Labor shortages are plaguing key U.S. industries as the omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to surge, and experts fear the problem will get worse before it gets better.
Over the past two weeks, canceled flights and people scrambling to get tested for the virus have dominated headlines. Schools also have staff out sick, and the variant isn’t making the labor shortage at healthcare facilities any easier.
“We’re at a high, this is higher than January of 2021,” noted James Bailey, professor of leadership at George Washington University’s School of Business. In fact, the seven-day average of new cases is about double what it was this time last year.
Bailey explained that the U.S. was already shackled with problems filling workplaces with employees prior to the new wave of infections, which will only lead to more staffing problems.
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“It’s just going to make it worse because more people are sick,” Bailey told the Washington Examiner about the country’s current work situation. “More people aren’t coming into work, and it takes that labor shortage that we have been seeing that has been affecting supply lines and increasing inflation over the last really year, and it just exacerbates that problem.”
He said some industries can roll with the surge in omicron-related labor problems better than others and used the food service industry to illustrate that point.
If restaurants are short on staff, on any given night those establishments can simply apologize and tell patrons that business is expected to be slow for the evening. Bailey said that at this point in the pandemic, many people are just happy to be able to get out of their homes and dine out and may not be too upset about longer-than-usual waits.
“They’re willing to deal with some slow service, and it’s the same thing with most retail,” he added.
Other industries, though, such as the travel industry, are feeling the brunt of surging omicron cases. Bailey pointed out that while a store can simply slow down service and still remain open, airlines are governed by strict federal rules that stipulate the number of crew members who must be on a plane before it takes off.
And flights have been canceled across the country.
Thousands of flights have been canceled since before Christmas, when seasonal demand for travel was exploding. More than 4,700 flights were canceled on Saturday, the largest day of cancellations since before Christmas Eve, according to CNN. Including this past Sunday, more than 14,000 flights have been cut in the previous 10 days, resulting in long lines and headaches for weary holiday travelers.
Public transit is also feeling the strain. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, based out of Washington, D.C., has had to reduce service on several bus routes because of shortages related to omicron. Just before Christmas, some 35% of bus routes were reportedly operating with fewer vehicles and longer wait times than usual.
Meanwhile, in the Big Apple, nearly one-third of paramedics with the New York Fire Department were out sick, prompting the department to urge residents to only call 911 for serious matters and not just to try to get a ride to the hospital for a COVID-19 test.
Mo Cayer, program coordinator for the master’s in human resources at the University of New Haven, told the Washington Examiner that the education sector is also being disproportionately affected by omicron and surging new infections. He said that while teachers or staff at a school might be vaccinated and wear masks, because of the setting with so many people, students could spread the virus to adults, resulting in labor shortages.
Hospitals and the healthcare industry are also suffering from omicron-induced snarls. Some hospitals have been forced to turn away people with minor problems who may have normally been examined prior to the pandemic, according to Bailey.
“If you have two nurses in a 10-nurse staff at a small hospital not show up, that is making it really hard right now,” he said.
New data for the month of November (prior to the massive omicron surge) released on Tuesday found that businesses were already having trouble holding on to workers before the latest deluge of infections.
About 4.5 million workers quit their jobs in November, up from 4.2 million the month before. The quantity of people quitting is the highest since the country began keeping records of the statistic about two decades ago and is equivalent to about 3% of the workforce.
“The low-wage sectors directly impacted by the pandemic continued to be the source of much of the elevated quitting,” said Indeed Hiring Lab’s director of research Nick Bunker. “For example, the quits rate was 6.9% for accommodation and food services.”
While there are several factors at play as to why workers have been trying to find new employment, a phenomenon that has been described as the “Great Resignation,” Dan Bowling, a senior lecturing fellow at Duke University, put some of the onus on the Biden administration.
He noted confusion with the president’s vaccine mandate, which targets businesses with over 100 employees. The Supreme Court is set to weigh the constitutionality of the move this week, although several private businesses already forged ahead with setting their own vaccination and testing requirements absent the government mandates.
For some people who have recently left the labor market, Bowling said that many might find it easier to “sit at home” and just wait the surge out rather than immediately trying to reenter the workplace in the middle of this new wave of infections. Bowling also told the Washington Examiner that some workers also inevitably quit because of privately imposed vaccination requirements that some businesses have undertaken separately from the government.
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There has been some tension about vaccine mandates with unions as well. For example, a union for Southwest Airlines pilots had argued that the company was violating employees’ collective bargaining agreement. Police unions have also pushed back against changes related to COVID-19 vaccination.
Amid the omicron surge, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its mitigation guidance to slash the quarantine time for positive cases from 10 to five days if positive individuals continue to wear a mask. Cayer said that he thinks labor shortages were one of the considerations that went into crafting the updated guidance.
