Page 6 - BusinessWest September 15, 2021

Hire Ground?
Questions Persist About Labor Market and When Things Might Turn Around
For months now, business owners and elected officials have pinned the region’s mounting labor woes and all those ‘help wanted’ signs on too-generous federal unemployment assistance. Now that those benefits have expired for more than 3 million Americans, we’ll soon find out just how much of a factor those benefits were. Many involved in economic development and workforce matters say the problem has much deeper roots and that it might be some time before there is a return to anything approaching normal — whatever that is.
DBy George O’Brien
ave Gadaire says considerable thought went into the timing of the massive, statewide job fair he helped coordinate last month.
Indeed, he said the week-long virtual gathering, said to be the
largest such event ever staged, was scheduled for
a time when employers across every sector of the economy were struggling to fill vacancies, often to the point where it was impacting productivity, if not profits — and when large numbers of individuals would be staring down the loss of federal unem- ployment benefits (specifically those weekly $300 bonus checks) in less than a month.
The thinking was that the convergence of these factors would create a sense of urgency and that the foundation would be laid for some good matches between employers and job seekers at this job fair.
And while that happened, and all those involved with the job fair, from the governor on down, have declared it a success, there are certainly question marks as to just how many matches will be made and whether this event will put a dent in a labor shortage that is, by all accounts, without precedent.
In many ways, the job fair, and the uncertainty concerning the bottom-line results from it, are a
RICK SULLIVAN
“States that ceased the incentive on their unemployment earlier have not seen huge upticks
in labor participation. But we’ll see what happens; we certainly think some people will enter the workforce when the benefit goes away.
microcosm of what’s happening with the job mar- ket here and elsewhere, said Gadaire, president and CEO of MassHire Holyoke Career Center. The ongo- ing plight of employers seeking help and the end
of those federal benefits would, logically, seem to indicate that jobs are going to be filled — probably sooner than later.
But more evidence is indicating this is not going
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SEPTEMBER 15, 2021
FEATURE
BusinessWest