HISTORIC TRIANGLE — For many, New Years Day is a symbolic fresh start, a clean slate, and a day to say, “Out with the old, in with the new.”
The Earth completes one full rotation around the Sun, business as usual, and we as individuals come up with resolutions, new hobbies, and goals to pursue. If you are an employee in the service industry, amongst your list of goals for 2022 might be the idea of applying and landing a new job at another company, or even in another industry. For some employees in the Historic Triangle that’s beginning to look like more than a goal.
The Local Labor Shortage
Labor shortages probably place an even greater strain on the local economy than supply chain shortages.
Unlike the clean slate that comes with New Year’s resolutions, the labor shortage issue, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is not something local businesses in the Historic Triangle can leave in the past. That’s because the local economy is made up primarily of recreation and service-based businesses (hotels, restaurants, resorts, schools, and hospitals, amongst others). The economic effects of COVID-19 will continue to influence employees in these industries as they make life decisions preparing for 2022.
“It is a complicated issue. So when we locked down, people stayed at home, and the government supported some industries like hospitality, like the hotels and so on and so forth. When some of the employees were laid off they had support,” said Professor of Operations & Supply Chain at William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business Ram Ganeshan. “The government came and said we’ll give you unemployment for three or four months. So what does this give a lot of employees in certain industries? They saw how they can live their lives. They were with their family and they could spend more time with their family, and many in those industries started questioning whether that is the correct life choice that they made. So they were saying, ‘Hey, I think this job was taking too much out of me. Maybe I need to do something else.’ So there was this whole of reexamining whether they should be doing these jobs.”
The WYDaily newsroom has covered this issue as it has been developing on a larger scale with hospitality workers that work for Colonial Williamsburg (CW). Over 200 CW employees were backed by a Washington D.C.-based labor union called UNITE HERE! Local 25 during new contract negotiations.
“We want better pay, better healthcare, better treatment, because we deserve it. We work too hard,” said CW employee Agatha Hilt in an interview with WYDaily prior to the labor protest that took place during CW’s Grand Illumination event on Dec. 4, 2021. Hilt has been an employee with CW for over 11 years.
Employment Issues at Local Schools
Local Schools throughout Hampton Roads have also faced challenges pertaining to the labor shortage.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools moved from in-person classes to an entirely virtual system.
“When you think about the school system, think about the enormous amount of effort that is required. Let’s say, last March. To move from a physical system to a virtual system, it’s not easy for teachers,” said Ganeshan. “They had to sort of remake the whole curriculum so that they could go virtual.”
Local schools finally made a return to in-person classes for the 2021-22 school year, but one of the prevailing problems that the school system had to overcome was a shortage of bus drivers. Prior to schools opening back up for in-person classes, both the Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools (WJCC) and the York County School Division (YCSD) reported a shortage of bus drivers.
Even as the Historic Triangle enters 2022, there is a need for substitute teachers in the WJCC school division to provide support for local school teachers who have been serving the community and providing education for the public school systems during the pandemic.
How Is Virginia’s Job Market?
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) in October 2021, “the number of quits in Virginia decreased by 7,000 to 108,000, which was 6 [percent] lower than in September but still elevated compared to historical trends.”
The survey defines Quits as: “[V]oluntary separations initiated by the employee. Across the U.S., the number of quits decreased by 205,000 in October to 4.2 million. This was down from a record of 4.4 million the month before. The previous all-time high represented the most people quitting since the United States began keeping records of the statistic about two decades ago and is equivalent to about 3% of the country’s labor force. The number of quits can be seen as a leading indicator of wage trends in that it includes workers who quit to move to another job.”
Despite this recent trend, local businesses understand the issue and are making their best attempts to help their employees.
“People have to realize that the restaurant industry doesn’t have to be this brutal monster where you’re working a hundred and fifty hours a week and not getting paid for it,” said Co-Owner of Culture Café Scott Hoyland in an interview with WYDaily.
As we move into 2022, only time will tell how much the Omicron variant of COVID-19 will have an impact have on the Historic Triangle.
WYDaily will continue to follow these trends throughout 2022.
