Immigration: Source of New Groomers

from PetGroomer.com Magazine - Spring 2022

Inflation and the Grooming Industry

Here we are not promoting anything, we are simply sharing some information. As consultants we hear many things and asked for our opinions.

We all know that finding an adequate supply of groomer employees remains a challenge in most of the United States. For 26 years we have published over 500,000 help wanted ads at PetGroomer.com and we still do every day at no charge to groomers worldwide.

With this background we get lots of inquiries about what else can employers do to find groomers. In 2022 we have had inquiries from employers wondering about the usefulness of offering immigration assistance to foreigners in return for working as groomers. These are experienced professionals in immigration matched with businesspersons in the pet care industry.

Our initial response was, interesting. Many franchises sell to foreigners as part of their immigration to the United States. Of course, we are talking employees and not business owners. It is an interesting prospect and stirred up many questions on our part.

Will these new groomers have to commit to working contracts and for how long? What U.S. states would allow the arrangement? Where will most of them come from? How will they be trained? Must they have previous grooming experience? The list goes on.

We don’t have all the answers. This con-

cept is an active work in progress on their part, not ours. Are there enough Americans that could fill the open positions with looking beyond their borders. Perhaps our industry is not really communicating the shortage of skilled groomers, and just whose responsibility is that? We don’t have a national associ-

ation for such purpose. In this light, some people are looking beyond our borders to fill their personnel needs. We shall see. ◄