Hilton Head’s largest employers say they’re hiring. Why aren’t people applying?
This past summer, as businesses across the country sought to emerge from the financial devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, Lee Edwards faced a problem.
Edwards expected his Hilton Head Island-based company, the Greenery Inc., Landscape Services, would get more applicants because so many had been laid off from other work. The Greenery hadn’t been as affected by the pandemic, and the business was desperate for workers.
“We had quite a few situations where we had offered people jobs because they’d been laid off, but they didn’t want to come to work because they were on the enhanced unemployment,” Edwards said. “That was kind of a big negative for us for a while. It was pretty tough to compete against that. ... We were really thinking we’d have some more decent applicants, but it really hasn’t been the case. It’s been just as difficult to find good people as usual.”
Now in Hilton Head’s off-season, the Greenery is no longer looking for manual laborers. But Edwards said he is unsure what will happen in the spring, when hiring picks up again.
“I don’t anticipate there to be a lot more applicants looking to get into landscaping,” Edwards said.
The Greenery is one of several major employers in the area seeing a dearth of job applications as more positions become available. And it appears that flush unemployment benefits are not the only reason people are not applying for work.
On Friday, the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce reported that 4.2% of South Carolinians were unemployed in October, down from September’s rate of 5.2%. In the Hilton Head, Bluffton and Beaufort metropolitan area — which consists of Beaufort and Jasper counties — 3.2% were unemployed, down from 3.8% in September.
The rates have been decreasing since hitting a peak in April, when 11.6% of Beaufort and Jasper County residents and 14.4% of Americans were unemployed. The metropolitan area has consistently fared better than the state and the country in its unemployment rate this year.
And the labor force — consisting of employed people and unemployed people looking for work — grew slightly, from 91,160 in September to 92,646 in October after seeing a significant drop at the beginning of the school year. Across the country, many parents left the workforce to assist their kids in virtual schooling.
DEW data indicates there are now enough job openings to employ those who remain unemployed. There are 3,609 openings for 3,007 people looking for work.
Brian Nottingham, director of South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce’s Labor Market Information division, said the industries with the greatest number of openings in the Lowcountry are accommodations and food service and retail.
Yet Chris Maddaloni, who owns the staffing agency Atlantic Personnel, said potential workers simply are not “coming through the door” right now. Even during the peak of summer tourism, the company struggles to find enough people to meet the clients’ needs for labor.
Interestingly enough, Maddaloni said, the staffing agency tends to get more applicants in the winter, such as those who have been laid off from their peak-season job. But that hasn’t happened this year.
“I think most employers are deciding to keep their employees year round, even if that means maybe reducing their hours in the slower season,” he said. “Employers know if they let go of their good staff, they may not be able to get them back when the season starts going in March. It’s extremely competitive.”
Maddaloni works closely with the hospitality industry, which was among the hardest hit by COVID-19 in the spring and summer as tourism slowed on Hilton Head and across the country. Even its most successful institutions are struggling to find adequate staffing.
“We have the usual staffing concerns, likely shared by other businesses,” said Cindi Rivera, director of human resources at the Sea Pines Resort. “It takes [a] certain amount of creative scheduling and department cross-training to cover the operations.”
Greg Parker, chief executive officer and founder of Savannah-based convenience store Parker’s Kitchen, said staffing is his company’s single greatest challenge.
“We used to have 50 to 60 people attend Parker’s hiring events, and now we only have four people show up,” Parker said. “It’s extremely difficult to find people who are willing to work.”
Parker’s has stores across the Georgia coast up to Charleston. But the CEO said the Hilton Head area is the toughest to hire in. Like The Greenery’s Edwards, Parker cited state and federal aid as a reason people might choose not to return to work.
Sandy Gillis, director of the Hilton Head charity the Deep Well Project, suspects some other dynamics are at play.
The nonprofit will generally see a spike in requests for aid this time of the year, as people find themselves out of work in the off-season, Gillis said. But with tourism continuing strong into the late fall, that phenomenon has been blunted.
“A lot of these businesses are employing people at higher hours than they normally would be in late October, November, so that’s been a boost for a lot of people that their work has continued much later into the off-season,” Gillis said.
This could be why other employers might be having trouble finding people, Gillis said — the workers are not looking to pick up more hours.
“People are doing better than they normally would be this time of year — except for those households that are dealing with those direct COVID impacts,” Gillis said.
Additionally, Gillis said, some people are not going back to work because their kids are in school virtually. Others might not go back because of the risk of exposing themselves or family members to COVID-19.
“Even with the children returning to school two days a week, that has still put a lot of folks who just don’t have the kind of job where they can work from home ... in that very difficult position of choosing, “Do I go to work and get income for the family, or do I stay home with the kids because I have no place else to go?” she said.
Nottingham said it is important to remember that although we look at data in the aggregate, each member of the workforce has individual circumstances.
“With COVID-19 ramping up again, some folks might have made the decision that it’s not worth it, we’re going to try to stay home and ride it out,” he said.
Still, Nottingham expects more people to join the workforce as federal unemployment aid runs dry. The Lost Wages Assistance program, which provides up to $300 in backdated weekly unemployment benefits, is set to expire in late December.
“You’re going to have a lot of people, come the end of next month, that are going to see their benefits curtailed dramatically,” Nottingham said, “and then you’re going to hopefully see an influx of those people back into the workforce, taking these jobs that perhaps employers are having a difficult time filling.”
This story was originally published November 27, 2020 at 4:30 AM.
