HIRING CHALLENGES AS THE WORLD RETURNS TO WORK Moving Forward Into A New Way of Recruiting and Retaining
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s many businesses work through what “re-opening” looks like following a tough period of lockdowns and health crises, we have a hiring predicament happening as the world returns to work. The Oregon Leisure and Hospitality industry was one that was hit the hardest in 2020, accounting for 46.9 percent of payroll jobs lost in Oregon during the height of the pandemic. Now we’re addressing a new pairing of concerns: hiring surges in this industry are happening all at the same time, while many jobseekers aren’t wanting to return to work. What’s Driving the Gap Before we can find ways to attract talent in such a competitive job market, it’s important we start with some background understanding of what’s driving employees to not return to work. Many headlines stress the cause of this is extended unemployment benefits, and yes, we agree this is one driver. But as we look closer at this predicament, there’s not actually just one “simple” answer as to why we’re struggling to bring people back, but actually a number of barriers to returning to work.
Record openings, but supply/demand issue. In March 2021, alone, there were 597,000 job openings, but even as unemployment rates decrease, it seems we have more jobs than people looking for work. People can now look beyond their state for the newly popular, remote work opportunities. Stimulus & UI Benefits. With the recent extensions of some unemployment benefits, if someone was making under a $34K/ year, it may be more advantageous for them to stay on UI than get a lower paying job. We are starting to see states slowly start to reimplement job search requirements and other pre-pandemic UI rules, leading to a lower number of claims. Childcare & School Instability. For those who do have children, future childcare and schooling is still so uncertain. Not knowing if in-person schooling will continue or if we’ll revert to virtual learning or even hybrid schedules, is making it difficult for parents to take a new job right now. Fear & Uncertainty. This fight against COVID-19 isn't over, so we can't say we’re “post pandemic” yet. News of new variants and differing views on vaccines have people very cautious
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Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association | AUTUMN 2021
