As we take our first steps into a largely post-COVID era, we need to come to terms with the new truths of our new world. We don’t give ourselves enough credit that we have worked through the last two years in essentially crisis mode. Many businesses have been under-staffed, over-worked, and just trying to ride it out until COVID is not the dominant factor of our daily lives. Well, we’re at that point — COVID isn’t gone completely, but it’s not the dominant factor in our lives.
Now what?
Many people say, “oh good, well back to normal, let’s get everybody back to work.” That’s the rub though, we’re not going back to how it was, we’re in a different place now. Welcome to the new world.
We need to accept the new truths and stop believing that we will go back to the way life was before. There are things we know happened, that won’t be reverting. Take this for example: More people retired annually during the pandemic than in the years previous — up about 75% more.
A Pew Research report in November of 2021 titled Amid the Pandemic, “Rising Share of Older U.S. Adults are Now Retired,” surmised that since Baby Boomers first hit retirement age in 2008, the average retirements per year were around 1 million people annually. But according to the story, “in the past two years, the ranks of retirees 55 and older have grown by 3.5 million” meaning 750,000 more each year.
Very few of these people are coming back to the workforce. Two reasons can be cited for that, with the first being the health of the stock market and their retirement funds, and secondly the housing market. You can sell your house in this market and downsize and make significant money.
Whether these retirees left for early retirement due to COVID, or just because they could, we need to accept they’re not coming back. Or if they do make it back, it may not be in the field they retired from, because we also need to accept all industries were not hit by unemployment evenly.
“The highest rates of people leaving their positions are in sectors where remote work is not an option and COVID risks are elevated,” a Jan. 7 Reuters story titled “A Pre-Pandemic U.S. Job Market is a Long Way Off” suggests. It continues by saying “Healthcare, retail and restaurants are facing big labor shortages.” When we think about that, it makes sense- those are the businesses we have witnessed the shortages in, the long wait times, and heard the news stories about.
Some of these restaurant and retail workers may have simply gone home to not work, but some of them jumped to other career paths. Anecdotally, I worked in restaurants and bars earlier in my life, and I would say that half of the people I worked with all had a side gig, or a career they were thinking about jumping to in order to work a more daytime shift, especially parents. The pandemic accelerated that for many workers, especially when employers were forced to go to curbside or reduce staffing because they didn’t need as many forward-facing staff.
As for healthcare workers, we have heard the tales of being burned out and the daily stress on their lives. Some of them may be coming back, but again for some, another career path may have now fit their life better.
Add to that, the options for employees. With more Baby Boomers retiring, more 9-t0-5 jobs are available and with less applicants, the requirements for those positions have become less rigid. No longer is a four-year degree required in some positions, more employers are taking work experience to be as valuable as certification in some cases. This has opened new doors for employees to jump into jobs they might not have been “qualified for” in 2019 (I say “qualified” because if they weren’t qualified before, but are somehow succeeding now without that ‘qualification’ then aren’t they proving that maybe that qualification shouldn’t have been required).
Finally, the work-from-home transition. In December of 2020, we did a survey of over 700 Maine businesses, and 1 in 4 said they would be continuing with remote workspaces. When you subtract out the service industry, where you can’t work from home, you see at least 1 in 3 businesses looking to continue work from home. That’s a tremendous shift from pre-pandemic when maybe 1 in 12 businesses were even considering that, and now 1 in 3 are doing it at least partially.
Add it all up and what do we have? Retirees not coming back to work because that’s the definition of retired. Certain industries were more understaffed as employees shifted to new careers. Lower bar for entry into some open positions and remote workspaces for 1 in 3 non-service businesses. What does that tell us?
It tells us we need to replenish the pipeline for healthcare, restaurants and retail and remind people how meaningful and rewarding these career paths can be. Healthcare workers save lives and make a difference daily with their patients. Restaurants have flexible schedules, high earning potential, electric atmospheres and, for personable people, you can make lifelong connections with customers. Retail employees are literally the face of many of our downtowns, malls and every nook and cranny tourist shop there is.
We also need to start planning for how the business model changes with smaller staffs. Having less people doing the same amount of work that a bigger staff used to accomplish is unsustainable. We need to change the way we promote our jobs too, because if applicants aren’t going on Indeed.com to find you, or looking in the newspaper, how do they know about your job? We need new world solutions.
March 11, our chamber announced six new workforce programs, and wouldn’t you know, three of them address these exact solutions. More on that next week.
Cory King is the executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber.
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