It took me a while to connect all the dots. There was our two-hour wait in the rental car line, our new dining room table that was promised to arrive any day but got held up for months at port, the endless dealership invites to sell my 2017 vehicle for top dollar, the repeated delays of our early Friday morning Southwest flight (that finally got us home an hour before Shabbos), and the months-long wait for a dented refrigerator door replacement.
The list goes on and on –
across the board and across the globe. Product lines, professional services,
food establishments, educational institutions, and more, in every state, every
country, and every continent. For months, we have all experienced the
trickle-down effects of this unprecedented labor shortage in one way or
another. I went behind the scenes of just a few of these workplaces to do some
investigation.
The Domino Effect
When I reached out to Torah Institute’s (TI) coordinator
of general studies, Dr. Suzanne Cotter, just about a week before secular
subjects were to begin, she was still short two teachers.
“I think the labor shortage is a
result of a domino effect – almost the inverse of it, as it were. We hired a
teacher, and just today he let us know that he was able to get full-time
employment with benefits. We can’t compete with that, so now we have an
opening. If there’s a shortage, a person with good skills can get an even
better job and that leaves us without an employee.”
Dr. Cotter explains TI has very
little attrition, only losing a couple of teachers a year to other career paths
or other professional opportunities. “Our staff is very committed and very
steady. Last year, however, we had three teachers leave because of Covid, and
they did not return. They felt they were particularly at risk and had to make
the best decision they could for themselves and their families, and we respect
that. I am not feeling that Covid is the issue now. I can only assume that
government benefits are a factor, although I can’t confirm that.”
Hold the Schnitzel
Eli Siegel, Market Maven’s general
manager, is having similar problems. “In the grocery industry, there’s a high
turnover rate, and we are constantly looking for people. Most of the positions
are labor jobs; it really doesn’t require tremendous amount of skill, so we are
always looking for fresh hands and people who are able to commit to the job and
the schedule. At this point, I could probably fill at least a dozen spots – from
managerial positions to warehouse workers.”
Eli’s vendors are short-staffed,
too. The tremendous chicken shortage is just one example, says Eli. “Since the
vendors are short-staffed, the employees they do have are demanding more money,
causing prices to go up and production to drop. That leaves consumers with fewer
options for product selection. For example, being short-staffed means less time
to devote to break down whole chickens to smaller pieces for us to buy. It is
almost impossible for us to get chicken cutlets now, which means we have to buy
the more readily available whole chickens – because they require less work –
and our staff has to break them down to create the cutlets. It makes it very
difficult for us, especially since we are short of staff as well.
“So prices are going up because
employees are costing more money, productivity is dropping, and availability is
less than what it used to be. It is hurting us on both ends,” says Eli. “Unfortunately,
it hurts the consumers, too, just not us. Some of my vendors don’t have a truck
driver available for deliveries, and if they do have one, they have to charge
us a lot more for trucking than they did in the past. I now have to send a
truck to pick up product from New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut, instead of
having it delivered here directly.”
More Dollars, Fewer
Goods
Fishel Gross, proprietor of
O’Fishel Kosher Caterers, was also hit hard by the chicken cutlet as well as
other shortages. One vendor told him that his order – like everyone else’s –
had to be cut down drastically. “Sysco, one of the largest food distributors,
doesn’t have enough drivers and employees to fill their orders, which is
causing a hiccup in the food chain,” says Fishel. “When we need to place equipment
orders across the country, we get the same story: not enough staff. We were in
the market for a new refrigerated truck, and they laughed at us. They told me I
couldn’t get it for four to six months – and I needed it yesterday!
“Some employees are reluctant to
take a promotion or jobs because they can’t afford the raise. They will lose
too many government benefits: food, childcare, and health care, etc. Whenever
you have the government putting trillions of dollars into the economy, it leads
to too many dollars chasing too few goods and a shortage of items; that is ‘Inflation
101,’” Fishel concludes.
Behind the Scenes
“It is a ripple effect,” remarks
Eli of Market Maven. “There is a shortage at the ports, for product being
imported into the country, especially from the Far East where a lot of kosher
products come from. There’s also a shortage of staff as the product comes into
the ports on the inspection end, and there’s a shortage in the warehouses that
hold the product and the truckers of the companies that sell the product. That
shortage is the biggest shortage that we’ve had since the beginning of the
pandemic and affects the whole market. Labor has gone up, production has
dropped, and the cost of materials has gone up, as well. I hope it will be only
a few months before things settle down and go back to normal.”
Seven Mile Market’s vice-president
Moshe Boehm concurs. “Whether it’s due to Covid, politics, or the economy,
there is a major labor shortage. It is extremely difficult to find employees
now. The government is offering so many benefits that many people make more
money not working. Some states have turned away federal funds because they
can’t find enough employees.”
Moshe shares a CNBC article,
posted August 4, 2021, by Greg Iacurci: “Twenty-six states ended federal
unemployment benefits early. Data suggests it’s not getting people back to work.”
It notes: “With the $300 supplement, almost half of jobless workers (48%) make
as much or more money on unemployment benefits than their lost paychecks,
according to a recent paper published by the JPMorgan Chase & Co. Institute.”
“The supply chain has been
affected from start to finish,” points out Moshe. “No one I have spoken to has
ever seen anything like this before. There are shortages for product that the
customer is looking for, as well as the materials you don’t even think about.
For example, a truck door, a large freezer door, compressors – items we need to
run the store – that used to have a wait time of 10 days to three weeks to
delivery are now delayed three to five months.
“We just had a trailer of
tissues cancelled because the manufacturer is out of raw materials. (Stock up
on tissues!). Who would think that this could happen in the year 2021. We are
trying our best to have enough staff to service our customers, but we hope the
customers understand the difficulties in the topsy-turvy, unprecedented times
we are living in.”
