North Shore Workers Now In Demand Have Plenty Of Options

SALEM, MA – It's hard to drive anywhere along the North Shore these days without seeing those "Now Hiring" signs in window after window on block after block.

Bars, restaurants, coffee shops, retail stores, garages, warehouses and landscaping companies are all vying for the same pool of employees who may have been out of work for months because of the coronavirus health crisis and who are now very much in demand.

And who will likely very much be in demand for the foreseeable future.

"This is reality," Mary Sarris, Executive Director of the Salem-based MassHire North Shore Workforce Board, told Patch. "From a jobs perspective, it's a good time to be a worker. You will have lots and lots of opportunities and can decide where you want to work.

"It's a good time to be young. We need you in the labor force. Whether you are out of high school, or in high school, or out of college, or in college, you are going to be in great shape."

To help counter the labor crunch, Salem earlier this month launched a hiring incentive program for hospitality workers where they get a $400 gift card after six weeks of starting a new job and another $400 gift card if they maintain it through the busy Halloween season. Sarris told Patch on Wednesday that Beverly is about to institute a similar program involving more industries.

"This is a very smart move on the city of Salem, and now Beverly, and very good use of the federal money that the city has received," she said. "This provides support for the small company that doesn't necessarily have big pockets and can't offer incentives."

With service industry workers more in demand, bigger chain stores and restaurants have raised wages and offered hiring bonuses that Sarris allows some smaller shops may have a hard time matching. While this is good for workers, it does present problems for the small businesses already trying to get by on tight margins that face the prospect of having to either now raise wages or cut hours of operation because of a lack of staff.

"A lot of it has to do with companies creating what you might want to consider 'good' jobs, where people's schedules are set, they know what they are going to earn when they are going to work and they have an opportunity to work up a career ladder," she said. "You can get a job at Amazon in a second. It's a pretty high starting wage. That's probably more than the little gift shop in Salem can offer."

That's where Sarris said the gift card incentive helps level the playing field for those who might rather work in that mom-and-pop operation all things being equal. She said at MassHire one of the things they are suggesting for those available to work is to consider getting one of those part-time jobs now with the incentive and use their extra time to join one of the retraining programs that can set them up for career tracks in manufacturing, health care, IT or mechanical services through classes at local community colleges or technical high schools.

She said that more than 50 people in Salem have gotten a job that qualifies them for the gift card program over the past three weeks, with similar hopes for the upcoming Beverly program.

She added that while the extra $300 the federal government added to unemployment through the American Recovery Act – which expires on Sept. 4 – has helped provide a safety net for those who lost their jobs during the pandemic, she does not believe it's been "a major incentive to stay home."

"No one that I know of got rich off the employment," she said. "I think they were able to get by on it."

An aging population on the North Shore where more people are leaving the labor force than coming in, she said, is likely to make jobs plentiful for those returning to work for the next few years.

"It's good for the job seekers," she said. "They have some control over where they want to work.

"They are going to have some options."

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)