Where I live there’s a trend recently toward staff shortage s in restaurants…to the point that we are seeing early closing times or random daily closings.
People are grumbling about it on FB, placing 100% of the blame on unemployment benefits or “free money” as some of them put it. I’m not so sure that’s all of the cause.
Is this happening where you live, and what in your opinion is the cause?
A lot of people that were laid off last March, found new places to work and aren’t going to quit their new job to go back to their old one.
How could it be any part of the cause since unemployment, simply, does not work that way.
Unemployment is a problem but it’s not how you would think. It’s not the “free” money. The reopening(s) are hell on employees and the unemployment bureaucracy. Laid off for a month. Now can you work two shifts of drive up? Now we’re reopening up half capacity. Now we’re shut down.
Actually, right now, it might. The unemployed who are eligible for Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation can get another $300 per week on top of regular state unemployment. (The amount was $600/week for awhile last spring, under the CARES Act.) Current “regular” weekly benefit amounts in my state, Kansas, are between $125 and $503, so those eligible for FPUC may be getting several times their regular UI because of those payments, which could make the unemployment benefits comparable to what they’d earn working. Average weekly pay for a restaurant worker in the US is about $413/week; the Kansas minimum amount of $125 plus the federal supplement of $300 = $425.
Right, now remind me what the unemployment rules say about refusing work.
Some of the reasons that the people on FB never mention that I wonder about are:
had a shitty boss
had shitty working conditions
wasn’t paid enough
got a better job
making more trading cryptocurrency lol
That’s why you can’t find or keep staff! But I suppose stimulus checks or tax refunds or unemployment might be part of it. I also think, “here’s a good argument in favor of increasing immigration”.
Just wow. People working multiple jobs to stay afloat and support themselves or their families for once in their lifetime catch a break and they get chastised for taking it. Meanwhile corporate profits soar. Excuse me for not caring about Burger King having to close early.
A bunch of states waived part or all of those rules due to COVID; here in Kansas, for example, “If you are unemployed due to COVID-19 and have taken all necessary steps to return to work for your regular employer, you do not have to look for other work.” (cite). Other states have been even more generous.
The rest of the states are so completely overwhelmed that nobody is checking anyway.
Wow you think everyone is actually out seeking work if they were making minimum wage before? Even states that pay low unemployment like $365 a week with the $300 federal kicker that’s $2660 a month, well above minimum wage. Right now most states have done away with work search requirements.
And hey I don’t blame them minimum wage should have been raised years ago, it hasn’t kept pace with inflation and cost of living.
If people can make more collecting welfare than they can working minimum wage then we really ought to consider raising the minimum wage. i.e. I don’t blame them either and I couldn’t care less about any industry predicated on paying their employees peanuts.
Oh yeah I absolutely agree it’s $7.25, 20 years ago it was only $5.15, it hasn’t gone up at all in 10 years.
My impression is that enforcement of that is pretty spotty at the best of times, and currently essentially nonexistent. Do you think it’s otherwise?
I don’t know. I just had my fill of people complaining about unemployment* pre Covid and continuing to blame unemployment benefits for ‘whatever’ gets to me.
*Not understanding that there are rules and their pet story about their sibling/cousin/nextdoor neighbor gaming the system are bullshit if they didn’t report it.
I’m sure there’s lots of reasons, one that hasn’t been mentioned is part timers not going back into that labor force. Students and others that used to work part time in restaurants not wanting to do it. Wearing a mask all shift and having to follow all the rules makes a job even more undesirable.
And the schedule creep that part timers have to deal with, originally working a couple nights a week gets creeped up to more shifts every week, a short staffed restaurant might try that on a student who then just walks away.
We might be in the middle of a pandemic… that’d be my bet.
I have a friend who ran a brewery with a brewpub. They closed for a while, opened up, city had a spike, they cut back hours but after two weeks opened up to 50%, customers kept ignoring mask requests and were crowding each other and the staff, main bartender got Covid as did a server, then it went through her family so she had to stay home with each kid, another server quit so she didn’t give it to her elderly mom… And the brewpub’s closed now. Maybe forever.
Hell yeah, they had shortages.
Don’t forget that large national chains often staff according to metrics, meaning that if they had a slow day, they’ll cut shifts the next day. Not knowing from one day to the next if you’ll be working can’t be good for morale, or your budget, or your family life for that matter.
Heck, Walgreens did that for a while with pharmacists, and may still.
A pizza place opened recently in my town with much publicity, and now the owner is saying he can’t staff it; for instance, people might show up for two shifts and then never come back. This makes me wonder if the owner is the problem - that he’s a brute, or sexually harasses female employees, or any number of other issues.
People who work service positions are most often unable to survive without work. Even for the period it takes to get benefits. All the servers I know had a side hustle bringing in money within a couple weeks. And some of those side hustles are proving more lucrative and less work, then their server gig was. It happens.
So you can create conditions in which shitty bosses can thrive and shitty working conditions can persist? Why on earth would that be a desirable outcome?
It looks to me much more like a good argument in favour of increasing wage rates.
Not all of the businesses suffering here are national chains.
There are a whole lot of small business owners who have lost or are losing everything.
I know some of these people, and I’m not quite so cavalier about their loss. Unlike their employees, they don’t get to collect unemployment.
Pre-covid, unemployment was interesting. Depending on the state, you could get fairly generous benefits even if you left voluntarily. Work requirements also varied from state to state.
Unemployment offices were overwhelmed most of the time, and they had no ability to check to make sure that recipients were applying for work, it was pretty much self reported.
However, since the covid relief packages, those rules don’t apply at all. You don’t have to seek work, and last year’s payment was probably more than most of them were making while working.
This year’s is a bit less generous, but you still don’t need to be seeking work, and it is still likely more than you would make at a low wage job.
So, now you know.