Stories From the Great American Labor Shortage: An Update

Hello, hello.

This is Sydney Harper, producer with The Daily here in D.C.

This is Clare Toeniskoetter. I am on Smith Street in Brooklyn.

Walking up and down 18th Street in the nation’s capital.

[EXHALES SHARPLY]

18th Street is a big hill. Ooh, child, I’m just breathing hard, breathing hard. Breathing hard.

Hi.

Hi, how are you?

Hi, I’m a producer with The New York Times, a daily news podcast. We’re turning to an episode looking at businesses and local restaurants hiring people and if they’re having trouble finding people. Can I get your name and your role here.

Dave Delaplaine, general manager.

My name is Vanessa. And I’m the manager here at Xochitl Taqueria.

My name is Jonathan. This is my family’s restaurant.

Hi, I’m Daniel from Savelli Restaurant in Brooklyn.

I’m Simona. I’m a manager at Mama Capri.

How big was your staff pre-pandemic? And how big is it now?

So in February, I believe we had about 13 employees. Now it’s six of us.

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

What are you at now?

I have 30 now, I’d say.

So you’re actively hiring, then, right now?

Yes, always.

It’s been so extremely difficult trying to find employees.

Hiring is something crazy right now.

Finding waitstaff.

Servers.

Bartenders.

And the kitchen probably is the hardest.

Busboy, runner.

Sous chef.

Pizza guy.

Experienced grill cook.

Line cooks.

Line cooks.

Line cook.

Dishwashers.

Sometimes I clean dish myself.

I’ve even had to do the kitchen, I’ve had to do deliveries.

I was cooking in the kitchen last week. I have a huge burn on the bottom of my leg.

Oh, wow, yeah, I can see it. Are you OK?

I’m OK. But it tells you that I shouldn’t be working in the kitchen, most likely.

We’ll take anybody. And we’re willing to work with them and train them.

We get down on our knees and we beg.

But we can’t even get that.

Where do you think everyone went? What do you think is happening?

Everybody is getting free money sitting at home. That’s all the reason is. It’s very clear.

The government is just giving out so much help. They’re basically making more money to stay home.

If I was getting $600 a week, I would not be going to work either. I would be chilling out with my money.

This unemployment, it makes people more lazy. People rather stay home and watching TV than go back to work.

Hello?

Hi, is this Caleb.

This is.

Hey, Caleb, it’s Diana. Is it still an OK time for you to talk?

Absolutely.

Just to start, can you introduce yourself. Tell me your name and your age and where you live in the U.S.

Sure. My name is Caleb Orth. And I am 35. I am pretty new to Chicago. I just moved here at the beginning of June. I’ve worked in kitchens since I was 19. I didn’t go to college. I went to culinary school. 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.

My last job that I had before the pandemic was in Portland, Oregon, at a seasonal, highly-acclaimed, sort of American-Italian restaurant. It was the 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. It is a complete lifestyle. So when I say that I worked there, what I mean by that is I worked there 80 hours a week. I worked there from 11:30 in the morning until 1 o’clock in the morning most days.

So that’s very unsustainable to me, just the culture of the work itself. You don’t eat meals at appropriate times. You’re always standing. You’re working so hard.

I would usually work a shift at this restaurant nearby.

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 fryers.

You know, waiting tables jobs can also be very kind of psychologically damaging in some ways, because you have interactions with people who don’t respect you.

It would be horrible. We would be soaked in sweat.

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

It Standing for eight hours, and just five minutes to sit down and eat something quick.

You have to learn to perform at a level that’s, like, essentially flawless.

Basically living paycheck to paycheck.

I was depressed.

It can be very overwhelming. We’re constantly overworked.

There’s a lot of multitasking.

Underpaid.

Remembering stuff.

Underappreciated.

There’s a lot of pressure.

You know, like, dropping the meat and the chicken. So there’s oil everywhere. When you put the meat down, sometimes oil drips down. So for a very long time, I had a lot of burns and scars on my hands. I still have some scars. I don’t think they’ll go away.

It sucked. It really sucked.

My last day of work was March 15, 2020. The night before, we had a very, very slow service. And I remember talking with one of the other guys that was in kitchen management. And I just said, hey, tomorrow I might be a little late, because I’m going to go to the store, and I’m going to stock up on supplies in case this gets bad.

