JBord

I don't think it changed my mind, but I think it's valid. There are some people, in all jobs, that are excessively scared of the virus. It stands to reason some of them would be restaurant workers. But all kinds of workers whose jobs weren't forced to shut down by the government have gone to work every day - are we seeing grocery store clerks and stockers quitting in droves and refusing to come back? There has to be another factor, and I think that factor is the higher unemployment pay folks have received due to the pandemic.

Completely agree. I don't like my job either. At my last company, I got a severance package that basically paid me the same amount of money, in a biweekly check, to not work for a year. I didn't once listen to a job offer or talk to a potential employer...until that money ran out. It's just human nature. When the money runs out, I expect many will go back.

gaobest

There have always been jokes about restaurants failing or press about razor-thin margins. It makes sense that it’s hard to return to a restaurant job when there are other jobs with steady pay. When we last went to carmel, we went to our beloved fondue restaurant and observed that Ricardo wasn’t there that night. Then we went to our usual Safeway (which had a closed self-checkout) and at cashier checkout, With the added masks, I realized that Ricardo was our checkout guy. We chatted and didn’t go into details about his job change; he mentioned helping a friend with their restaurant on weekends albeit in Marina which is a tad farther for us. So I can imagine that he recognized that he’d get a better steady compensation as a starting staffer at Safeway instead of continuing his longtime job as a manager/server at a fondue spot.

bitterproffit

I don’t think it’s fear of Covid that’s keeping people from going back to work. The $7.50 an hour federal unemployment checks might be behind some of it.

but these servers were dropped like hot potatoes by these restaurants the minute the pandemic started and they were left to fend for themselves. And they know if there’s another surge, they’ll lose their jobs again.

I know locally in Nashville, the minute these jobs all went away last spring a lot of the people who worked those jobs had to move back home with their parents in whatever town they have left to come to Nashville. And they haven’t come back. Amazon is giving signing bonuses for workers at $15 an hour down the street, and the local restaurants still think they can get away with paying $2.56 an hour for tipped servers in Nashville.

The economics are just not working out for restaurants. The hospitality worker crowd left town and didn’t come back. Or they got higher paying jobs at grocery stores and fulfillment centers.

Around here that ‘alternative means of income” is a job at Amazon paying 3 times the wage of a server, plus benefits, guaranteed 40 hour weeks, plus overtime, plus a signing bonus in a pandemic proof occupation where they won’t get one day notice of restaurant closure.

beachmouse

not too long after the pandemic began, we were noticing the new people working the Publix counter had some serious knife skills, so not hard to guess their previous line of work. And Publix actually has a good wage and excellent benefits package by retail sector standards so a lot of those folks would rather take the stock purchase options and such instead of going back to restaurant work.

JBord

There are absolutely better paying jobs out there. But that's always been the case. Perhaps when the government forced his restaurant to close, it was the catalyst for Ricardo to finally look for a new job?

Restaurants didn't drop employees. The government shut down restaurants, effectively eliminating server, host, and busboy jobs. Putting this on restaurant owners doesn't seem fair. As I said above, a restaurant worker could have left before the pandemic for a higher paying job. What changed? It also seems that this worker shortage goes beyond the restaurant industry and is affecting all types of jobs. My boss was telling me that it's been nearly impossible to hire a new sales manager, because demand is greater than supply right now.

The jobs report that came out this morning seems to back the point that people are not taking other jobs, they're just not going back to work. New jobs were much lower than expected. Some states are now moving to restrict the federal unemployment COVID benefits to try to get people back to work. It's a more complex situation than restaurants not paying enough.

It does make sense that some of the restaurant workers who lost their jobs during the shutdown looked for other work. Grocery stores, pizza companies, and some others grew tremendously. I think I saw last spring Domino's was hiring another 10,000 employees. For me, if my old company closed down, and I found a new job, I don't think I'd rush back to my old job if it reopened.

bitterproffit

My place of business shut down, I didn’t lose my job. Many of these restaurant owners scored huge PPP loans that they will never pay back. Many are owned by large corporations that enjoyed big profits and paid little taxes. And in many cases, the workers didn’t even get 2 weeks notice, they were just dropped.

