Stories from the Great American Labor Shortage: An Update

[0] Hey, it's Michael.

[1] This week, the Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and hearing what's happened in the time since they first ran.

[2] Today, we return to the country's labor shortage to find out why so many Americans have left their jobs since the start of the pandemic and whether the people we talked to back in August are working again.

[3] It's Monday, December 27th.

[4] Hello, hello.

[5] Sidney Harper, producer with the Daily, here in D .C. This is Claire Tennis Getter.

[6] I am on Smith Street in Brooklyn.

[7] Walking up and down 18th Street in the nation's capital.

[8] 18th Street is a big hill.

[9] Child, just breathing hard, breathing hard.

[10] Hi, how are you?

[11] Hi.

[12] I'm a producer with The New York Times, a Daily News podcast.

[13] We're trying to an episode looking at businesses and local restaurants.

[14] hiring people and if they're having trouble finding people.

[15] Can I get your name and your role here?

[16] Dave Deleplaine, General Manager.

[17] My name is Vanessa and I'm the manager here at Sochi Takaria.

[18] My name is Jonathan, this is my family's restaurant.

[19] I am Daniel from Savile Restaurant in Brooklyn.

[20] I'm Simono.

[21] I'm a manager at Mama Capri.

[22] How big was your staff pre -pandemic and how big is it now?

[23] So in February, I believe we had about 13 employees.

[24] Now it's six of us.

[25] Pre -pandemic, we had a staff close to 50.

[26] Wow.

[27] What do you at now?

[28] I have 30 now?

[29] So you're actively hiring then right now?

[30] Always.

[31] It's been so extremely difficult trying to find employees.

[32] Iering is something crazy right now.

[33] Finding waitstaff.

[34] Servers.

[35] Bartenders.

[36] And the kitchen probably is the hardest.

[37] Busboy, runner.

[38] Susha.

[39] Pizza guy.

[40] Experience grill cook.

[41] Line cooks.

[42] Line cooks.

[43] Line cook.

[44] Dishwashers.

[45] Sometimes I clean dish myself.

[46] I've even had to, like, do the kitchen.

[47] I've had to do deliveries.

[48] I was cooking in the kitchen last week.

[49] I have a huge burn on the bottom of my leg.

[50] Oh, wow.

[51] Yeah, I can see it.

[52] Are you okay?

[53] I'm okay, but it tells you that I shouldn't be working in the kitchen, most likely.

[54] We'll take anybody and we're willing to work with them and train them.

[55] We get down in our knees and we beg.

[56] But we can't even get that.

[57] Where do you think everyone went?

[58] What do you think is happening?

[59] We're going to getting free money, sitting at home.

[60] That's all the reason is.

[61] It's very clear.

[62] The government is just giving out so much help.

[63] You know, they're basically making more money to stay home.

[64] If I was getting $600 a week, I would not be going to work either.

[65] I would be chilling out with my money.

[66] This unemployment, they make people more lazy.

[67] People rather stay home and watch TV and then go back to work.

[68] Hello?

[69] Hi, this is Caleb.

[70] This is.

[71] Hey, Caleb, it's Diana.

[72] Is it still an okay time for you to talk?

[73] Absolutely.

[74] Just to start, can you?

[75] introduce yourself.

[76] Tell me your name and your age and where you live in the U .S. Sure.

[77] My name is Caleb Orth and I am 35.

[78] I am pretty new to Chicago and I just moved here at the beginning of June.

[79] I've worked in kitchens since I was 19.

[80] I didn't go to college.

[81] I went to culinary school.

[82] I wanted to be a chef and I really tried to make that happen throughout my 20s and early 30s, and I got really far.

[83] My last job that I had before the pandemic was in Portland, Oregon at a seasonal, highly acclaimed sort of American -Italian restaurant.

[84] It was a kind of place that had the sort of prestige, but it was by no means a dream job working in the back of the house in a restaurant, especially a restaurant like that, of that caliber is more than a full -time pursuit.

[85] It is a complete lifestyle.