And so when I was at the grocery store the next day, buying food and stuff, with everybody else in the city, I got called. And they said, we’re closed indefinitely. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Everybody still has a job right now. But we don’t know how long this is going to last. Then we got an email about five days later basically laying off the entirety of the staff.

My name is Katya Barmotina. I am 25. I am a musician, teacher. I live in Brooklyn in Bed-Stuy. And I grew up here too. So yeah, that’s me.

Tell me about unemployment. Did you — did you start applying right away?

I didn’t apply right away because I thought, you know, I have money. I have savings. And then, two months later, when I had, like, maybe one month’s rent, I was like, no, we got to do it now. We have to apply. This is a bad situation now.

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

After taxes, I think it was like a good $600, $700 a week. So very, very decent. It was great.

I loved napping and having money come in. I was able to rediscover and discover things that I never really did for myself. I never took a moment to just take a walk, be with my thoughts, read in the morning. I’m reading “Immodest Acts,” which is a book about lesbian nuns in the Renaissance. I was able to really think about the kind of relationships I want to have. Buying organic. [LAUGHS] I invested in a cat for my mental health. You know, some of those rich, bougie things that I wasn’t able to do.

And then I start teaching around noon. So I have one or two students from 12:00 to 1:00. Sometimes I take a nap in the middle of the day if I don’t have anything between, like, 1:00 to 3:00. 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, [LAUGHS] absolutely not. No, 100 percent no.

In the initial period of the beginning of Covid, the spring of 2020, we all filed for unemployment. 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 your state would give you, whichever state that you’re in. So for a while, I made considerably more on unemployment than I did working. And I just told you how hard that I worked.

So you know, I really thought, well, this is a good chance for me to just sort of take a rest. I know that I want to go work in a different restaurant. My girlfriend and I were seriously considering a move to New York City. And I had a line on a restaurant job there at a restaurant that I really like and admire. And I was going to try to go work there.

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, 4 in the morning and waking up at 11 a.m. And I was eating healthy and exercising.

My girlfriend and I were going on daily bike rides at the time, all over the city. We were going out and seeing places that we’d never seen before. And granted, everything was closed. But it was spring. Oregon is beautiful in the spring. And there were all these things that I never, ever had time to experience.

Once I took stock of my life, I was like, I’m never, ever, ever —

There’s a whole generation —

— ever —

— they’re gone.

— ever, ever, ever going back to that.

They’re not coming back —

I worked at McDonald’s for three years.

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

— depressed, I was overworked.

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

— that are out.

I started getting more inquiries for online lessons.

— was able to escape McDonald’s.

They’ve taken a job somewhere else.

And now I currently work at Universal.

And then somewhere around like five students, six students, I was like maybe I should invest more time and more energy into this business and see what happens there. Because here —

Here at Universal, I get an hour break. And half of that, 30 minutes, is paid. And that, to me, is so wonderful. Like, I —

Or they’re out, they’re back in school.

I had just been having a conversation with my father. And he had said, why don’t you go back to school?

So they can do something else for a living.

Eventually, I want to be doing my own thing.

E-learning is such now a huge business.

Our dream is to open a cafe that is also a greenhouse.

I have a lot of dreams, like —

I know lot of people that have made a lot of changes.

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

I think I feel a lot more hopeful now?

What’s your plan?

I’ve 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 pull of work as I possibly can be.

Well, is there anything else that you — is there anything else that I didn’t ask you that you feel like I should know?

Well, I was thinking the other day, I was looking at Instagram, and it was this sort of trope that’s going around about these low-wage food places, you know, McDonald’s, Chipotle, et cetera, not being able to find anyone for their low-wage jobs. And it’s always something along the lines of unemployment’s too generous and none of these people want to come back to work. And I just find that so offensive. I do think that there are certain people that are saying that, that unemployment’s paying me far more. I don’t want to go back to work at this terrible job. And I don’t blame them for that.

But I also think that there’s a huge part that’s being left out of that conversation. And that part is this. Almost 700,000 Americans have died of Covid. So I think that A, it’s super offensive to think that, why won’t these people come back to their terrible jobs where they’re going to make less than they are on unemployment. But B, what’s really not being said here is that a bunch of us died going to work. A bunch of us died. So-called essential workers paid the highest price.

