The Hiring Market is Crazy

COVID-19, unemployment benefits and weird application hiring trends (oh, my).

If you’re reading this, you know the U.S. labor market is insane right now, with hiring trends not necessarily matching up with applicant volume. We’re currently seeing less than one person available for a single job opening across the U.S. (even factoring in the slingshotting effects of COVID, which produced a short-term spike in layoffs in March 2020).

Even though companies in the security and cleaning industries are actively hiring, we’re not seeing a matching trend of applicant job seeker volume.

What’s the reason why? To be fair, we can’t pinpoint it exactly. A common argument floating around hiring manager conversations and the media is that state unemployment benefits are incentivizing people to not return to work.

We’ve done a little bit of a case study specifically looking at California’s federal unemployment benefits compared to security guard base pay correlations. What we found? There is an economic incentive to not return to the workforce at the current guard base pay while there are unemployment benefits available.

But…

We’re also monitoring studies surrounding unemployment benefit repeal rates. And, TEAM has conducted our own analysis comparing states who repealed extra unemployment benefits in June 2021 to those who chose to wait until September 2021. The findings might not be what you think. Take a look in the video below.

Want to learn more about the current market, plus action items that can help you counteract its current challenges, like sourcing applicants and moving them through your hiring funnel? Check out our full, free on-demand webinar after submitting the form below.