Job shortage isn’t due to greedy unemployed people

 

Bill Knight column for 5-24, 25 or 26, 2021

 Some businesses say they’re struggling to fill vacancies as the pandemic starts to ease; the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) says 42% of small businesses have unfilled openings; and the National Restaurant Association suggests people would prefer staying home and subsisting off unemployment insurance, which through Sept. 6 includes a $300 federal supplement to state benefits.

However, HALF of restaurant workers were denied benefits because their pay was too low to qualify, says the One Fair Wage (OFW) coalition.

The problem is more complicated than the alleged greed of the jobless, and the solution is simple.

Women have been harder hit, according to the Brookings Institution, which reports 40% had to drop jobs when schools and child-care services closed.

“Without childcare, it will be very hard for women to come back to work on an equal basis with men,” said Ariane Hegewisch of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Next, with just 60% of the country vaccinated, jobs remain risky and stressful.

There’s a shift occurring, too, as people re-think job choices and career options. Pew Research says 66% of unemployed Americans may change their field of work, and 53% of restaurant workers in an OFW survey said they’re considering leaving that industry.

Further, it’s hard to hire when many employers simultaneously have openings, and a labor shortage has been predicted for years with Baby Boomers retiring and younger generations are smaller.

Last, but far from least, many jobs have low wages and no benefits, and more people are wondering why they should have to have multiple jobs without benefits and STILL live in poverty.

“The very people we’ve deemed essential aren’t paid enough to cover their actual essentials,” said Karin Norington-Reaves of Chicago-Cook Workforce Partnership. “They contracted COVID-19 at higher rates; they died at higher rates. Yet we balk at them for utilizing the very [jobless] benefits to which they have contributed.

“In my nearly 10-year tenure as CEO of what has become the nation’s largest publicly funded workforce development system, where we have facilitated training and employment of over 70,000 people, I have never once heard anyone say they didn’t want to work,” she added.

Plus, workers ARE returning to work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent report, which showed the economy last month ADDED 916,000 jobs (including 176,000 at restaurants and bars), and new claims for state jobless benefit fell by 20%, and those seeking federal benefits also dropped: 15.5%.

Nevertheless, some states, including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Montana and South Carolina (supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) are cutting jobless aid to force people to work bad jobs.

That’s “scapegoating” jobless people, said U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D- Ore.)

“A deeply disturbing trend is emerging with Republican governors cutting off enhanced jobless benefits months early,” he said. “Enhanced jobless benefits helped save the economy by ensuring millions of families could pay rent and buy groceries.”

Cutting jobless benefits will hurt the economy, too, since spending will drop.

“We don't need to end $300 a week in emergency unemployment benefits that workers desperately need,” added U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), “We need to end starvation wages. If $300 a week is preventing employers from hiring low-wage workers, there's a simple solution: Raise your wages. Pay decent benefits.”

NFIB said 28% of small businesses are raising pay, some employers say they’re offering bonuses to accept jobs. and McDonald’s announced it would raise pay at its company-owned locations (but that’s just 7% of its 38,000 restaurants).

Economists including Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell say if demand for workers exceeded supply, then the price of labor would be rising, but it’s not.

“We don’t see wages moving up yet,” Powell said, “and presumably we would see that in a really tight labor market.”

What’s needed is simple: improve pay and provide paid sick leave; have schedules with two consecutive days off; ensure workers have opportunities to advance and security from hazards and mistreatment on the job.

“Employers simply don’t want to raise wages high enough to attract workers,” says Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. “Whenever anyone says, ​‘I can’t find the workers I need,’ she should really add, ​‘at the wages I want to pay’.”

In National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters wrote, “Work is always about more than a paycheck,” said “but it is about the paycheck, too.”