It's hard to believe this is even possible. But hard data don't lie.
Three years after Covid led to a national shutdown of restaurants, the $900 billion US foodservice industry is struggling to find enough workers - despite boosting pay and benefits. In fact, over 60% of establishments say they're understaffed, according to a new poll cited by Bloomberg.
Look, I'm not denying that this is happening. Obviously it is. But I have to say I'm just completely mystified about one thing:
Where are these workers? Where did they go? Where are they hiding?
The arrangement of the data itself is very strange:
Like much of the US labor market at the moment, the picture that official data paint of the restaurant industry can look contradictory. On one hand, foodservice employment levels are approaching where they were in early 2020 and the number of restaurants is still below pre-pandemic counts, implying there are plenty of workers to go round. Yet for every two job openings in foodservice, there's only one unemployed person to potentially fill the gap, and job openings spiked to 1.7 million in December.
So the employees exist, they're just not showing up. And the demographics of that gap are quite striking:
Who's still missing from the labor force? Mostly Millennials and Gen Xers, who make up a 'significant chunk' of the more than 2 million people who are still unemployed, according to BofA research from February. They explain that many left for childcare or eldercare reasons, or quit because of a disability or a disease, or relocated to areas with lower costs of living, Zhou told Bloomberg. These structural changes have left restaurants desperate for servers, cooks and cashiers.
As Bloomberg reports, some business leaders are resorting to desperate incentives that are themselves not really working:
Many restaurants, including McDonald's Corp. and Domino's, gave workers bonuses during the pandemic. Some smaller chains and franchisees that did the same are now struggling to wean them off.
Herridge started offering a $2-per-hour attendance bonus in late 2021, where employees get extra pay just for showing up. He's since notched it down to $1 per hour extra, but said that competition from other industries would make it difficult to scrap entirely.