[86] So when I say that I work there, what I mean by that is I work there 80 hours a week.

[87] I work there from, you know, 1130 in the morning until 1 o 'clock in the morning, most days.

[88] So that's very unsustainable to me. Just the culture of the work itself.

[89] You don't eat meals at appropriate times.

[90] You're always standing.

[91] You're working so hard.

[92] I would usually work a shift at this restaurant nearby.

[93] Working in a kitchen where we're like regularly 80, 90 degrees, sometimes even 100, being right next to ovens and heaters and grills and friars.

[94] You know, waiting table jobs can also be very kind of psychologically damaging in some ways because you have interactions with people who don't respect you.

[95] It would be horrible.

[96] We would be soaked in sweat.

[97] And then Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would sub in for like a barista shift.

[98] Standing for eight hours and just five minutes to sit down and eat something quick.

[99] You know, you have to learn to perform at a level that's like essentially flawless.

[100] Basically living paycheck to paycheck.

[101] I was depressed.

[102] It can be very overwhelming.

[103] Like we're constantly overworked.

[104] There's a lot of multitasking.

[105] Underpaid.

[106] Remembering stuff.

[107] They're appreciated.

[108] There's a lot of pressure.

[109] You know, like dropping the meat and the chicken, so, you know, there's oil everywhere.

[110] When you put the meat down, sometimes oil drips down.

[111] So for a very long time, I had a lot of burns and scars in my hands.

[112] I still have some scars.

[113] I don't think they'll go away.

[114] It sucked.

[115] It really sucked.

[116] My last day of work was March 15th, 2020.

[117] The night before, we had a very, very slow service.

[118] and I remember talking with one of the other guys that was in kitchen management and, you know, I just said like, hey, tomorrow I'm, you know, I might be a little late because I'm going to go to the store and I'm going to stock up on, you know, supplies in case this gets bad.

[119] And so when I was at the grocery store the next day, buying food and stuff, you know, with everybody else in the city, I got called and they said, you know, we're closed indefinitely.

[120] We don't know what's going to happen, you know.

[121] Everybody still has a job right now, but we don't know how long this is going to last.

[122] And we got an email, you know, about five days later, basically laying off the entirety of the staff.

[123] My name is Katya Barmwetina.

[124] I'm 25.

[125] I'm a musician, teacher.

[126] I live in Brooklyn in Bedstuy, and I grew up here, too.

[127] So, yeah, that's me. Tell me about unemployment.

[128] Did you start applying right away?

[129] I didn't apply right away because I thought, you know, I have money.

[130] I have savings.

[131] And then two months later, when I had like maybe one month's rent, I was like, no, we got to do it now.

[132] we have to apply.

[133] This is a bad situation now.

[134] Once unemployment started to come in, do you remember how much you were getting a week at first?

[135] After taxes, I think it was like a good 600, 700 a week.

[136] So very, very decent.

[137] It was great.

[138] I loved napping and having money come in.

[139] I was able to rediscover and discover things that I never really did for myself.

[140] I never took a moment to just, Take a walk.

[141] Be with my thoughts.

[142] Read in the morning.

[143] I'm reading Immodest Acts, which is a book about lesbian nuns in the Renaissance.

[144] I was able to really think about the kind of relationships I want to have.

[145] Lying organic.

[146] I invested in a cat for my mental health.

[147] You know, some of those rich, boogey things that I wasn't able to do.

[148] And then I start teaching around noon.

[149] So I have one or two students from 12 to one.

[150] Sometimes I take a nap in the in the middle of the day if I don't have anything between like one to three I take a two hour nap it's amazing thankfully unemployment thank you government about how many hours a week would you say you're working now honestly just teaching wise I'm working like 12 hours a week do you see any scenario in which you go back no absolutely not um no 100 % no we'll be right back in the initial period of the beginning of COVID the spring of 2020 you know we all filed for unemployment um and unemployment at that time was more than fair the money from the federal government at that time was 600 a week and that's on top of the amount that that your state would give you you know whichever state that you're in so for a while i made considerably more on unemployment than I did working.

