Coast river business journal., November 17, 2021, Page 9, Image 9

COAST RIVER BUSINESS JOURNAL
FEATURE STORY
NOVEmBER 2021 • 9
Continued from Page 8
The long-term trends include the baby
boomer generation retiring, the plateau of
women joining the workforce and slowing
birth rates. Knoder said the workforce sup-
ply relies on people moving into the state.
Additionally, the unemployment rate is at
its lowest since before the pandemic, around
5.5% for Clatsop County.
Knoder said that “help wanted” signs first
started appearing around 2018.
“The economy was in this 10-year-long
expansion phase and it was tight — the labor
market was getting pretty doggone tight —
and then the pandemic hit,” he said. “Well,
that just made it worse.”
The leisure and hospitality indus-
try reported the second-most vacancies in
Northwest Oregon, following health care
and social assistance.
Fort George Brewery has jobs posted on
its website and on Craigslist, including for
dishwashers at $15 an hour plus tips.
“We are hiring, and we definitely had
more employees pre-pandemic,” said
founder Chris Nemlowill. “It has been slow
to get back to those staffing levels.”
The pandemic also heightened existing
issues in housing and child care for workers.
“A lot of people want to move to Astoria
to work at Fort George, then they get to town
and they just cannot find an affordable work-
force housing situation,” Nemlowill said.
According to the Employment Depart-
ment, Northwest Oregon had an estimated
9,825 vacancies this spring, four times that
of spring 2020.
Oregon has also seen an increase in peo-
ple quitting their jobs, what some are call-
ing the Great Resignation. Statewide, 9% of
people who were unemployed as of Septem-
ber had left their jobs voluntarily, according
to Employment Department data.
The region has enough people to fill the
positions, Knoder said. In the counties he
covers, the labor force includes 121,000
people. The labor force statistic includes
everybody who is eligible to work, includ-
ing those who have a job and those who are
unemployed and job-seeking.
“There’s probably an easy 100,000 of
us, myself included, who could work as a
cashier or a retail salesperson or work in
fast food,” Knoder said. “We don’t, but it’s
not because we can’t do it. It’s because the
wages are low. And we can do something
else that pays better, or is more interesting or
has better hours.”
The labor force in Clatsop County is
close to the highest it’s been since 2009,
with around nearly 19,800 people as of Sep-
tember, 500 more than in 2020.
“So I find it hard for somebody to tell
ABBEY McDONALD
The McDonald’s in Astoria has signs posted hoping to attract applicants for more than 10 open positions.
me it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a labor shortage,’”
Knoder said. “ I’m like, no, that’s not a labor
shortage. That’s a wage shortage. You’re
not paying enough to attract the thousands
and thousands of people who could do that
work.”
Competing with other businesses
In 2020, housekeepers were reported to
be the most difficult-to-fill occupation in the
region, according to Employment Depart-
ment data.
The Kathryn Riverfront Inn in Seaside
is looking for a maintenance technician and
a housekeeper, offering $15 an hour with a
$500 sign-on bonus.
Kathryn Libby, the inn’s general man-
ager, said they’ve been lucky compared to
other lodging in the area.
Their staff remained stable throughout
the busy summer season, with two vacan-
cies opening. One staffer left because they
got married and moved away.
“We’ve been really lucky that our signifi-
cant changes in housekeeping came after the
summer rush,” Libby said.
Though their vacancies weren’t directly
related to the pandemic, the inn is now com-
peting with hotels, many of which are also
seeking housekeepers.
During the pandemic, Libby said they
have had no-shows for interviews, which
she called discouraging.
“Housekeeping is always a tough posi-
tion to fill. It pays the same wage as front
desk work, but people have the idea that the
front desk is a little more glamorous,” Libby
said. “We’ve had some applicants, and some
of them, they’re just not actually interested
in the job although they’re applying for it.”
The inn’s incentives include bonuses
and group activities, like a pumpkin carv-
ing contest for a gift card prize, to promote
employee relations.
“I think that we’re a bit of an anomaly in
the area when it comes to having a pretty sta-
ble staff,” Libby said. “I know the industry
as a whole is really struggling right now.”
For those struggling with vacancies,
Knoder said it will be a matter of finding the
right wage to offer.
“Wage discovery takes time,” Knoder
said. “It takes time for the workers and the
managers to figure out ‘what’s the least I can
hire you for,’ and for the worker, ‘what’s the
most I can make.’”
Knoder said that it’s a historic moment
for the labor market, exacerbated by the
pandemic. He said some factors related to
COVID, including vaccination and child
care, may alleviate some of the difficulties
in hiring. It likely won’t go back to the way
it was, though.
“America is used to low prices,” Knoder
said. “We’ve just had a couple of decades
where goods and clothing were cheap, and
computers were getting cheaper and faster,
it was just cheap goods. We imported a lot
of inexpensive stuff. People would work for
less.”
Then came the pandemic, and decades of
market-stressing trends meeting at once.
“And then boom. All of a sudden, they’re
getting hit with high labor costs that nobody
is really prepared for,” Knoder said.