Economy – United States: Why are companies unable to fill vacancies if unemployment is at 6.1%?

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The US Department of Labor reported that 266,000 new jobs were created in the country in April 2021, just a fraction of a million that analysts expected and much less than the 770,000 created in March.

In January of this year, Alex Washut drew up hiring plans for his two restaurants in western Massachusetts. His initial calculation indicated that he needed to hire, by May, 20 new employees, including cooks, waiters and cleaning personnel.

Even though he says he has doubled salaries in some cases, he has only managed to hire five. Most of the time, he told Reuters, the candidates did not even show up for their interviews.

As if it were a paradox, of the 22 million jobs that the pandemic destroyed in the United States, there are still eight million to recover. And unemployment was stagnant at 6.1%, after months of progress, after hitting an all-time high of 14.7% just a year ago.

A survey by the National Federation of Independent Business showed that a record 42% of small businesses still had unfilled jobs in March.

But why do some employers complain that they can’t fill their vacancies? As is often the case in Washington, the answer differs radically depending on the political party you ask.

Excess help?

Many Republicans say the disappointing employment report indicates that federal and state governments are being too generous with unemployment benefits, discouraging people from working.




In a move that could be replicated in other Republican-led states, Arkansas, Montana and South Carolina said they will end federal unemployment benefits pushed by President Joe Biden next month, saying they are preventing people from working. .

Data released by the Labor Department on Thursday, May 6, showed that more than 16 million people continue to receive some type of unemployment benefit, despite the fact that more than a year of pandemic has passed.

Democrats, for their part, say that companies don’t offer high enough wages or programs like subsidized child care to encourage people to go back to work.




President Biden said this Friday that “when we approved the rescue plan, I want to remind everyone: it was designed to help us in the course of a year, not 60 days, a year! We never think that after the first 50 or 60 days everything would be fine. “

The truth is that, after one year of pandemic, unemployment has a long way to go, if it wants to return to the levels of February 2020, when it was at the lowest rate in five decades: 3.5%.

With Reuters, EFE and AP

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source https://pledgetimes.com/economy-united-states-why-are-companies-unable-to-fill-vacancies-if-unemployment-is-at-6-1/