[151] And I just told you how hard that I worked.

[152] So, you know, I really thought like, well, this is a good chance for me to, you know, just sort of take a rest.

[153] I know that I want to go work in a different restaurant.

[154] My girlfriend and I were seriously considering a move to New York City.

[155] And I had a line on a restaurant job there at a restaurant that I really like and admire.

[156] And I was going to try to go work there.

[157] And then the thing that happened for me is that I, started to notice how well rested I was the bags that were under my eyes forever for years went away my feet stopped hurting and I never had really thought about how much my feet hurt all the time but they did my back stopped hurting I was going to bed at a reasonable hour and waking at a reasonable hour rather than going to bed at like four in the morning and waking up at 11 a .m. And I was eating healthy and exercising.

[158] My girlfriend and I were going on daily bike rides at the time all over the city.

[159] We were going out and seeing places that we'd never seen before.

[160] Granted, you know, everything was closed.

[161] But it was spring.

[162] You know, Oregon is beautiful in the spring.

[163] And there were all these things that, you know, that I never, ever had time to.

[164] experience.

[165] I also got really into cooking at home because I really do love to cook.

[166] It was a hobby of mine before it was my job.

[167] You know, there's this adage that my dad used to say to me and my grandpa used to say it's me too that you should take what you love to do, you know, your hobby and make it your job, you know, so you get to do that all the time, right?

[168] And that'll make you happy.

[169] but I actually I actually 100 % disagree with that now I think that if you take your hobby and you make it into your job your job being something that you have to do every day whether you want to or not that you end up hating your hobby I know that's true for me there were lots of days where I had to go into work and it'd just be like I really don't want to do this I'd be thinking about it and it'd be like I really don't want to have to make this food again.

[170] I'm so tired of making this food.

[171] Somebody else's food, the same thing over and over and over.

[172] So during COVID, I'd be making meals at home and I got really into it.

[173] I'd make like, you know, the best version of some kind of takeout that I could make, so like stuff that we couldn't get, right?

[174] Like a full -on Indian meal or something with gnawn and a bunch of different curries and that was really fun for me and I sort of got to reconnect with this thing that I really do like doing and I just started to think that this is how I'd like to live I'd like to feel rapid and well like this all the time not have this just be some kind of little vacation you know and so I started thinking like well why am I really doing this is this really serving me or is it just serving, you know, whoever my employer is?

[175] And the easy answer to that question is it isn't serving me. It's serving whatever my employer is, hands down, you know, for all of my 20s and the first three years in my 30s, I've worked in the service of someone else.

[176] And I was making $3 ,000 a month, maybe $3 ,200 a month.

[177] So it was enough for me to live, no doubt, but you got to bear in mind that that was for $8 ,000.

[178] 80 hours a week.

[179] And so I don't want to have to live like that anymore.

[180] I want to have my work be my work and have it be something that I punch in for.

[181] And I do for a set amount of hours during the day and then I punch out of it and I go home and I don't have to think about it.

[182] I think it's a wake -up call.

[183] Once I took stock of my life, I was like, I'm never, ever, ever, ever.

[184] There's a whole generation.

[185] Ever.

[186] They're gone.

[187] Ever, ever, ever going back to that.

[188] They're not coming back.

[189] I worked at McDonald's for three years.

[190] There are people all around me that have this exact same story.

[191] I was overworked.

[192] You have nights where you just want to rip your hair out.

[193] That are out.

[194] I started getting more inquiries for online lessons.

[195] I was able to escape McDonald's.

[196] They've taken a job somewhere else.

[197] And now I currently work at Universal.

[198] And then somewhere around like five students, six students.

[199] I was like, maybe I should invest more time and more energy into this business and see what happens there, because here...

[200] Here at Universal, I get an hour break, and half of that, 30 minutes, is paid.

[201] And that, for me, is so wonderful.

[202] Like, I...

[203] When they're out, they're back into school.

[204] I had just been having a conversation with my father, and he had said, why don't you go back to school?

