Where have all the workers gone?
The bottom line is the techniques and the offerings that you used in the past will not work now. And, no, I don’t believe it’s going to change anytime soon. American workers don’t want to go back to that normal. And what needs to change, actually, is just about everything.
VIDEO
TRANSCRIPT
Every client we talk to, every company that we interact with, is saying the same thing: they can’t find talent.
most everything that they’ve done in the past that has worked or isn’t working right now. How could that be?
The pandemic hit in march of 2020 and what did we see? We saw unemployment skyrocketing or businesses that were affected by either shutting down, slowing down, or going out of business.
But as the economy starts to heat back up, what we expected was an excess of candidates and an excess of jobs–all those things would mesh together and what we would get would be this perfect situation. But that isn’t what’s happened.
For the first quarter of 2021 what we’re seeing is unbelievable numbers on all the factors that the government measures like GDP, durable goods spending, etc. Well the opportunities have returned to the market but we haven’t seen the workers come back.
Why is that?
What I’d like to suggest here, are a few things that you should consider:
- With the increased unemployment benefits,
some people can just survive staying at home and there may be lots of reasons that they want to do that. - Some people that have been laid off have just decided they’re not willing to go back to work.
- Competition for talent has increased dramatically, and you need to pay attention to that because that’s a key.
- Some people have gone back to school and they’re not available for full-time work.
- But also, with schools and day care centers not going back full-time, some people are challenged because they
now have children that are at home and they have to care for them. - Despite increased vaccination rates, some people are still worried about returning to the
workforce and being subjected to COVID. - Some laid off workers have realized that, you know what, they they really dislike their manager, they
dislike that job or the industry, and they’ve decided I’m not going back to that at all. - And last but not least a remote workforce which was an exception, has now become the norm.
The bottom line is the techniques and the offerings that you used in the past will not work now. And, no, I don’t believe it’s going to change anytime soon. American workers don’t want to go back to that normal. And what needs to change, actually, is just about everything needs to change.
