As Hiring Slows, Employers Say It’s Getting Harder to Find Workers

Many of them were able to find jobs in health care, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing, which were among the strongest job-creating sectors.

Employers added 27,000 manufacturing jobs in November, on top of nearly 300,000 positions in the previous 12 months.

Those who are doing the hiring, though, have repeatedly complained that the field of available workers has been picked through, and that people with sufficient skills are particularly scarce.

At Western in the Milwaukee area — where the jobless rate is down to 3 percent — workers bundled against the cold unloaded door frames on Friday. Elsewhere, millwork employees used palm sanders to smooth down doors suspended back to front from a conveyor, like a scaled-down, less colorful version of Disney’s animated “Monsters, Inc.” factory.

This December has been unusually busy, said Mr. Willey, who is finishing up his 42nd year at the factory, where he started as a seasonal worker. The company has 217 people on staff and expects to raise the total to 230 next year.

Entry-level wages are $12.50 an hour, while the typical worker earns nearly $17 an hour plus benefits. Because the business is 100 percent employee owned, workers build up equity in the company after a year, which Mr. Willey said amounted to a 25 percent raise. He and his colleagues have batted around the idea of raising starting wages to $16 an hour, but “we have to have the productivity for it to make sense,” he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/business/economy/hiring-slowdown-job-market.html?partner=rss&emc=rss