[205] So they can do something else for a living?

[206] eventually I want to be doing my own thing.

[207] E -learning is such now a huge business.

[208] Her dream is to open a cafe that is also a greenhouse.

[209] I'll have a lot of dreams.

[210] I know a lot of people that have made a lot of changes.

[211] I feel like I wouldn't have even considered doing that if I didn't have the time to even like think about it, you know?

[212] I think I feel a lot more hopeful now.

[213] What's your plan?

[214] I have accepted a conditional offer of employment with the United States Post Office here in Chicago and I'm going to be a mail carrier and I'm doing that because it offers me a regular schedule where I work during the day and I go home at night where I have holidays off where I have benefits and the protection of a labor union and most of all I'm doing it to be as far away from the tractor pole of work as I possibly can be.

[215] Well, is there anything else that you, is there anything else that I didn't ask you that you feel like I should know?

[216] Well, I was thinking the other day I was looking at Instagram and it was, you know, this sort of trope that's going around about these low -wage food places, you know, McDonald's, AAA.

[217] et cetera, not being able to find anyone, right, for their low -wage jobs.

[218] And it's always something along the lines of, you know, unemployment's too generous and none of these people want to come back to work.

[219] And I just, I find that so offensive.

[220] I do think that there are certain people that that are saying that, right?

[221] That unemployment's paying me far more.

[222] I don't want to go back to work at this terrible job, you know, and I don't blame them for that.

[223] But I also think that there's a huge problem.

[224] part that's being left out of that conversation, and that part is this.

[225] Almost 700 ,000 Americans have died of COVID.

[226] So I think that, A, it's super offensive to think that, you know, why won't these people come back to their terrible jobs where they're going to make less than they are on unemployment?

[227] But B, what's really not being said here is that a bunch of us died, going to work, a bunch of us died.

[228] so -called essential workers, right, paid the highest price.

[229] So I really, I feel like that's something that's not said enough.

[230] So I did want to say that.

[231] When we come back, an update from Kachya and Ben.

[232] Katya, hello.

[233] Hello.

[234] Hello.

[235] How are you?

[236] Oh, other than, like, my cat having a skin infection, we're doing all right.

[237] Sorry to hear about the cat.

[238] It's fine.

[239] He just licked.

[240] himself unnecessarily.

[241] Yeah, I mean, so I guess we just are trying to check back in with some of the people we talked to back in the summer.

[242] And I don't know, the last time we spoke, like, I think you were pretty determined to, like, make it work, not going back to sort of the traditional job.

[243] And I guess I'm kind of curious, like, where are we now?

[244] Yeah, well, I lost a couple of students this year, so I did have to, like, take on a part -time job.

[245] It's kind of perfect for me because it's a receptionist job, but it's a reception job at a yoga studio.

[246] And it's in the mornings, like 20 hours a week.

[247] Nobody talks to me. I'm totally alone.

[248] I go in, do the bare minimum, check out a bit, go home, get paid.

[249] It's great.

[250] I think when we talked to you were still on unemployment benefits, which I assume those have ended now?

[251] Yeah, yeah, they've ended.

[252] Was that a blow when that came to an end?

[253] It wasn't a big blow because I was expecting it.

[254] So I just found a way to make that money back in a job environment that doesn't make me want to keel over, you know?

[255] it seems like a lot of the things that we talked about the last time have actually become like even more a part of the I don't know the conversation more recently like the whole idea of like workers sort of saying you know what I don't want to go back to the way I used to do things like that actually seems to have like become even more I don't know in the water since we spoke yeah I well weren't they saying that like once unemployment benefits stop people will come back to work.

[256] But no, now we have a great resignation.

[257] Like, duh.

[258] Duh.

[259] Why would people want to work again for shitty jobs when they can go out there and like get better for themselves?

[260] But I guess that part is the key part.

