Restaurants Ready to Hire, but Government Payments Keep Workers Home

[G.L.R.]

Restaurants Ready to Hire, but Government Payments Keep Workers Home

May 4, 2021



Working or sitting down in a restaurant isn't what it used to be!

Owners and managers from New York, California, Washington, and Chicago told The Epoch Times hiring woes have become a nightmare amid a litany of other challenges like indoor occupancy rules. They say the federal unemployment bonuses handed out during the CCP virus pandemic incentivized people to stay home instead of working. Now, restaurants are starting the long, hard, and costly climb back to profitability. The lockdowns imposed across the country a year ago have since put out of business over 110,000 eateries, some of them permanently. It's become so dire that one McDonald's location in Florida started paying $50 to anyone who would show up for a job interview. Other franchises like Taco Bell, which needs at 5,000 new employees, are holding hiring events in parking lots.

White people may actually be the only one's working to support those in need

Hiring difficulties have long existed in the service industry, even before the pandemic."When it comes to recruiting workforce, in January, 7 percent of restaurant operators rated recruitment and retention of workforce as their top challenge; by April that number had risen to 57 percent," Riehle told The Epoch Times. "With fewer people in the workforce, the stimulus supports still in place, worker safety concerns, the need for caregivers to remain at home, and much greater competition with other industries for workers..."

Maybe eating at home more wasn't such a bad idea

Mark Fox, a Dublin native who lives in New York City, owns four restaurants in the Big Apple. While business is now finally starting to pick up, hiring troubles have slowed down the momentum. "We have difficulty hiring hourly workers, bartenders, servers, bar-backs, busboys, runners, overnight cleaning staff," Fox told The Epoch Times inside his flagship restaurant. "We are probably 60 employees short," he said. "I have one restaurant in Greenwich Village that I haven't reopened yet because they don't have the manpower."

Restaurants Ready to Hire, but Government Payments Keep Workers Home
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/restaurants-ready-to-hire-but-government-payments-keep-workers-home_3796054.html