Don’t Blame Extra Unemployment Benefits for the Hotel Labor Shortage Crisis
Photo Credit: The hotel industry executive argument that extra unemployment benefits are keeping workers away isn't holding up in states that ended the program early. StockSnap / Daria Nepriakhina
Skift Take
The extra $300 in weekly federal unemployment benefits is an easy political punching bag to use to explain away the hotel industry’s labor shortage problems. Want people back? Pay more and market the industry better.
Hotel leaders across the U.S. in recent weeks pointed to an extra $300 in weekly unemployment benefits, provided from a $1.9 trillion federal pandemic relief measure passed earlier this year, as the leading culprit for a labor shortage crisis heading into the summer.
Some early evidence suggests that argument isn’t bulletproof.
Twenty-six states are on track to end the added boost to unemployment insurance — set to expire at the federal level in early September — by next month. But several states that have already ended the measure aren’t seeing major swings in job search activity, according to data compiled by the job listing platform Indeed.
Economists and analysts point to a variety of factors, from the industry's lower pay rates to poor messaging on career advancement as to why people may not be willing to get back into hospitality.
“The industry has never had a great reputation as an employer. There was a labor shortage problem before the pandemic,” said