[261] Because I think what some people were saying was like, not that people would necessarily want to come back to lousy jobs with low pay, but that basically like you'd have no choice but to come back to lousy jobs for no pay for the same reason that you did the lousy job with low pay two years ago well but but then it's also like the choices I think right now are like do I go back to a job I might not particularly like or do I go out into the unknown and it seems like the unknown is more appealing to people than going back to a work environment of pre -pandemic.

[262] I mean, didn't I say that people won't want to go back to their normal jobs?

[263] I called it.

[264] You are proving right.

[265] I called it.

[266] I called it.

[267] I called it.

[268] And bring you in, although that is an office job.

[269] So I don't know.

[270] Okay.

[271] I have to teach a student.

[272] Yeah.

[273] Go, go, go.

[274] Thank you.

[275] Bye.

[276] All right.

[277] Bye.

[278] Hi, Kayla.

[279] Can you hear me?

[280] Hi.

[281] How are you?

[282] I'm good.

[283] Can you hear me?

[284] I'm talking on my cars.

[285] Bluetooth thing.

[286] Yeah, I can hear you.

[287] Are you on your way home from work right now?

[288] I am.

[289] I'm a mail carrier in Chicago.

[290] What was it like to go back to work after, you know, having a break for, I guess, almost a year and a half or so?

[291] It's been really nice.

[292] You know, it's pretty hard work, but I don't find it to be nearly as taxing physically and especially emotionally as working in a restaurant.

[293] is.

[294] Pays really well.

[295] You know, I'm doing better financially than I ever have before.

[296] Wow.

[297] That's great.

[298] Yeah, it's good.

[299] I was ready to go back.

[300] You know, it's nice to feel useful again.

[301] And it's nice to be earning a living again.

[302] And I don't mean to say that, like, I don't think that I deserved the unemployment payments that I got.

[303] I did deserve them.

[304] And everyone else did too, but it's really nice to be, you know, earning your living independently of any sort of government oversight.

[305] What are your hours like?

[306] I generally go to work at 8 a .m., and it's pretty typical for me to get off at about 7.

[307] The hours are pretty long, but, you know, out at night.

[308] And every time I go over eight hours, I go into time and a half.

[309] Every time I go over 10 hours, I go into double pay.

[310] So there were some times where I was working late thinking like, this is bullshit.

[311] I don't want to have to work for 12 hours a day.

[312] But then I got the paychecks for it, and that really made it worth it.

[313] Do you still feel like you have time to kind of like pursue the other things you want to in your life and to enjoy, you know, your evenings and whatever else it is you want to do?

[314] Well, I haven't been cooking nearly as much, that's for sure.

[315] I'm pretty tired when I get home and I don't really want to stand.

[316] And then, you know, I'm still free in the evening, so I'm able to, you know, see friends and hang out with my girlfriend, my fiance, actually, we got engaged.

[317] Congrats.

[318] Thanks.

[319] And, you know, I don't have.

[320] I'm nearly as much free time as I did, but I was not employed, but that's okay.

[321] I was getting sort of tired of that.

[322] Thank you so much for taking the time, Caleb.

[323] I really appreciate it, especially after your long workday.

[324] Yeah, yeah, no problem.

[325] It's my pleasure.

[326] Okay, cool.

[327] You have a good night.

[328] Thank you.

[329] All right, you too.

[330] Okay, bye -bye.

[331] Bye.

[332] Today's episode was produced by Diana Winn, Osla Chothervati, Lindsay Garrison, Robert Jimison, Luke van der Pluck, and Claire Tennis Getter.

[333] with help from Sydney Harper, Michael Simon Johnson, Alexandra Lee Young, and Rochelle Bonja.

[334] It was edited by Lisa Chow, Anita Bonitoe, and Mark George, engineered by Chris Wood and Corey Shreppel, and contains original music by Dan Powell.

[335] Special thanks to Vivian Rusk, Ben Castleman, Patty Cohen, Neil Irwin, Gina Smilick, Sarah Maslinier, Sydney Ember, and Sapna Maheshwari.

[336] That's it for the daily.

[337] I'm Michael Bilbarro.

[338] See you tomorrow.