Where Have All the People Gone?
It’s the one question I hear more often than any other: Where have the candidates gone?
Over spring break, I was standing in the Delta wing of the Atlanta airport, talking to a SkyLounge representative, trying to tamp down my frustration at multiple delays and layovers, stuck for hours on end (with two children in tow!) in various airports. “It’s the staffing,” the very kind, patient Delta rep explained. “We can’t get enough employees to fly and staff the planes.”
Delta isn’t alone. In an abrupt reversal from the spring of 2020, companies have found themselves struggling to acquire talent like never before.
PEW Research reports that 42 states have more available jobs than people looking for work. Salaries are escalating higher and higher as companies attempt to out-bid each other, and according to Fortune, half of the 11,000 employees recently surveyed by CNBC in October reported their companies are understaffed.
The impact? Shortened hours, reduced employee count, and a strain on all resources. Restaurants are having to scale back hours without appropriate staff on hand and even Harris Teeter had to reduce open hours last fall to alleviate staffing shortages. Professional, white-collar roles are open for significantly longer than ever before, and the most recent DOL report lists the highest number of job openings since 2000. Read that again—the highest number of job openings since the year 2000!
So, again, where are the people?
The answer is complex and layered, of course, but we’ve seen a few consistent themes as we talk to thousands of candidates and companies across the nation.
People chose, and are continuing to choose to stay home since Covid began.
The percentage of participation in the labor force has genuinely shrunk—it’s not just your imagination. In February 2020, 63.4% of the workforce were either working or actively looking for work. In January 2022, it was 62.2%—an impact in the millions. But why are people staying home?
Many chose early retirement during COVID, especially when faced with health risks. Fortune reports: “Of the over 5 million Americans Goldman Sachs estimates have left the workforce since the pandemic kicked off, about 3.4 million were over the age of 55—about 1.5 million of whom were early retirees and about 1 million of whom retired on time.” So over half chose to take early retirement packages.
That Delta situation I mentioned earlier? Delta paid out many pilots to take early retirement in the height of COVID—and they can’t get them back.The impacts of virtual school brutally and often unfairly impacted women, who made the choice to stay at home with their children. “More often than not in a two-income household, the mother has taken the hit, trying to work from home and monitor children struggling with remote learning,” Aljazeera reports.
Speaking from personal experience as the mother of two young children, we faced these decisions in 2020. Thankfully, my daughter’s pre-school offered a virtual learning option for my Kindergarten-aged-son, but I cannot imagine the difficulty of holding down a full-time job and trying to teach him to read.
Mental health has significantly suffered, and people have responded by putting their careers on hold.
Everyone I know right now is exhausted. There are no mental or emotional reserves left, and “nearly half . . . of working Americans surveyed by LinkedIn have considered taking a break from their career,” according to Fortune. Others take long sabbaticals that are occasionally even company-sponsored, but still impact the work load left behind.
“Sabbaticals have tripled in the past four years, in large part because of COVID-19,” according to DJ DiDonna, co-founder of The Sabbatical Project and reported in Fast Company. Some larger companies like GoldmanSachs and CitiGroup are offering paid and unpaid sabbaticals, depending on length of service and role, in order to retain employees and avoid burnout.
But the reality is that people are working more than ever before, and the hustle culture is real. As people’s lives have moved increasingly online instead of real-world interactions, the stress levels have risen in a corresponding fashion. And some people are simply throwing up their hands and saying, “Enough.”
So, are the people returning?
Here’s the good news. Not all will return, but most will. (Deep sigh of relief!)
Research shows that the retirees will most likely not come back, even if it was an early retirement package. James Furman, an economist and professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, “estimates that about 90% of the workforce will return,” according to an article published by Fortune in the end of 2021. “But it will take a while to hit that milestone. “My best guess would be that it takes a year or two. And a year or two is a really long time,” he says.
From a recruiting perspective, we’re starting to see the labor force regulate a bit. Some people are realizing remote work isn’t for them, others got lured by a big paycheck and realized the job wasn’t so great after all. And some are realizing they just need a break—and that’s ok too.
What can you do?
We’ll hit on more practical topics down the road, but a few quick takeaways.
Know your Employer Value Proposition: what do you offer and how does that meet what candidates are looking for? Why should someone want to work for you?
Offer flexibility where possible. Balancing the needs of the business and the needs of the person is no joke, but offering flexibility when possible will help retain people.
Streamline your interview process. Show candidates you value them, and you value their time by how you treat them during the interview process. Many candidates heavily weigh how the interview process goes when making their decision to join a company.
Think about where you can flex on your requirements and what you’re looking for. Can you relax on the years of experience required if you can’t increase the compensation?
Partner with a strong recruiter who knows the market and the candidate pool, and how to tell your company story in a meaningful way. Of course I had to add this one!
And last but not least, remember to take a breath yourself.
If you’re in a hiring role, you are probably stressed, and it’s easy to let that become all-consuming. A Shareholder I used to work with in a different life once told me whenever I got stressed, “Remember, we aren’t saving lives here.”
A little fresh perspective never hurts anyone, so when it’s been a hard day of finding candidates, I go home, take a walk, and hug those who matter most.