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walkitouthttps://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-bz-coronavirus-employers-difficulty-hiring-wages-women-20210524-7kqkafjpajgdpc4nnctceqpkrq-story.html
Orlando Sentinel article dated May 24, 2021 11:23 am, headline: “ Orlando restaurant owners raise wages, say hiring woes are ‘compromising’ industry”
I had been thinking of subscribing to the Orlando Sentinel because I have family in the area, and we go down a couple times a year most years. They also have, by a lot, the best WDW / UO / Cruise industry coverage that I have found so far. This article was teased in email with this paragraph:
“ Restaurant owners who spoke with the Sentinel rejected the notion that higher unemployment compensation is the only thing deterring job candidates. Labor groups said the biggest issue is that jobs in the tourism and service industries don’t pay well.”
This coverage contains no labor department statistics or polling data, beyond this:
“ By May 2020, when statewide unemployment peaked at 14.5% and joblessness in Orlando surged to 22.6%, the tourism industry had lost 460,500 jobs, about 36.8% of its workforce. It’s since gained back about 302,000, according to figures from the DEO.
But as of April, at least 487,000 Floridians were still out of a job, out of a labor force of more than 10 million people. And about half of the 1.3 million jobs that were lost because of the pandemic and government shutdowns still haven’t been recovered.”
That’s really color, more than anything. The meat of the article the result of interviews with business owners and workers who are now or who formerly were in the industry.
It’s about what a thoughtful person would expect: people were laid off, and a lot of them got other jobs. Those other jobs often pay better, and while those jobs involve physical labor in hot and humid environments, none of them are nearly as physically demanding as working in a restaurant kitchen. And many of the jobs they got when they were laid off from restaurant work did not just give them a multi-dollar-per-hour pay raise: they got paid vacation and other benefits as well.
Finally, many people (predominantly women) left “the work force” (I hate this phrase in so many ways) because they had kids at home, or aging or otherwise disabled family members requiring care and were unable to access that care (safely). Until everyone can access the vaccine, and until we are much further along on the curve of case reduction, that is not changing.
Different people have different economic indicators. I have three (four?) that I have used now for decades. In a down economy, traffic is delightful, the service at fast food restaurants is Superior to a somewhat shocking degree, and you don’t see any For Sale signs on houses (except that one, that is falling off, and has been there for years and the house looks abandoned) or Hiring signs in restaurant windows. When you are stuck in traffic in the middle of the day, and everywhere you go — including Dunkin’ — there is a very nice, laminated, printed Hiring sign that lists things like 401K and amount of paid vacation and starting pay rate that is way above minimum, and For Sale signs go up for a couple weeks then go Pending and then you have new neighbors, and there is just no point in even going to McDonald’s because they are surly and out of everything anyway and when you get your food you wonder if it is going to kill you because it does not look or smell right — when all that is true, you can at least console yourself that people who have never had formal employment are being hired all over your area or maybe even the country while you sit there in traffic.
The pandemic has upended a lot of things, but these metrics are still surprisingly useful as we come out the other side of it.
Orlando Sentinel article dated May 24, 2021 11:23 am, headline: “ Orlando restaurant owners raise wages, say hiring woes are ‘compromising’ industry”
I had been thinking of subscribing to the Orlando Sentinel because I have family in the area, and we go down a couple times a year most years. They also have, by a lot, the best WDW / UO / Cruise industry coverage that I have found so far. This article was teased in email with this paragraph:
“ Restaurant owners who spoke with the Sentinel rejected the notion that higher unemployment compensation is the only thing deterring job candidates. Labor groups said the biggest issue is that jobs in the tourism and service industries don’t pay well.”
This coverage contains no labor department statistics or polling data, beyond this:
“ By May 2020, when statewide unemployment peaked at 14.5% and joblessness in Orlando surged to 22.6%, the tourism industry had lost 460,500 jobs, about 36.8% of its workforce. It’s since gained back about 302,000, according to figures from the DEO.
But as of April, at least 487,000 Floridians were still out of a job, out of a labor force of more than 10 million people. And about half of the 1.3 million jobs that were lost because of the pandemic and government shutdowns still haven’t been recovered.”
That’s really color, more than anything. The meat of the article the result of interviews with business owners and workers who are now or who formerly were in the industry.
It’s about what a thoughtful person would expect: people were laid off, and a lot of them got other jobs. Those other jobs often pay better, and while those jobs involve physical labor in hot and humid environments, none of them are nearly as physically demanding as working in a restaurant kitchen. And many of the jobs they got when they were laid off from restaurant work did not just give them a multi-dollar-per-hour pay raise: they got paid vacation and other benefits as well.
Finally, many people (predominantly women) left “the work force” (I hate this phrase in so many ways) because they had kids at home, or aging or otherwise disabled family members requiring care and were unable to access that care (safely). Until everyone can access the vaccine, and until we are much further along on the curve of case reduction, that is not changing.
Different people have different economic indicators. I have three (four?) that I have used now for decades. In a down economy, traffic is delightful, the service at fast food restaurants is Superior to a somewhat shocking degree, and you don’t see any For Sale signs on houses (except that one, that is falling off, and has been there for years and the house looks abandoned) or Hiring signs in restaurant windows. When you are stuck in traffic in the middle of the day, and everywhere you go — including Dunkin’ — there is a very nice, laminated, printed Hiring sign that lists things like 401K and amount of paid vacation and starting pay rate that is way above minimum, and For Sale signs go up for a couple weeks then go Pending and then you have new neighbors, and there is just no point in even going to McDonald’s because they are surly and out of everything anyway and when you get your food you wonder if it is going to kill you because it does not look or smell right — when all that is true, you can at least console yourself that people who have never had formal employment are being hired all over your area or maybe even the country while you sit there in traffic.
The pandemic has upended a lot of things, but these metrics are still surprisingly useful as we come out the other side of it.