250 come in this year.
Gerdau was one of the businesses represented at the event, and they’re dealing with the same issues Reliable and Jackson Pride are.
“Despite offering competitive wages, award winning benefits, and opportunities for career development, Gerdau is struggling to find quality candidates for our open positions,” said Gerdau human resources manager Jennifer Alexander. “We are taking many steps to confront this challenge, including engaging with our community partners, evaluating our hiring practices and incentives, and generating awareness for the outstanding opportunities that exist with Gerdau.”
But whether it’s steel manufacturing like Gerdau, service industries like landscaping or cleaning services or the restaurant industry, would-be workers aren’t showing up.
Old Country Store will employ between 85 and 90 workers when it’s fully staffed. They’ve run closer to 75 most of 2021 so far.
“I like to think we’re a good company to work for with competitive wages and we take care of our employees with opportunities for advancement and other incentives,” said Brooks Shaw, owner of Old Country Store. “But when you can’t get a person to show up for an interview that you scheduled with them when they put in an application, it’s hard to keep ourselves at full staffing.
“We’ve had a few people who’ve turned out to be ones that will show up to work and stay, and they are phenomenal additions to our team. But they’re a small percentage of the people we talk with about coming in.”
Great expectations
Armstrong said it’s difficult to get some people in to work for the starting pay at Reliable.
“If someone comes in looking for a job and is willing to work with no prior knowledge of what we do in landscaping and lawn maintenance, they’ll start out making $13.25 an hour,” Armstrong said. “And I’ll get some coming in here and they start out and then come back and tell me they can make more at another job and they try to get me to match it or beat it, and I tell them I’ll pay them more when they can do more to get paid more.
“Yeah we start at $13.25, but if you’re willing to stay with me and learn to do bigger things, you can be making $16, $18 or even $20 an hour pretty quickly.”
Because there’s a lot of work outside, there’s hard labor involved at Reliable, and Armstrong says that will cause some workers to stop coming in.
“It’s pretty regular for us to bring someone in, and then they’re ready to go and walk off when they get hot or dirty,” Armstrong said. “And you’ve got to know beforehand that’s part of what we do.”
Reactions to Gov. Lee’s decision to stop federal stimulus coming to Tennessee
The federal stimulus package meant to take care of unemployed workers when businesses shut down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic added $400 per week to unemployment benefits, raising the weekly payouts of those on unemployment to nearly $800 per week, which is equal to $20 per hour for a 40-hour work week.
Lee said it’s time to get Tennesseans back to work.
“There was a time when that federal stimulus was needed, but that time has passed,” Lee said this week while in Huntingdon announcing Hydro-Gear bringing 375 jobs to Carroll County. “We made the decision to decline the federal component of unemployment insurance so Tennesseans can get back to work.
“Employment brings dignity, it’s good for families and it’s good for Tennesseans. It’s time to stop paying people not to work, and we need to return to pre-pandemic strategies for employment.”
David Kustoff, the U.S. Representative for the Eighth District of Tennessee made similar statements last year when he was talking with West Tennesseans about how they were dealing with the pandemic.
“The enhanced unemployment benefit is too high, and some employers are competing against that benefit and they lose because their employees are making more than they would at work,” Kustoff said last September. “That’s been a real problem.”
Business owners said it continues to be a problem they hope is about to come to an end, but possibly not.
“I’m glad Gov. Lee said no to the federal stimulus, but then there are childcare tax credits,” Diane Cotten said. “But if they’re about to give more money for those with children – which I know in a lot of cases is necessary – then how many people will decide to stay at home because they’ve got enough kids they can live on that?”
Hope for the future
While some at the job fair on Wednesday predicted a shortage of jobs in July when the federal stimulus will no longer be available for Tennesseans, Armstrong agrees with Cotten that the childcare tax credits could be too much of a reason to not get a job.
“I’ve got people who will come in and work for maybe a day,” Armstrong said. “They’ll come in late in the morning and then walk off from the job by lunchtime, and then two weeks later I get paperwork where they’ve applied for unemployment.
“There’s too much of an incentive to not work, and hopefully it will go away, but I don’t think so if the government is promising more money for every child you have.”
As their respective businesses stand now, Reliable is having to either say no to jobs because of a lack of workers and materials because suppliers are short of workers as well, which means their inventory is down and slowing the manufacturing and delivery of supplies.
Jackson Pride is having to cut down on the number of jobs they do too.
“I could continue to add jobs to what we’re doing, but that would overwork the staff I do have, and I’m not doing that, burning them out and running them off,” Cotten said. “I’m just hoping and praying we’ll get quality workers in here that can do the job and will show up consistently to do it.”
Old Country store has cut an hour off their take-out services in the Dixie Café on Sunday evenings and cut down the number of days the café offers breakfast. Shaw said those decisions weren’t totally influenced by the labor force.
“We didn’t do that necessarily because we’re short, but if a certain time of the week isn’t great for sales, we need to look out for our employees and not keep them here longer than they need to be here,” Shaw said. “But hopefully we’re close to the end of this.
“I support Gov. Lee’s decision with the federal stimulus, and I think it’s a step in the right direction. Hopefully it will lead to people coming back to work.”
Reach Brandon Shields at bjshields@jacksonsun.com or at 731-425-9751. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or on Instagram at editorbrandon.
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