Posted on 04/26/2021 4:41:52 AM PDT by Prov1322
Despite increasing numbers of initial unemployment claims across the region, local business and industry leaders say the jobs are available but no one is applying for them. The 60 members of the Greater Rome Existing Industry Association report some 400-plus open positions but say additional federal unemployment benefits and stimulus payments give some possible candidates no incentive to work.
“There are hundreds of jobs here, we just can’t find people to fill them. I was at the GREIA meeting this week and all manufacturers were saying the same thing,” says David Newby, President and CEO of Profile Custom Extrusion in Rome, which has approximately 180 employees.
Profile Custom Extrusion has a ‘Now Hiring’ banner up at their facility along U.S. 27 in Rome. Hometown photo. “In my 40 years here, I have never seen anything like this. We have always had a strong workforce in Rome. We do know the stimulus has created part of the problem. With the federal unemployment, folks can make over $16 an hour not working. They don’t have to search for jobs right now…there is no incentive to work.”
The state’s unemployment benefits top out at $365 a week, while the federal government adds $300 a week. That adds up to the equivalent of $16.63 per hour for a 40-hour week, which in some cases is more than they made when they were working.
According to the latest statistics from the Georgia Department of Labor, the initial unemployment claims increased 29% (32,102) in March to 143,410 compared to 111,308 claims in February 2020. Locally:
Floyd had 1,260 initial claims in March, up 26.8% over February. Bartow had 1,671 initial claims in March, up 22.1% Gordon was up 16.1% in March with 1,018 claims. Polk was down 8.6% with 502 claims in March compared to 549 in February. Chattooga was down 3.5% in March with 136 claims vs. 141 in February. For more: Statistics Pam Powers-Smith, director of Business and Industry at Rome-Floyd Chamber, says she has been surveying both large and small businesses on workforce and labor issues. She says all areas of employers are having trouble finding workers, including restaurants, medical, manufacturing, government and education.
“The types of positions that are available are quite honestly all over the spectrum. I think some people make the assumption that it’s only entry level positions but the survey said it was all…entry level, middle management, top level management, customer service, skilled labor, degreed and certified,” she says.
The chamber has a job site (www.romega.com) that is updated daily. It currently has 122 jobs listed. Powers-Smith says it gets some 10,000 hits each month.
Newby says his company has 12 open positions right now and could bring in more but can’t grow until they fill the immediate openings.
“We have both production jobs and management positions as well. We are having trouble just finding people who will show up. We will bring in seven employees just to keep one of them,” he says.
Jennifer Cole, Human Resources manager at F&P Georgia, says her company has 20 immediate openings and is doing “anything and everything to recruit new employees.”
“We have never had this difficulty staffing before. It is not because of our work environment. F&P is a great place to work; we have great benefits and wages. We have 14 million hours worked without a lost-time accident, so we have a safe environment,” she says.
“We’re finding it hard to recruit when we’re learning people would rather stay home and draw unemployment. As long as people are making $15 an hour with unemployment, they will keep drawing it…that is what we’re fighting against…I have never seen it like this in the 20 years I’ve been in the industry.”
John Cothran, Operations Manager at Brugg Lifting North America and chair of GREIA, says his small company has had trouble filling his vacant shop positions.
“Applicants are almost non-existent. Sometimes it is weeks before an agency sends an applicant our way,” he says. “We are certainly not on the upper end for starting wages. However, even some of those businesses with the higher starting wages have the same problem. I am sure the pandemic has played a significant role here but it seems that since COVID, workers can make almost the same staying at home.
“Fortunately, since we are a small company, we are maintaining by all of us covering all the business needs…we all wear a lot of hats. It is a daily struggle and until we are fully staffed, business growth maybe challenging.”
Manufacturers are not the only ones struggling to find workers. Local businessman and developer Wayne Robinson owns several Bojangles restaurants in Northwest Georgia including locations in Cartersville, Calhoun, Adairsville, Summerville and Hiram. He says it has been “extremely hard” to find employees.
“We have ‘Now Hiring’ signs up at all the businesses and have had no applicants. I think every fast-food and quick service restaurant is looking for employees,” he says.
“It is frustrating to operate with such low staff levels. That’s the reason we haven’t been able to open the dining rooms at Bojangles back up…there is not enough staff on shift to cover both dining room and drive-through. We have even had to close earlier because we don’t have staff. It has made us be creative in stretching employees out.
“Restaurants typically have 35-50 employees and everyone is fighting for same folks. The stimulus checks have taken away the incentive to look for jobs. So many are content not to work. But once the stimulus money evaporates, I look for the job market to return.
Hann with JWH Transport “In the meantime, we are offering higher salaries and entry rates…but it’s very frustrating to be a business owner right now.”
Nick Hann, owner of JWH Transport in Rome, also is having a tough time filling transportation jobs for truck drivers.
“We are not exempt…it’s hitting every industry,” he says. “We are a smaller transportation company with 40 trucks. We typically average at least 10 applications per month but we have had maybe 10 applications in the last 90 days…about a 60% decrease.
