Businesses Worldwide Are Desperate For Workers As Jobless Claims Rise

Today the U.S. Labor Department released the latest round jobless claims. 332,000 people filed first time jobless claims, a 20k rise from the week previous.

This translates to just shy 3 fully-packed football University of Michigan football stadiums.

These continuing jobless claims are happy as businesses are struggling to real in more workers, only worsening the supply chain issues.

Difficulties Hiring Employees

ManpowerGroup – an employment services provider – recently published a survey of almost 45,000 employers in 43 countries, and found that 69% said they are having a hard time trying to find workers.

Because of this, The Epoch Times reports that 67% of these employers are offering prospective staff more flexible work schedules and where the work gets accomplished. 41% are investing in more training, mentoring, skills development, to ease the burdens of the current labor debacle.

15 countries – including the U.S., Canada, U.K., are reported to have their highest hiring outlook compared to 2020.

This recovery is unlike any we have seen before with hiring intent picking up much faster than after the previous economic downturn.

At the same time, some workers are hesitant to reengage with employers as factors including health concerns and childcare challenges continue.

Jonas Prising, ManpowerGroup chairman and CEO, said in a statement.

‘In the United States, job openings surged to a record high of more than 10 million on the last day of July, while hiring lagged that figure by more than 4 million, painting a picture of an economic recovery held back by businesses struggling to fill vacant positions,’ says The Epoch Times.

Released on September 8th, The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), displayed job vacancies jumped by 749,000 to 10.9 million on the last day of July. 9.9 million of them were reported to be from the private sector alone.

The biggest challenge is matching the substantial number of jobs available with individuals in the labor force. It remains to be seen whether improvement in employment wanes a bit further here in the closing act of 2021.

Bankrate Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

One particular industry that has been affected greatly is the food industry.

Food Industry Is In Dire Need Of Workers

The following is from the Trends Journal:

Not only restaurants are having trouble hiring: in many parts of the world, farming and food-processing sectors are finding far fewer workers than they need, Bloomberg reported.

Brazil’s coffee growers needed 120 days to close this year’s harvest instead of the usual 90, due to a shortage of pickers; Vietnam has drafted army troops to help bring in the rice crop.

Malaysia will be unable to collect almost a third of its palm oil harvest, Vietnam’s shrimp collection is 70% below 2019 levels, and 20% of southern Italy’s tomato crop has been lost because transport is unavailable amid a heat wave, a farmers association has announced. 

In Britain, farmers are pouring milk down the drain because there are too few truck drivers to collect it all before it spoils; some farmers are milking less often because they lack enough workers to maintain the usual schedule. 

Also in the U.K., fast-food chain Nando’s closed 50 restaurants due to a shortage of chicken meat and some gas stations have run out of fuel, complicating supply-chain issues even more.

The U.K.’s logistics chaos has been made even worse by a COVID track-and-trace app that notifies a person if they have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus. If the app pings a person with a notice and that person fails to immediately quarantine for two weeks, resulting fines can reach as much as £10,000 – equivalent to $14,000.

U.S. wholesalers Sysco Corp., United Natural Foods, and others report delays in getting a range of items. In the U.K., some grocers are facing short supplies of bread and chicken, while Britain’s McDonald’s restaurants ran out of milkshakes last month.

In the U.S., KFC has pulled television ads for its chicken tenders, the supply of which is shrinking due to a shortage of workers in poultry plants, Bloomberg said. 

That makes good news for workers.

For them, the current economy offers “choice where choices may not have existed in the past,” making it harder to fill less desirable jobs, Decker Walker, agribusiness specialist with the Boston Consulting Group, told Bloomberg.

Companies are so desperate for help that at Smithfield Foods in South Dakota, workers on the pork processing line can choose Apple Watches or iPads as bonuses after they complete 60 days on the job, a company spokesman told Bloomberg.

Whether stooping for hours to pick strawberries in sweltering heat, risking carpal tunnel injuries and lost fingers on a poultry processing line, or milking a herd of cows after dark in a sub-freezing Minnesota barn, agricultural work “is a physical job,” Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, said to Bloomberg. 

For fruit pickers, “you are picking fruit and carrying it up and down ladders, so if your alternative is pushing buttons indoors on a cash register, that might be more appealing,” he acknowledged.

Agricultural workers are not in short supply worldwide; mainland Europe sees no lack and China and India, where labor is plentiful, have enough farm and food workers, Bloomberg noted.

TREND FORECAST: For countries where agricultural and food-processing workers are scant, higher pay may persuade workers to stay in, or return to, the fields and factories. Still, the COVID crisis has realigned entire sectors of the economy and agribusiness will continue to struggle to find enough workers as long as there are better options available.

Three trends will grow stronger as a result.

First, more people will shop at farmers markets and other local sources of produce in season if not enough fruits and vegetables can be trucked in from farther away.

Second, indoor farming will gain more interest as the ongoing trend toward fresh, local foods is spurred by a lack of greens supplied by the usual growers. We first reported on this trend in “The Rust Belt Goes Green” (1 May 2014).

Third, conventional outdoor farms will be pressured to enlist robots to handle routine tasks such as planting and weeding. Farm robots are pricey, but, as we said in “Robots Take the (Farm) Field” (4 May 2021), farmers and government agencies are exploring ways to make robotic farm equipment affordable, including subsidies and also purchasing through co-ops that could give a dozen or more farmers access to the same machines. 

AI Farming Robot Sells Out As It Replaces Farmers

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

As I have noted before, so many economic outlets (even many of the alternative ones that are awake to what is happening), still do not mention that a lot of these labor shortages are due to the fact that many people simply are avoiding these workplaces because of vaccine mandates, masking, testing, and so forth.

That being said, there are still a lot of people that would much rather sit at home and collect checks, though that is coming to an end; but I think many would agree they will probably come back by the winter, with the assumption of more lockdowns and restrictions – which is what a lot of these people are banking on. Also, more and more people are making ridiculous money by playing video games and shooting pornographic images. That reality is real, look into if you don’t believe me.

Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.

Proverbs 13:11

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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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