So I really feel like that’s something that’s not said enough. So I did want to say that.

Katya.

Hello.

Hello. How are you?

You know, other than my cat having a skin infection, we’re doing all right.

Sorry to hear about the cat.

It’s fine. He just licks himself unnecessarily.

[LAUGHS] Yeah, I mean, so I guess we just are sort of trying to check back in with some of the people we talked to back in the summer. And I don’t know, the last time we spoke, I think you were pretty determined to make it work not going back to sort of a traditional job. And I guess I’m kind of curious, where are we now?

Yeah, well, I lost a couple of students this year. So I did have to take on a part-time job. It’s kind of perfect for me because it’s a receptionist job, but it’s a reception job at a yoga studio. And it’s in the mornings, like, 20 hours a week. Nobody talks to me. I’m totally alone. I go in, do the bare minimum, check out a bit, go home, get paid. It’s great.

[LAUGHS] I think when we talked, you we’re still on unemployment benefits, which I assume those have ended now.

Yeah, yeah, they’ve ended.

Was that a blow when that came to an end?

It wasn’t a big blow because I was expecting it. So I just found a way to make that money back in a job environment that doesn’t make me want to keel over.

It seems like a lot of the things that we talked about the last time have actually become even more a part of, I don’t know, the conversation more recently. Like the whole idea of workers sort of saying, you know what, I don’t want to go back to the way I used to do things, that actually seems to have become even more, I don’t know, in the water since we spoke.

Yeah. Weren’t they saying that once unemployment benefits stop, people will come back to work? But no, now we have a Great Resignation. Like, duh. Duh. Why would people want to work again for shitty jobs when they can go out there and get better for themselves?

But I guess that part is the key part. Because I think what some people were saying was not that people would necessarily want to come back to lousy jobs with low pay, but that basically you 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.

But then it’s also like the choices, I think, right now, are 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 pre-pandemic.

I mean, didn’t I say that people won’t want to go back to their normal jobs? I called it.

You are proven right.

I called.

We’re going to fire the economists and bring you in. Although that is an office job, so I don’t know, maybe —

[LAUGHS] OK, I have to teach students.

Yeah. Go, go, go. Thank you.

Bye.

All right, bye.

[PHONE RINGING]

Hello.

Hi, Caleb. Can you hear me? Hi. How are you?

I’m good. Can you hear me? I’m talking on my car’s Bluetooth thing.

Yeah, I can hear you. Are you on your way home from work right now?

I am. I’m a mail carrier in Chicago.

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

It’s been really nice. 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 is. Pays really well. You know, I’m doing better financially than I ever have before.

Wow. That’s great.

Yeah, it’s good. I was ready to go back. It’s nice to feel useful again. And it’s nice to be earning a living again. And I don’t mean to say that I don’t think that I deserved the unemployment payments that I got. I did deserve them. And everyone else did too. But it’s really nice to be earning your living independently of any sort of government oversight.

What are your hours like?

I generally go to work at 8 a.m. And it’s pretty typical for me to get off at about 7. And the hours are pretty long. But they’re not at night. And every time I go over 8 hours, I go into time and a half. Every time I go over 10 hours, I go into double pay. So there were some times where I was working late, thinking, this is bullshit. I don’t want to have to work for 12 hours a day. But then I got the paychecks for it, and that really made it worth it.

Do you still feel like you have time to pursue the other things you want to in your life and to enjoy your evenings and whatever else it is you want to do?

Well, I haven’t been cooking nearly as much, that’s for sure. I’m pretty tired when I get home. And I don’t really want to stand. And then I’m still free in the evenings, so I’m able to see friends and hang out with my girlfriend — my fiancé, actually. We got engaged.

Congrats.

Thanks. And I don’t have nearly as much free time as I did when I was unemployed. But that’s OK. I was getting sort of tired of that.

Thank you so much for taking the time, Caleb. I really appreciate it, especially after your long workday.

Yeah, yeah, no problem. It’s my pleasure.

OK, cool. You have a good night. Thank you.

All right, you too

OK, bye bye.

Bye.