Originally Posted by
FLYMSY
I think there needs to be some clarity to the above. I don’t believe that the government shut down restaurants, rather, it was indoor dining not being allowed. In my area, many restaurants pivoted to doing takeout and managed to survive up to this point. Indoor dining is now allowed at 100% here. We went out to one of our favorite restaurants last night and while 1/3 of the staff was new, it was fully staffed. We don’t patronize chain restaurants, only locally owned small restaurants. We have had some restaurants close permanently, but, surprisingly, we have had some new restaurants opening during the pandemic.
Yes, this is a better way of saying it...the government shut down indoor dining, that's a good correction to my statement. Many restaurants in our area just shut down completely. Some because they couldn't or didn't want to pivot to takeout/delivery, some because they just didn't feel like it was worth it. I'm sure there were other reasons. And then some others made it through the winter by finding loopholes - such as building indoor structures in their parking lots, which qualified as outdoor dining, even though it was no safer (and much colder!) than dining inside the restaurant. We haven't experienced any shortages at our favorite places personally either...but we're still only partially open. I have recently heard about the issue in other areas around Chicago. In any case, I actually think seeing the staff was 1/3 new is quite good. In the restaurant industry, people move around a lot or just come and go. High turnover is the norm, and in a year's time I'll bet a lot of owners are happy to have 33% turnover.
We also had a couple new places open, but not as many as normal for this area. And quite a few have delayed opening. We've been anxiously awaiting the second location of one of our favorite Neapolitan pizza places opening in our town - and we've now been waiting since last fall. Seems like everything takes longer than normal still.
Originally Posted by
bensyd
Right, but in order for the employee to benefit they had to be unemployed. The program here was similar to the UK in that the government subsidised the employee's wages at a flat $750/week but only while they remained employed. Coupled with rent-relief and government cash handouts to small businesses of up to $100k that kept everyone in work even when there were takeaway only/limited seating options.
So the program basically subsidized payroll for restaurant owners in order to keep staff employed. Do I understand that correctly? Did it allow employers to decrease or stop payroll for people getting the $750? If not, I don't see the incentive for employers.
There was a loan program here than restaurants could apply for, but I think it ran out of money pretty fast. I've read many quotes from chefs and owners around here who very much wanted to keep people employed. Some owners pledged all profit would go toward paying employees last year.
Regardless, the reality is that here in the US we have a high unemployment rate, still more than double what it was before the pandemic. So if there's a "labor shortage", something else is now causing it, because there are able-bodied people out of work. Sure, restaurants pay low wages and often are not fun jobs. But that's always been the case, and people took those jobs because they needed to pay their bills. I still think the only variable that's changed is that now people aren't worried about paying their bills - they're getting larger than normal unemployment benefits and don't even have to pay their rent if they can't or just don't feel like it. And again, I have no problem with all of that during the pandemic, but it seems like time to start moving back to normal.