Garage Doors to Hospital Floors
An August 30 Wall Street Journal article noted, “Shortages of mechanical parts,
commodity materials, and electronic components containing semiconductor chips
have been disrupting manufacturing across multiple industries for months.
Companies determined to keep factories open are trying to work around shortages
by producing what they can. At the same time, rising customer demand has
cleaned out store shelves, dealer showrooms, and distribution centers.…Executives
expect the shortages and delivery bottlenecks, exacerbated by overwhelmed
transportation networks and a lack of workers, to stretch into the fall.”
Alex Gans, owner/manager of
Rowe Door Sales Company in Scranton, PA, can attest to the gravity of the
international labor shortage, even down to his garage door components like
springs and staples. “It takes 10 to 20 weeks now to get a garage door once
it’s ordered,” says Alex, who adds that the wholesale price of garage doors has
gone up over 60% since January 1. “Two or three times a year, I put in a large
order of garage door springs for my stock inventory. Lately, they’ve been
limiting amounts. Whereas I would normally order 1,500 pounds of springs at a
time, I can now order only 500 pounds per week – and there is a four- to five-week
wait. One reason is that the Covid lockdown is much stricter in Mexico,
compared to the States. Also, a lot of the raw materials are produced in
countries overseas, which are not producing as much as they used to. We also
use staple guns to attach wire around the garage walls and there is a staple
shortage. Fortunately, I was able to find 10 boxes of staples at Lowe’s. I took
them all.”
The health care industry is
also not immune from labor shortages. A local hospital employee shares, “The
nursing shortage is not specific to any one local hospital; it’s a national
issue right now. There are multiple nursing positions open, and all hospitals
are struggling with staffing as many other healthcare organizations are right
now, both locally and nationally.” She adds that some hospitals offer sign-on
incentives for units and departments that are more in need than others.
Back to Schools
I spoke to Rabbi Yaakov Cohen, TA’s executive director,
who advertised multiple position openings on August 29. Middle school and high
school had already started; preschool and elementary were to begin in two days,
and the preschool was down several assistants.
“This has been something we
have been grappling with for the last several months,” says Rabbi Cohen. “It’s
been very difficult to attract people to apply for a job. We aren’t getting
nearly the number resumes we have gotten in the past. There are more ads
locally for schools than I have ever seen in any summer leading up to the
school year, and we’ve been emailing parents. We need office personnel,
teachers, assistants, and kitchen help.
“There’s a trickle-down in
every industry that affects everything,” continues Rabbi Cohen. “Not only are
we struggling internally at TA, with things that we would have normally gotten
done but, because things are on backorder and not here on time, we have had to
employ some work-arounds and reprioritize things to make everything come
together. Baruch Hashem, it’s
not at all a disaster here; we are on our A game, but we would love to be on
our A++ game.
“You’ve got to keep up a good
attitude and you’ve got to keep plugging and keep doing the best you can. The
Ribono Shel Olam is in charge. He knows exactly how many employees we need or
don’t need, and He gives us what we need, and, iy”H, we plug forward.”
Will They Ever
Return?
Eli Siegel of Market Maven notes that he is
getting a lot fewer applicants responding to ads posted on social media and
hiring websites. “In the past, we would get hundreds of people applying for
jobs; at this point, we barely get anyone coming in to interview. When they do
come, they tell me they would rather sit at home and collect unemployment, stress-free,
instead of working for a little bit more money than they are getting from the
government. Some tell me they only came for the interview because they are
concerned that the benefits will end and then they will have to have a job. The
number of applicants has plummeted, especially in the last six to twelve
months.”
Rabbi Cohen of TA theorizes
about his staff shortage: “I suspect it is a combination of people having found
other jobs that they can do remotely from home. Or they are comfortable at home
and don’t want to get into the workplace again, or they are getting
unemployment. If I can make ends meet by staying at home, why on earth would I
want to go back to work? I think every industry is struggling with this.”
Dr. Cotter, coordinator of general
studies at TI, puts a positive spin on things. To those who are looking for a
job, she says, “I encourage people to think of themselves more broadly and out-of-the-box.
You can take this shortage as a half-full-glass type of situation and see it as
an opportunity. If you think of yourself as having a certain skill set and an
opening exists which requires different skills, maybe you should broaden your
horizons and be willing to stretch in places where training and support is
offered. Seize the day! The shortage then becomes an opportunity for people to go
into something else or to get a position they may have never thought they could
get – and now they can.”
Miriam Sidell was working as a
home care OT until the pandemic hit. “My husband retired five years ago
and is learning Torah, and he was hoping I would retire soon, as I was often
busy with work documentation during my “free” time at home. When Covid
started, my career abruptly came to an end. Due to medical concerns, I could
not take the chance of possible Covid exposure. Besides attending many Zoom Torah
classes, I became a shadchan. This gives
me a feeling of accomplishment. Also, getting money from the government – due to
not being able to work – certainly helped. At first, I missed working. Now
that I am so busy, I don’t know when I would have time to work. At age 67,
I am grateful that I can say I am retired. But I am keeping up my OT license,
just in case I change my mind.”
After 15 years of working
part-time in Dr. Menachem Cooper’s office, Marcia Weiss retired at the
beginning of Covid – a year or two earlier than planned – to relocate with her
husband to Boynton Beach, Florida. “Covid lasted much longer than expected, and
I was just not comfortable going back to work. I know I won’t return to the
workplace. I love retired life. I’ve gotten a taste of the good life, and there
is no way I am going back to work. This is like paradise! I’m on vacation every
day!”
