This summer, life will not be easy for workers-hungry American companies Reuters

Authors: Ann Saphir and Howard Schneider

Santa Cruz, California/Washington (Reuters)-Loading riders on the Big Dipper, California’s oldest roller coaster and the star attraction of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, it’s not that Karl Rice thought he would spend his summer The way.

However, after the coronavirus pandemic triggered a year-long work stoppage, Rice’s family reopened in April and started hiring workers later than usual. So far, he has managed to gather about half of the approximately 1,900 employees needed to cope with the busy summer.

The 114-year-old amusement park is crowded with customers who are addicted to freedom after the lockdown. It is expected to usher in the biggest crowd of the season on the July 4 holiday weekend. “Almost everyone is on the deck,” Rice said.

This summer, all executives worked at attractions or food stalls at least once a week, and Boardwalk’s president Rice worked twice a week, with an eight-hour shift, usually helping guests get in and out of the historic roller coaster Big Dipper.

As the United States approaches its Independence Day celebrations, the Biden administration hopes this will mark the country’s symbolic emergence from the pandemic, with the economy returning to normal, and—as Rice’s experience shows—far away from it. .

The mask and social distancing rules of the past 15 months have basically disappeared. The unrestricted sold-out crowd on the waiting lists of Major League Baseball stadiums and restaurants is back in fashion.

However, there is a certain speed limit for the economic rebound. According to IMDB data, the North American box office sales of the top 10 movies last weekend was $93 million, which is the best performance since Valentine’s Day 2020. Before the pandemic began, weekly revenue was still about half of the previous Or less crisis.

“Who knew that reopening would be as difficult as it used to be?” Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said on Monday when talking about some anomalies in the economy: Theme parks are restricting business hours because despite the high unemployment rate Not lower, but they cannot hire enough workers; in the era of record sales, auto factories are slowing production due to supply shortages.

In terms of output alone, the United States has recovered. According to the latest estimates from the Atlanta Fed GDPNow model, the US economy has exceeded the pre-pandemic level of 19.3 trillion US dollars. However, in terms of employment, more than 7 million people are still in trouble, and it may take several months to achieve a full recovery in the labor market.

Graphics: Back, and bigger than ever-https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/USA-ECONOMY/yzdvxldxlvx/chart.png

What is unusual is that for economic recessions, people have money to spend, and the source is unusual: the government. Ongoing unemployment insurance payments, the expansion of child tax credits, and other federal assistance keep families affluent. As the aid ends, it is unclear when or whether private sector wages will fill the vacancies.

Chart: Personal income increased due to government spending-https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ECONOMY/REOPENING/xlbvgqongvq/chart.png

Consumers are consuming. Spending on services—the largest share of household spending and 70% of the economy—has been rising, especially in recent weeks. Many restaurants are overcrowded, and the owner complains about recruitment difficulties.

But the entire leisure and hospitality industry still lacks the top 15% of the jobs in the pandemic. In contrast, work in the financial industry has actually returned to more than 99% of pre-pandemic levels.

Chart: Jobs by industry-https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-FED/INDUSTRY/qmypmdoolvr/chart.png

Data from OpenTable shows that as the number of new COVID-19 infections in the United States declines, people are dining out again, and seated diners have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Picture: Dine-in return-https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ECONOMY/NORMAL/jznvnybxdpl/chart.png

The San Francisco cafe Farley’s is booming; sales are currently about 70% of pre-pandemic levels, but are expected to rise in July, once co-owners Amy and Chris Hillyard hire enough staff to resume pre-pandemic business hours. At Farley’s East’s larger factory in downtown Oakland, sales were only about 40% of pre-pandemic levels.

Chris Hillyard predicts that Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bay Area Rapid Transit) employees will resume work three days a week at the Oakland headquarters at the east corner of Farley’s East. They will meet next week. It has been boosted, but he expects to lose money every month before the fall, when he hopes that more office workers will return.

Air travel in the United States has steadily recovered, but only reached about 75% of the 2019 level, mainly due to the slow rebound in international and business travel. Travel management company TripActions said that air and ground transportation and hotel bookings have more than quadrupled since the beginning of 2021, but only reached 60% of pre-pandemic levels. International business travel is 18%.

Chart: Air Travel Strikes Back-https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ECONOMY/STIMULUS/qmyvmdoglpr/chart.png

The labor market is still far from normal.

Although the number of unemployed has increased by millions from before the pandemic, the number of job vacancies reported by US companies has also hit a record high. The company needs workers, and workers are quitting jobs in large numbers, presumably to pick up other more valuable people. But compared with the numbers required to return to pre-pandemic levels, net employment growth has been slow.

The governors of the Republican-led states blamed the abundance of federal unemployment benefits for the slow matching of employment and workers, which they believed encouraged people to stay at home and had taken action to cancel these additional payments.

William Spriggs, professor of economics at Howard University and chief economist at the AFL-CIO Labor Organization, offered a different explanation: skilled workers in slower-recovering industries are waiting to resume their careers, rather than being forced to accept whatever comes with it. work.

He said that trade workers in the entertainment industry “do not want to work at McDonald’s (NYSE:)”, but they are waiting for Broadway shows, live concerts and film production to resume. Those analysts who believe that unemployed people can be matched one-to-one with currently open jobs “compared to market conditions.”

Chart: Jobs and job vacancies-https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ECONOMY/JOBS/rlgvdrknxvo/chart.png

At Boardwalk, the lack of advance notice of pandemic closures and reopening means that this year’s seasonal recruitment is a few months later than usual. When it does so, competition for workers is fierce, because all local businesses are increasing at the same time.

Sabra Reyes, Director of Human Resources at Boardwalk, said that after the park offered a $300 biweekly bonus to people who worked at least 30 hours a week, the number of applicants surged. She said the limiting factor now is how fast she trains and recruits new employees.

“We have been hiring at full speed,” said Reyes, who works on the cave train in the amusement park every week. “But it is and is still a struggle.”