Facing the tightest labor market in 50 years, many delivery and warehouse companies fell short of their hiring goals this holiday season, staffing firms say, at least raising the prospect of some shipping delays.
“Understaffing is absolutely a problem going into the holidays,” says Mathieu Stevenson, CEO of Snagajob, an online job site. One package delivery company he would not name still needs about 10,000 drivers, he says.
Meanwhile, most major retailers are well-staffed, and some may even have too many employees because they brought on lots of workers early to get ahead of a feverish scramble for seasonal labor, says Bart Sichel, an independent retail consultant. Many smaller shops that can’t offer the same pay and benefits may find themselves short-staffed, he says.
To cope with such imbalances and persistent worker shortages, a growing number of companies are providing flexible scheduling software and sharing workers through networks so they can compete more effectively with gig economy giants such as Uber and Lyft.
In October, retailers added 137,000 workers on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, up 18% from the 116,000 jobs added last year, according to the Labor Department and outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Meanwhile, payrolls in transportation and warehousing fell 17% to 43,700.
That’s not because warehouses and freight companies didn’t need shelf-stockers and drivers, says Andrew Challenger, vice president of the Challenger firm. IHS Markit predicts holiday sales will rise a solid 4.6% this year, though that’s after a poor performance in 2018. Rather, he says, with unemployment at 3.6%, near the lowest mark since 1969, businesses simply can’t find enough workers, especially during the busiest shopping season of the year.
Refer from：USA TODAY, www.usatoday.com
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