2021 might be the strangest year for summer jobs in quite some time.
Despite a national unemployment rate that continues to fall after the worst months of the pandemic, many businesses across the country are struggling to find and hire new workers. This shortage of workers has been felt most acutely by employers hiring for service positions, like those in restaurants, hospitality and tourism. Even as the end of the school year has freed up a glut of local young workers, Macon County employers are still struggling to find help, which some feel may signal a sea change in the local job market for the summer months.
“Actually, it seems like I have seen a lot more kids lean towards entrepreneurship,” said Michelle Brooks, faculty advisor for the Franklin High School chapter of Future Business Leaders of America, a national organization that prepares students for careers in business. “They’re doing it more like starting a lawn mowing business, where in the past it seemed like they would go and work in fast food and that sort of thing. I think here lately, they’ve realized it’s more lucrative to start their own business. It’s harder work, but they realize that their hard work is going to pay off as far as [earning] more income.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the majority of the nation’s economy last year, Brooks said the time away from work seems to have given her students time to consider their options before the economy opened back up. Between cutting grass, babysitting for friends and neighbors and even building custom computers for friends and local clients, Franklin’s youngest workers have gotten more creative to earn their pay.
“I think maybe they’ve thought outside the box a little bit more. With everything being shut down for a while, a lot of them did lose their jobs just like a lot of other people,” said Brooks. “I’m glad to see them go out into the workforce and be productive rather than staying at home doing nothing.”
While starting their own businesses or practicing in-demand skills prevent Macon County’s young workers from having to work service jobs, the shift has taken a toll on many local businesses.
Restaurants in particular have had a hard time filling their staffs since reopening from the COVID shutdown, resulting in longer wait times for customers and increased efforts to make their job openings more attractive to workers. Most local food and hospitality employers either declined to comment on the issue or could not be reached by press time.
With job candidates opting to draw unemployment rather than working for a similar income, businesses have been left short-handed. Several restaurants around town have prominently displayed starting wages for new employees, and many have been forced to increase their rates significantly.
Between the necessity of raising wages to keep pace with government benefits, rising food costs due to pandemic-related supply chain issues and the resulting stress on businesses’ existing workers, Franklin’s restaurant owners have been in a tight spot since reopening from COVID. While this labor scarcity has given rise to the idea that workers don’t want to return to stressful, often grueling jobs, other business owners and managers believe they simply must be given the right incentives.