Millions Are Unemployed. Why Can’t I Hire Employees?

You’ve been hearing about it on the news and reading about it online, but now you are looking for help and you are seeing it for yourself. Trying to hire somebody, anybody, seems nearly impossible these days. We are in a red hot economy with business owners trying to put their lives back together, and nobody seems to want to come back to work. Here are 3 reasons to help explain what’s happening.

1. Fear of getting Covid-19. Many people are still afraid of contracting Covid. Even though the scientific community has proven vaccines are effective, and the chances of becoming deathly ill after a second shot are extremely low, people are still scared. Given an opportunity to work from home vs a warehouse or an office, most employees would prefer to stay at home.. The problem is you can’t make fast food from home, you can’t work in a warehouse or a retail store from your kitchen, and you can’t serve tables from your backyard. So at the end of the day, potential employees are going to have to make some hard choices. For companies that sell surplus inventory and deal with other liquidators, there are many positions that can be filled remotely. For example, if you buy excess inventory and have a staff of closeout buyers, they can work from home and still be effective. If you run closeout websites and sell surplus inventory via an online store or on Amazon and similar platforms, your programmers can also possibly work remotely. In general those companies specializing in closeouts and selling unwanted inventory are in a good position to allow office and admin employees to work from home.

2. Childcare responsibilities. For the most part schools, daycare and summer camps still aren’t open and children are stuck at home with their parents. For the millions of adults who can’t afford to pay outside childcare, they are forced to be at home with their kids. The struggle for parents to balance careers and childcare was a huge issue before the pandemic, but now it is even worse. It may be helpful for parents to form “support bubbles” with other families to help look after each others children. This may allow parents to go back to work at least on a part time basis while keeping their kids safe and at home. Salespeople and other sales assistants who sell surplus inventory for a living can likely make their calls and send emails to customers from home. Liquidators who buy excess inventory for their online closeout websites or brick and mortar stores can work from home because they can still make phone calls, share emails, have Zoom meetings, etc. There still must be a separation of personal and business time, but it can work.

3. Unemployment benefits. There is a growing list of employers complaining employees are receiving more in state and federal jobless benefits than they could earn by returning to work. The $1.9 trillion dollar corona virus relief package President Biden signed extends the $300 weekly unemployment benefit into September. There are currently 16 Republican lead states that have moved to cut off all of these federal benefits by the middle to the end of June. Companies with closeout websites that have done very well through the pandemic can consider paying a higher wage to attract employees to come back to work. Also, as the economy reopens and business improves, there is a good chance other businesses like liquidators and companies that sell surplus inventory to the wholesale trade will do well. Any business involved with retail stores selling unwanted inventory, closeout merchandise and liquidation stock should do well as the economy opens and more and more stores attract buyers. These companies might also be able to consider paying higher wages to attract employees, as their revenues will hopefully rebound.