So, I do blame the restaurant owners. It is what it is, but if you treat your employees like they are immediately disposal, they should quit whining that they didn’t all come running back.

I live in a big hospitality town. We got hit really hard. Some places tried to cheat and stay open and skirt the rules, and still treated their employees as disposable. Others shut down and still paid the employees or found other things for them to do. Guess who doesn’t have problems hiring people right now? The ones that took care of their employees.

these same restaurants fought through the state Chamber of Commerce to kill any laws that would propose raising the minimum wage on tipped employees. It is illegal in my state for a city to raise the minimum wage above the federal minimum. The hospitality industry has the legislature in its back pocket.

Janet Yellen was right today. She said that if the extra federal unemployment was keeping people from going back to work then you would see the states with the highest unemployment (the most people getting federal unemployment) having the least amount of job gains but that’s not what’s happening. States with the highest unemployment are enjoying the biggest job gains.

YVR Cockroach

A lot of people are somewhat content with doing the familiar same ol' even if they do complain about and are somewhat unhappy/discontent about it. Being forced into a long-ish stretch of unemployment in one's line of business was probably the incentive to go look for work n some other industry..

BamaVol

We went out for Mexican tonight. Plenty of servers.

bitterproffit

See? The answer is more open borders!

I’m only half kidding. I went out for dinner tonight for the first time in about a month. There was a help wanted sign out front, but pretty well staffed. It’s a popular place and they pay their servers above the minimum wage.

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.

bensyd

This is a huge issue in Australia at the moment. The labour force pre-pandemic was expanding at ~29k/month, but since the border was shut it's growing at 8,500/month. Foreign stu A mate who manages a cafe was telling me he just can't get staff. They'll apply he'll set up a time to interview them and they just won't show up. There's no lack of customers, the economy is booming, but for a lot of locals working in hospitality is not where they want to be.

I still can't believe there was so little government support when they shut everything down. Over here any employee working for an employer that had, or believed it would have, a 30% revenue decline was eligible for $750/week to remain employed.

Eastbay1K

I was having a conversation with someone yesterday, and he was a "lifelong" F&B employee (30-something) and had the opportunity for a M-F regular hours with benefits job last year. He is thrilled and will likely never go back in to the restaurant / bar industry. This story is consistent with other reports I've heard.

bitterproffit

Our state just used this ‘labor shortage’ canard to cut the number of weeks the state will offer unemployment in the future. Thing is, it won’t take effect until next year, long after the federal supplement expires. But they used this current situation to justify it. Meanwhile, the chamber of commerce and restaurant owners who support this likely won’t see a drop in their unemployment insurance premiums that they pay, and they will make people more reluctant to go into a highly variable job market like hospitality.

The restaurant owners fought raising the minimum wage, got PPP loans during the shutdown and didn’t pay employees, fought to end unemployment benefits. And now they think people are going to want to work for them?

lhrsfo

We used to have a relatively stable situation in the restaurant industry. Places and people came and went but overall demand, spend, customer count and employees didn't vary dramatically. Then suddenly the Government closes the whole thing down for some months, reopens partially for some months, closes it down again, reopens partially again, keeps borders closed and otherwise interferes massively with both the demand and supply sides of the equation. (I'm not saying the Government was wrong to do this, just that it happened). It's not surprising that key elements of the chain broke during that turmoil (in fact, we are seeing the same across so many industries). If I were employed in that industry, of course I'd look elsewhere when prospects were so bleak and of course I'd stay elsewhere when prospects are so uncertain.

YVR Cockroach

With the restaurant workforce shaken out of its familiarity and complancency, one wonders if the only workforce available to the restaurant industry - at the wages most are prepared to pay - when it reopens will truly be the dregs from the bottom of the workforce barrel. Where I am, the construction and trades were facing that already at least 3-4 years ago. Pre-COVID, I remember reading about (mainly fast food?) restaurant owners unable to fire their less-than-reliable employees because they were better than having no employees at all.