{ SPECIAL REPORT }
HELP ately ) r e p s e (D WANTED With the holiday season in full swing, employers are encountering a hard reality: a workforce reluctant to return to work. By Leslie Garisto Pfaff Jason Beck is tired. Since the spring, he’s been working six days a week, and with the holidays here, he’s putting in longer hours, under tougher conditions. As a divisional manager for a group of luxury stores, one in Garden State Plaza, he’s a victim of what many are calling the hiring crisis. Simply put, there aren’t enough people looking for jobs to fill the positions that currently need to be filled. That means that Beck has to step in when there are holes in his sales force— and lately, there are always holes in his sales force. Like almost everyone who works for a retail chain or a franchise, Beck is contractually prevented from speaking to the press, which is why we can’t name the store he works for, and why we’ve agreed to change his name in this article. Even if this proscription weren’t in place, though, it’s unlikely that brick-and-mortar retailers—already reeling from the effects of the pandemic—would want to advertise the fact that, in the year’s busiest shopping season, customers are apt to encounter longer lines, and fewer experienced salespeople, than in previous years. “Bergen County employers are struggling to recruit workers, despite high levels of unemployment,” notes Lynda Wolf, director of the Bergen County Job Center (BCJC). That’s especially true, she says, among hourly, entry-level and midlevel nonmanagerial positions, particularly in the sectors of manufacturing, hospitality, food service, retail sales and health care. A November walk through Mitsuwa Marketplace, the 45,000-square-foot Japanese mall in Edgewater, revealed “hiring” signs at virtually every kiosk, and a manager at a Bergen County Panera Bread told us that hiring “is one of our biggest difficulties.” Similarly, a manager at one of Bergen
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