One side effect of the nation’s worsening crunch has been an outpouring of research about seemingly every facet of the situation, from employee turn-offs to how restaurateurs and other employers unwittingly drive away job candidates. Sometimes buried in that blizzard of information are the sort of stand-alone insights that can drop a restaurant operator’s jaw to near-ankle level.
Here are four of those factoids that jumped out during recent statistical perusals.
Broader responsibilities for multi-unit supervisors
Hiring crewmembers may be restaurant chains’ biggest difficulty in restaffing to pre-pandemic levels, but the challenges don’t stop at the store level. Whether because of recruitment problems or the need to keep labor costs in check, the duties of multi-unit supervisors have “shifted significantly,” according to Black Box Intelligence.
The researcher found in its last pulse check of labor conditions that a typical supervisor overseeing multiple full-service restaurants had 8.8 unit general managers reporting to him or her in August, compared with an average of 7.8 in January 2020.
In contrast, the span of control has contracted in the quick-service sector, albeit slightly. The average multi-unit manager in that field was responsible for 7.3 restaurants in August, a drop from the January 2020 level of 7.5.
COVID’s hidden labor cost
The federal government’s latest statistical report on the national labor market was packed with stunning revelations, not the least of them being that 6.8% of restaurant and hotel workers quit their jobs in August—far more than double the astounding national quit rate of 2.9%. Buried far deeper in the data than most observers plunged was a sobering tidbit spotted by Guy Berger, the principal economist for LinkedIn.
Berger saw that the proportion of Americans who stayed home from work because of illness soared to 1% in August, a spike he declared was directly attributable to the delta variant of coronavirus. The chunk of the U.S. workforce that calls in sick in any given month is usually around 0.6%, a huge difference given the size of the base number. The country hasn’t seen the workforce that depleted by any sort of illness since January, when COVID-19 cases were still being driven up by contaminations over the holidays.
Brace for a new sort of labor problem
The restaurant industry may be hurting more than any other business from a shortage of workers, but it’s far from the only one to feel the squeeze. Just ask your distributor and just about any of your suppliers. Their labor issues have become a big problem for you, too.
Now it looks as if the industry may similarly feel the pain of yet another business’ inability to recruit. When snow falls this winter, chances are high that local governments will have a tough time clearing the streets for customers, employees and suppliers alike. Some are already scraping to find enough people with the credentials and desire to drive the snowplows.
All across the snowbelt, cities and counties are running recruitment drives to find drivers. The wage offered in Cleveland is reportedly above $18 an hour. Colorado is looking for about 200 new hires to drive its snowplows and airport shuttles this winter. Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation says it needs 600 part-time drivers.
How many might you lose?
Restaurants and other employers could get a first read as early as next week of what will be required of them under President Biden’s employee vaccination mandate, according to Reuters, which reported that a first draft of the plan is currently on the chief executive’s desk.
In the meantime, operators employing at least 100 people got a rough suggestion of how many employees are likely to balk at either getting vaccinated against COVID or submitting to weekly tests for the potentially lethal illness. New York Gov. Katherine Hochul revealed on Wednesday that 3% of healthcare workers covered by that state’s limited employee mandate—33,982 individuals—lost their jobs because they refused to submit to requirements that parallel Biden’s.
These were doctors, nurses and technicians, not restaurant workers, so the tally is an indication, not a statistical guide.
On the same day, the National Restaurant Association sent a letter to Biden administration officials, asking among other things that the option of being tested weekly for COVID-19 be greatly narrowed. The association argued that testing a large swathe of employees every week will be costly and logistically difficult. Plus, there’s the question of how to keep records of the results without encroaching on the employees’ rights to privacy.