Navigating Workforce Challenges in North Alabama: NORTH ALABAMA Businesses across the region have been grappling with workforce shortages since the onset of the Great Migration amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The shortage has left many business owners in North Alabama dealing with understaffed operations, pushing them to adopt creative strategies to attract new hires.
In an effort to entice potential employees, sign-on bonuses, lump sums of cash, have become a common offering from employers. However, Alabama Arise, a statewide organization dedicated to advocating for public policies that uplift Alabamians marginalized by poverty, emphasizes that addressing the root causes is crucial for retaining workers.
According to Alabama Arise Worker Policy Advocate Dev Wakeley, simply offering sign-on bonuses is not enough. If you dont actually build a system of work supports that lets people afford to work, then people are not going to be able to fill those jobs, Wakeley stated.
While sign-on bonuses are prevalent in the healthcare sector, Wakeley notes that various industries are now experimenting with this approach. However, he cautions that relying solely on bonuses may not lead to sustainable workforce solutions.
What you do see is that it is an attempt to mitigate the long-term wage pavement and kind of hope that employers will be able to just bring those wages back down, Wakeley added.
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Wakeley emphasizes the importance of wages that enable individuals to afford housing, transportation, and sustenance. Its not the recipe for long-term success in the workforce and its not the recipe for long-term employer success either. The recipe for bringing people in and having them retained is paying them enough to live on and thrive on, he said.
Data from the Alabama Department of Labor reveals a slight increase in the state’s unemployment rate to 2.3% in October, while the labor force participation rate remained steady at 57%.
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