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A local company was looking for “medical professionals” for $12 to $15 per hour, according to an electronic billboard.
Just down the street, at Buc-ees, they are paying non-professional labor up to $16 per hour.
And, Buc-ees has 401(k) matches, paid time off and other benefits.
It’s unclear what else you would get at the local company looking for “medical professionals.”
This contrast illustrates today’s labor market. In fairness to the local company, it’s unclear what type of “medical professionals” they are looking for. If they are looking for nurses, for example, it’s doubtful in this market that any nurse would work for so little, unless there was some other, overriding benefit to working there.
Buc-ees, a chain of highway rest stops that tout clean restrooms, loads of gas pumps, electric charging stations and an array of food and other items, is more like a Wal-Mart, in size and variety, than your basic convenience store/gas station.
Buc-ees makes no bones about wanting to take care of its work force as best it can.
More employers are encouraged – perhaps being forced – to be more rewarding to its workers, given the staffing shortages in nearly every industry.
It’s worth noting that some of the higher paid professional classifications, as in technology and media, are laying off people these days. These folks are likely to land on their feet in this labor market.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed the labor landscape perhaps forever. As businesses closed to prevent disease spread, workers lost their jobs in large numbers, or had to work from home. As they are now gradually coming back into the workforce and workplaces, they are re-evaluating what’s important in life.
It’s dangerous, particularly for employers, to give workers a lot of time to think.
The workers who are re-evaluating their situations are not, for the most part, lazy and just want to stay home. Their safety, their children’s education — kids had to go to school from home, too – and other factors are causing them to calculate whether what they were doing before Is worth going back to. As day-care options dried up during the pandemic, parents are now left looking hard for affordable child care, so they can go back to work.
Couple that with new, post-pandemic demand for goods and services unavailable for a long time, and they add up to more choices for workers.
More choices for workers mean more competition by employers.
This is good for all concerned. Certainly, we are all paying higher prices for things largely because employers have to give workers more. But, in the long term, both employers and employees will benefit.
Employers will have to try to find the sweet spot between not alienating customers with higher prices, and attracting and keeping workers.
This effort should create better places to work, and, ultimately, better products and services.
The employees will be compensated better on the job, although they may lose some that benefit through higher prices for things they need. Still, they will, as a whole, be better off in the long run than they were.
If you are a worker, evaluate your options with care, now that you have more of them. If you are an employer, find that sweet spot quickly, hire good people and your business should thrive in the long term.
Peter