Good or bottle? US restaurants struggling to find staff | Business and Financial Issues

Eva Johannesdottir has passed six kitchen staff members since reopening her restaurant for The Cliff last May. Each time, they set aside time and money to train them, but they have not been able to follow the demands of busy brakes and send them to a small cafe in Jersey City, New Jersey in the United States.

“The biggest problem with having a business right now is finding help,” Johannesdottir told Al Jazeera. “One of the main reasons why I can’t get a business open for more than three days a week right now is because I can’t find employees.”

The problem is not unusual. As restaurant boundaries are lifted and Americans fulfill their appetite, many corporations have “assisted” signs collecting dust in their windows.

The restaurant was one of the most challenging businesses during the coronavirus epidemic and ended 2020 with approximately 3.7 million jobs less than it had started in a year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But with the increasing number of vaccines and the growing burden of restrictions, the demand for restaurant workers has returned: there were opportunities to relax and entertain 1.2 million people in March, but many jobs have not been filled.

Teams of workers remain 14% lower than before epidemics, National Restaurant Association has found. In an April survey, 84% of restaurants said their work performance was lower than it would be without COVID-19, with nearly half of them working with more than 20% of employees.

Restaurants that are willing to sell after the 2020 crash are being held hostage due to a lack of staff – and they pay.

It can take $ 6,000 to find, monitor and train an hour worker, a learning and the Toast restaurant has been found, and this is economical while any other restaurants are no longer looking for servers, caterers, cooks, dishwashers and frontline staff.

Staff shortages are driven by a number of factors, experts say, ranging from difficulties with workers not being able to access child care for people who are changing jobs. But one thing, in particular, has become a political flashback – $ 300 a week to help the unemployed, which some say is unpleasant for people to go and find work.

“Most people are like, well, I will be enjoying the summer, spending time with the family, getting together and going back to work in September,” Johannesdottir said.

Contradictory benefit

In New Jersey, unemployment benefits $ 731 a week. Add up $ 300, and that’s $ 1,031 a week. By comparison, a person who works full-time for less than $ 12 an hour earns $ 480 a week.

Some of Johannesdottir’s employees at The Cliff are paid hourly and others are paid, with the minimum wage starting at $ 16 per hour. However, they cannot compare the benefits of unemployment – especially when prices go up.

“The areas are small, especially places like mine that do not have licenses,” said Johannesdottir. “If I could bring in all the money at the same or higher rate, I don’t think we will survive.”

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was an opportunity to relax and entertain 1.2 million people in March, but many jobs are not being filled [File: Mary Altaffer/AP Photo]

Twenty-five countries have announced their resignation from a non-profit federation, which includes $ 300 a week, all led by Republican ambassadors.

But many experts say I often say that the high benefits of unemployment are the only reason why restaurant owners are struggling to find employment right now.

Ioana Marinescu is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a research fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Marinescu said his research shows that while the benefits of unemployment can lower employment and make people realize, “the real cause of the crisis is simply being in the labor market – everyone is trying to get a job right away.”

And because of the special epidemics, the rental amount of cars “does not match the amount of unemployment”, he says.

Its advantage is the “double-edged sword”, Marinescu explained, noting that their presence makes it possible for people to save money so that they can have money to spend on businesses as restaurants in the first place.

The challenges of caring for children

Summer holidays for students in the US usually start in June, and many schools in the country are still studying distance or hybrid types on vacation.

While the benefits of unemployment have been at the center of many ideas about why workers are not going backwards, “we can say that the cost of child care is important, if not, to prevent workers,” Bob Schwartz, an economist at Oxford Economics, wrote last week. (PDF).

Continuing to distance or mixed education and the high cost of childcare because the Americans did not return to work [File: John Minchillo/AP Photo]

Schwartz states that in the year leading up to the epidemic, “the cost of day care for primary and secondary school children was 30 percent higher than the actual rise in property prices.”

Because the cost of child care has risen sharply than property and other services, “there is no reason to believe that this will not happen and prevent low-income women from returning to work,” she added.

Johannesdottir believes that child care – including federal – is a serious problem.

“If there is a restaurant worker who is getting unemployment plus extra income and is living at home with the kids, there is no reason for him to go back to work,” he said.

She and her husband have made their own child-care sacrifices to keep their restaurants open. In July, they sent their two young children to Iceland to stay with Johannesdottir’s mother to continue her schooling.

Hard summer

Johannesdottir is currently working with half of what he needs, but he hopes things will get easier in the fall, when unemployment benefits will end and children will return to schools with children.

Many restaurant owners are waiting to see if interest in their work has returned to the $ 300 reimbursement fee after the end of September. [File: Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo]

“This summer is going to be a long and difficult one, but if I can get it by September, I know things will change for the better,” he said.

Summer should not be a problem, says Marinescu, an economist. They want a “Empowerment of the unemployed” – which would allow employees to continue to raise $ 300 until the program ends in September even if they return to work earlier, which would encourage recruitment by providing a safety net.

The data shows that “most people take jobs before the benefits are gone”, he said. But he hopes to see the amount of work done before the deadline. For those who are waiting, however, “it will be difficult to get a job because you will have a hard time competing” with many who will be signing up for the same positions, he explained.

As restaurants increase with the number of employees, Johannesdottir expects their customers to give their employees a better chance.

“We’re out of the epidemic,” he said, “but we can’t expect everyone to stay where we left off.”