Lack of Foreign Workers Has Seasonal Businesses Scrambling

Mr. Doyle spent nearly $30,000 advertising for workers as far away as Nevada and got no response, he said. For the last year, he has had a 20-foot trailer parked outside his office, emblazoned with a sign proclaiming: “NOW HIRING. WALK-INS WELCOME.”

“I had two people drop in all year,” he said.

Higher wages could encourage more American-born workers to apply to these jobs, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at the New York University Law School. But he argues that in every labor market, there are difficult, unpleasant, low-paid jobs with no opportunity for advancement — like agricultural work or meatpacking — that are considered less desirable both for economic and for cultural reasons.

Some of the attitudes toward jobs, particularly in the service sectors, are changing, he said, but “we haven’t quite understood yet the impact of pandemic.”

Temporary guest workers have also gotten entangled in broader and more bitter arguments over immigration. There is a widespread misconception, Mr. Chishti said, that all foreign workers are eager to settle in the United States.

“A lot of workers don’t necessarily want to come and live here forever,” he said. “They want to work legally and travel back and forth. Their life in Mexico, for example, may be better than life in a U.S. city.”

In the meantime, employers are struggling. Small resort towns often depend on international seasonal workers because their population isn’t sufficient to fill all of the suddenly available slots at hotels, restaurants, ice cream shops or ski slopes that serve the hordes of tourists who appear and then vanish.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/business/economy/seasonal-foreign-guest-workers.html