What the Labor Shortage Tells Us About Labor Conditions
A construction company in Des Moines, IA, addressed its labor shortage by opening a training school and teaching students construction basics such as hanging drywall, painting, and operating machinery.
A plumbing company in Milledgeville, GA, was short on experienced plumbers, so the owner invested $700 on a camera system that allows junior plumbers to live stream their work while experienced plumbers supervise from the office.
For these companies, their labor shortage was due to a lack of skilled labor, so they came up with innovative solutions.
According to the January 2023 jobs report, construction was one of several industries that added jobs during that period.
Leisure and hospitality: 128,000
Professional and business services: 82,000
Government: 74,000
Health care: 58,000
Retail: 30,000
Construction: 25,000
There are estimated to be 2 million job openings in leisure and hospitality. Many employees in the industry who were laid off at the start of the pandemic moved to professional business services in favor of a consistent schedule, benefits, and less stressful working conditions.
The leisure and hospitality sector is seeing a demand boom as people came out of the lockdowns eager to travel and dine at restaurants. Employers in these sectors have used higher wages and signing bonuses to attract job applicants. The ripple effect is rising inflation and already high food and fuel costs, which raised alarm bells with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. It is a trend that may fade, and there are signs that the pressure is gradually easing.
Meanwhile, industries such as retail and health care face problems of their own design.
(Editor’s note: the openings in retail may be exclusive to that industry. Coming from personal experience, it’s rare for a retail worker to get 30 hours per week. You might get 25 hours one week and 10 hours the next. But you won't get more than0 hours because the company would have to pay for benefits. Retail companies are raising wages across the board, which is progress. However, the shortage of workers may have to do with the shortage of hours given to them.)
Finally, healthcare workers are disillusioned by a broken system that is killing patients.
In 2021 alone, approximately 117,000 physicians left the workforce, while fewer than 40,000 joined it.
One in five doctors says he or she plans to leave practice in the coming years, worsening the physician shortage.
One-fifth of physicians report they know a colleague who had considered, attempted, or died by suicide during the first year of the pandemic alone. (9)
The COVID-19 pandemic didn't cause these alarming statistics. A broken healthcare system inept at saving lives did. The healthcare system collapsed in a healthcare crisis.
The diaspora isn't about people working from home in their pajamas or having a break room with kombucha on tap. They don't want to burn out. The pandemic prompted waves of workers to seek more favorable employee experiences.
In the past three years, people experienced work environments that didn't compromise their physical, mental, and emotional health. An economy that puts that kind of burden on its workforce is not a sustainable one.
Solving the problems facing our economy, culture, and systems demands a paradigm shift. There's no going backward.
Photo by Taylor Davidson on Unsplash
