U.S. industries complain of inability to fill positions

Robert Besser
07 Apr 2021, 20:52 GMT+10

The pandemic drove several million into joblessness, largely constituting those from the hotel and restaurant industries.
Other industries were overburdened by the rising need for more employees to manufacture products, ranging from utility vehicles to plastic bag.
On April 2, the Labor Department reported on the creation of 916,000 jobs in March, the highest recorded since August of 2020.

WASHINGTON D.C.: Matt Arnold recently spent $5,000 for placing advertisements to hire people for his firm's five trailer plants, located from Pennsylvania to Utah.

"We hired two from the ads," according to Arnold, as quoted by Reuters. He still has a long way to go until he recruits 125 people required to reach the total workforce strength of 673. Fifty percent of the welder jobs at Arnold's Texas-based facility are vacant, thereby leading to a holdup in the process of constructing trailers on metallic frames.

Manufacturers in the United States have long complained about inadequate workforces, though 2020 has emerged as being especially aggravating.

Even as the coronavirus disease pandemic drove several million people into joblessness, largely constituting those from service industries, including the hotel and restaurant businesses, other firms were overburdened by rising requirements for manufacturing a multitude of products, ranging from utility vehicles to plastic bags.

On April 2, the Labor Department reported on the creation of 916,000 jobs in March, the highest recorded since August of 2020, which includes 53,000 openings in manufacturing. This figure is viewed as being the highest in vacancies at factories during the six-month period.

The report's diffusion index for manufacturing, which measures the extent of people hired in 75 industries manufacturing goods, clocked one of its peak record scores.

Manufacturing employment bore a comparatively lower brunt, as compared to service sector jobs during the springtime of 2020, when the pandemic initially drove the country's economic engine to a grinding halt. Elimination of approximately one per 10 jobs in factories resulted during the COVID-19 shutdown enforcements, as opposed to around one per six service jobs.

Employment in factories is four percent below the pre-COVID-19 levels, a shortfall reaching 515,000 jobs, as compared to 5.5 percent for the overall employment in the United States, with the deficit since February of 2020 recorded at 8.4 million posts.