Hiring Challenges: Is It Still a Worker’s Paradise?

When major global cities reopened after the pandemic, the expectations seemed straightforward, more or less. We envisioned rejuvenated economies, people returning to work, and life almost as it once was. A surge of new jobs opened up in the market. It was meant to bring relief to decimated economies and record levels of unemployment during the pandemic. Or so, that was the thought.

In a historic first, people were not returning to work, despite millions being unemployed. The labour shortage was a first for the U.S. – acute worker shortage when businesses should be thriving.

Fast forward to today, businesses everywhere are still struggling to get workers to return alongside spikes in resignation numbers. Workers have been quitting in droves since July this year. For perspective, that’s four months in a row and a record high. Data from the Bureau of Statistics for July showed that the U.S. still had more job openings than workers available.

For months, several corporations and policymakers blamed federal unemployment benefits as reasons for people not returning to work. But we’re now past September when those benefits ran out, and the number of people looking for work continues dipping. Over 10 million job vacancies across sectors lie vacant.

The challenge isn’t U.S-centric with the UK and Euro-zone countries reporting unprecedented worker shortages still. The reasons behind this are varied. While most are universal trends, respective nations have many localised concerns to contend with as well.

Some workers have retired early, while others no longer see the appeal of returning to low-wage jobs. Border controls and immigration restrictions in other countries are deterrents to fulfilling the labour shortage. The post-Brexit UK has been especially hard-hit in this respect.

Above all, there’s been an overall shift in worker priorities. Experiences with widespread loss and disease exacerbated questions on what people want out of their lives. Expectedly, commuting for hours to a mind-numbing, low-paying job wasn’t it. Many people began their own businesses or found different ways to make ends meet.

In actuality, the historic worker shortage is a major reassessment of employment priorities. At the top of the list is good living wages, childcare support, health care, insurance, and paid sick leave allowances.

Additionally, the threat of the virus is still very much real. The spread of the deadly Delta variant has kept most people away from work. In-person jobs could expose workers to health risks or keep them away from caring for family members affected.

Recovery will be slow. According to experts, the US labour market is on track to recover by July 2022. Recently, October payrolls looked optimistic as the country added 531,000 new jobs to the market. However, experts have long stressed that the roots of the labour shortage are pre-pandemic and result from fundamental developments in the U.S., UK, and Europe.