By Christopher Harper
As you drive throughout central Pennsylvania, it’s difficult not to notice something other than fall foliage: Help wanted signs abound throughout the region.
On Route 11, which snakes along the countryside near my home, more than 70 signs seeking employees dominate the highway.
Fred Gaffney, executive director of Columbia Montour Chamber of Commerce, told a local newspaper that he’s at a loss to say why. “This is a workforce crisis unlike anything I’ve seen in my years at the Chamber,” Gaffney said.
Recently, a local job fair featured more than 500 openings from 25 employers. But only 40 people attended, Gaffney said. Businesses in the area have raised their minimum wages to $15 an hour and higher.
What’s happening near my home is occurring throughout the country. According to the National Federation of Independent Business, 67% of small businesses reported hiring or trying to hire in September, and 42% raised compensation. But a record 51% still have openings they couldn’t fill.
The Wall Street Journal postulated in a recent editorial: “So what’s causing the worker shortage? One possible culprit is government and employer vaccine mandates that set ultimatums for workers. President Biden’s vaccine order first applied to nursing homes, which lost jobs in the month. Many states and school districts have also imposed mandates, and state and local education employment fell 161,000. The White House claims its vaccine mandates will boost job growth, but not if unvaccinated workers quit.”
The lack of workers has clearly become a drag on the economy. Ships are backed up at ports partly because there aren’t workers to unload and transport goods to where they need to go. Labor and material shortages are delaying projects and increasing prices in the home-building sector.
Another factor is that it doesn’t pay to work in some cases when the government provides enough money to keep people off the job.
For my wife and me, it’s meant postponing work on our new home because there aren’t enough painters and other tradespeople to perform needed maintenance. For example, we can’t get anyone to paint the exterior of our house until next spring.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration seemingly has no strategy to solve the problems.
In an interview with Business Insider, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh has a lame analysis:
–People are afraid to go back to work because of the Delta variant.
–People have moved out of areas where employers are hiring.
–People are rethinking their attitude toward work—what one psychologist has called the “the great resignation.”
“I think a lot of people are re-imagining or rethinking about what’s next for them,” Walsh said. The pandemic has changed people’s views about work, causing them to “ask existential questions about their purpose and happiness,” Business Insider noted.
Whatever the case, it would appear that the labor conflagration won’t be solved anytime soon, particularly under this administration.
I guess I may have to get out the work clothes and ladder to ponder the existential question of whether to paint or not to paint.
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