The owners of a small cafe in California say that they’re not struggling to find job applicants – but are instead struggling to find people who show up to interviews and to their first shift.
Yolanda Garcia and Jesse Hoover, who own Cafe Elk Grove in Elk Grove, just south of Sacramento, told Insider that they raised wages during the pandemic, but that it “doesn’t seem to have helped much.”
The cafe usually has between 10 and 12 employees on its rota, but its owners said that they’re currently struggling to fill three open roles, leaving existing staff “overworked.”
Hoover said that the cafe posted job listings on Facebook, Craigslist, and job forums, “and we tend to get a ton of applicants.”
“We make contact with these people, schedule interviews, confirm interviews, and I would say nine out of 10 people, if not more so like 9.5 out of 10 people, just don’t show up. They just don’t show up for the interviews,” Hoover said.
“Or if they show up, they show interest and then the next day will call and say that that job is not for them,” Garcia said.
“We’ve even got people accept the position, just not show up the next day, no call, no show, no nothing,” Hoover said. “So it’s just basically wasting our time.”
Garcia said that the cafe paid staff $14 an hour before the pandemic, but now has a starting wage for some roles of $22 “and they’re still not showing up.”
“That still doesn’t seem to have helped much in terms of getting people to actually show up for the interviews and then getting people to accept the position,” Hoover added.
California upped its minimum wage for businesses with fewer than 26 employees to $13 an hour in January. Average wages for nonsupervisory restaurant staff reached $15 an hour in May, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Garcia and Hoover said that they thought the $300 weekly supplemental unemployment benefits were the main reason why the cafe had struggled to find new staff.
“Prior to COVID, prior to the various different stimuluses and unemployment payments being available, we didn’t have any issues filling hard filling our open positions,” Hoover said. “That’s the only thing that we can put our finger on that’s different.”
“I feel like most folks now want to stay home and take advantage of that unemployment and continue to collect without working,” Garcia added.
The benefits are set to end Saturday, but workers say that it’s not the federal unemployment support that’s causing them to quit their jobs in droves.
Many are leaving the hospitality and retail industries in search of higher pay, better benefits, and a different work environment. One former bartender told Insider he’d pivoted to a career in tech so he could work more social hours and spend more time with his wife.
Some restaurants have closed their dining rooms or slashed their opening hours because they can’t find enough workers.
Employment in leisure and hospitality in California is still well below pre-pandemic levels. Around 1.63 million people currently work in the industry, compared to 2.06 million in February 2020, according to BLS data.
Meanwhile, unfilled job openings went up by 590,000 to a seasonally adjusted 10.1 million in June, per BLS data. This is the highest level since record-keeping began in 2000.
*story by Business Insider