“Trucking as a whole is hard to find employees because there are lots of guys that hold a CDL (Commercial Drivers License) but getting them qualified is another story because of a bad driving record or drugs.”
“We are constantly hiring, even when the market is doing well. We need at least two drivers right now.”
Some people get it.
Deal with it. I did. Or go out of business and learn to code. It's an unfair unjust world so pay to play or quit. Buck up.
Our local MCDonalds has shut down 2 days now due to technical problems.
I think it’s more staffing. The other ruse is our ice cream machine is broken or we just ran out of buns for Egg McMuffins
I agree with you 100%, and I would cheerfully eliminate H1B visas. The main problem with the labor market (non-IT) at the moment is the government distortion.
With zero evidence.
Typical lying manager.
If the demand for developers is so high, why don't you do what companies used to do? Train them yourself and require them to work for you for two years in return.
Oh, but that would involve financial risk to the company, and the Jack Welch types (together with the glut of the baby boom and the H1-B craze) taught you there'd never be any shortage ever.
Now that you've eaten your seed corn, the only thing you know how to do is insult the very people who could solve your problem.
“You accused central_va of having no skill, and me of having no job.
With zero evidence.
Typical lying manager.
If the demand for developers is so high, why don’t you do what companies used to do? Train them yourself and require them to work for you for two years in return.
Oh, but that would involve financial risk to the company, and the Jack Welch types (together with the glut of the baby boom and the H1-B craze) taught you there’d never be any shortage ever.
Now that you’ve eaten your seed corn, the only thing you know how to do is insult the very people who could solve your problem.”
— grey_whiskers
So, if you got another job and kept up to date with technologies over the years and are working as a developer, why are you still whining about losing your job 25 years ago?
Including training.
A wee bit spoiled, you are.
Have you noticed the outflow FROM California?
Now ask why.
Then ask why, if they're paying six-figure signing bonuses, they can't spring for 1/10 of that for training classes.
Like companies used to do before Jack Welch.
My business does not derive sales from teaching advanced mathematics to kids out of high school—there are universities to do that.
Because verminous managers of the sort you appear to be by your postings, arbitrarily changed the rules without warning, and then blamed the victim.
You don’t just “train” someone in mathematics—it’s not like operating a frontend loader.
Are you serious?
Life was good. Mortgage, good job, pregnant wife and all that ended in 1 day. It took 10 years to fully recover from that. Telling my preggers wife I was unemployed killed me. It turned me into a mean SOB when it comes to management and I hate globalists. So fukk you and everyone in management. Fukk off and die.
Do you have reading comprehension? I was responding to "It's a free market" - that is not a free market by definition.
Gasoline prices are massively distorted by the government. Steel prices are massively distorted by the government. Every price is massively distorted by the government, by changes in the markets, by the weather, by disasters.
I don't disagree with that, but the solution is not to introduce the biggest distortion in the history of the country that will only lead to inflation, government debt and companies going out of business or shrinking. If this became permanent, it would be a bigger distortion than all other government distortions combined. The only reason *anyone* is still working that makes less than $50k/year (half the country) is people think it will end.
You are an idiot
I don’t know what made you think I’m a globalist, especially since I stated several times I don’t hire H1Bs and think that visa should be eliminated, but whatever. Some people are able to roll with the punches and some aren’t. I guess you’re in the latter category.
You should have thought of that, before you destroyed an entire generation of IT talent.
You ate your own seed corn, you deal with it.
Otherwise, why get rid of so many Americans to hire H1-Bs?
Oh, poor baby. You did everything right, and YOU hire Americans.
Or do you just like to insult people on line to make up for your own incompetence as a businessman?
I'll make you an offer.
YOU take the risk, and pay me a living wage while I learn your technology; in return, I'll work for your company for five (5) years.
Real estate costs are astronomical in CA.
I'll do it in the Midwest, and you scale down the pay from Silicon Valle to account for my lower cost of living.
If you won't do that, why are you expecting other people who have to eat in the meantime, to train themselves on a technology which might suddenly run out of favor, at their own expense, with no income in the meantime, and no prospect of keeping a job or a career, just so YOU can rake in the dough?
Screw you. You want to set wages like Marxist in the USSR. Screw that.
_______
But isn’t that what we are doing by kicking in $600/week for doing nothing? We’ve set the wage at roughly $16 / hour by doing so. I agree with free market principles for wages, but not when the government is setting the minimum wage, unintentionally, at $16 / hour.
Because the H1-B threat is on-going at every level of the software trade. Corporate executives continue to press for importing millions of 3rd-world immigrants under indenture contracts which permit them no recourse in our political system. They know very well what they are doing.
This lowers incomes and degrades working conditions for the natives every time. From the executive viewpoint, that is a feature, not a bug. It is all about power to control other people.
The comment from "central_va" about a "typical lying manager" is spot on.
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