There were a record 8.1 million job openings available going into April.
Federal and state officials, who spent the last year trying to keep Americans safe in their homes during the pandemic, are suddenly grappling with the opposite problem: how to lure them back to work.
At least 14 states, including North Dakota, Alabama and South Carolina, have moved to cut off enhanced federal jobless benefits that were supposed to last until September. Florida is among roughly 30 states reinstating a requirement that the unemployed prove they are looking for work to receive state benefits. Montana is offering return-to-work bonuses to unemployment recipients who accept a job offer. Amazon, McDonald’s and Chipotle are hiking wages, as is Tyson Foods, which will also start allowing more flexible work schedules.
And President Joe Biden is emphasizing the need for workers to accept new job offers even as the factors that have been keeping them on the sidelines — scarce childcare options, elevated health concerns and generous federal unemployment aid — remain in place.
“It’s time to get back to work,” Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little said Tuesday while announcing that his state would be ending federal unemployment benefits. “We do not want people on unemployment. We want people working. A strong economy cannot exist without workers returning to a job.”
The flurry of activity underscores the rising concern that the economic recovery could be jeopardized even as lockdown restrictions are lifted if restaurants, travel companies and other businesses are unable to hire enough staff to keep up with surging consumer demand.
Fears of a labor shortage have been fed by government data that showed employers added 266,000 jobs in April, falling far short of the roughly 1 million that many economists had forecast.
While economists warn against jumping to conclusions based on one month of data, a second survey released Tuesday showed there were a record 8.1 million job openings available going into April. And there were fewer hires per job opening that month than at any time since the series began in 2001, said Jed Kolko, the chief economist at the job-search site Indeed. That’s fueling the suspicion that a shortage of workers is holding employers back.
The difficulty in hiring workers has prompted some of the country’s largest employers to increase pay. McDonald’s announced Thursday it would raise wages for more than 36,500 hourly workers by an average of 10 percent over the next several months. Amazon said it will hike wages by up to $3 an hour for more than half a million of its U.S. employees.
But the conversation over how to boost hiring has focused primarily on the enhanced unemployment benefits, which Republicans say are overly generous and give people an incentive to stay home.
The benefits currently supply an extra $300 per week in federal money on top of state jobless aid, which varies among states but averages more than $300 a week.
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Federal and state officials, who spent the last year trying to keep Americans safe in their homes during the pandemic, are suddenly grappling with the opposite problem: how to lure them back to work https://t.co/sbXi4ooPQ4
— POLITICO (@politico) May 14, 2021
Cut off the incentive to stay home — unemployment and other benefits — and people will go back to work. And no more stimulus (there was a rumor of a fourth payment).
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