Ryan Blythe

BY RYAN BLYTHE

I‘ve had the pleasure of meeting Cam Marston, one of the nation’s foremost experts on workplace and marketplace trends. He has written five books, hosts the podcast “What’s Working With Cam Marston” and has been quoted in or appeared on major media outlets.

Marston has a four-prong theory on why there reportedly are millions more job openings than there are people looking for work. 1. Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic affected the workplace, according to Alabama Secretary of Labor Fitzgerald Washington. However, that can’t account for all of the labor shortage. 2. Many baby boomers retired early as the pandemic spread, a move that had a ripple effect in the companies where they worked. “My clients may be exaggerating when they say it takes two employees to replace the work ethic of one boomer, but they are not exaggerating by much,” Marston said. 3. Midcareer Gen Xers decided the pandemic was a good time to leave their jobs and start their own companies. “I have seen no numbers on how many Xers did this, but it would have to be a lot to account for the dramatic shortage of employees we are now seeing,” Marston said. 4. According to Marston, Alabama’s Washington said that a few hundred thousand workers in his state simply “vanished.” He pointed out neither he, nor anyone else, can account for the shortage in the labor pool, which also has happened in other states.

My suspicion is that a combination of all of the above accounts for the diminished labor pool.

Another consideration is the shortage of tweeners in the job force. A tweener is someone who is born within five years of an adjacent generation. Marston pointed out that tweeners serve as interpreters between generations because they understand people older and younger than them and can make sure each generation knows what the other is saying.

“Becoming dependent on one of these interpreters, as I call them, tends to make these tweeners high centers of loyalty, meaning employees become loyal to them,” Marston said. “If the tweener leaves the workplace, the other employees find the workplace can become frustrating because they are struggling to understand or be understood and will soon leave, too.”

Blythe will share the rest of his interview with Marston in the January 2023 issue of Around Acworth.

Ryan Blythe is the founder of Georgia Trade School, which for the seventh consecutive year, was named one of the Cobb Chamber Top 25 Small Businesses of the Year.