Job openings going unfilled in 'crazy' market, recruiters say
Marcella Perez-Chinapen of Deer Park, who has been looking for a job for eight months, attends a job fair at Deer Park Public Library. Credit: Danielle Silverman
Employers on Long Island say they can't find workers, and yet many local jobseekers say they can’t find work.
It’s a disconnect that has become maddening for many actively on the job hunt, given the number of headlines over the last two years announcing the American workforce’s newfound leverage. Data, too, suggest that workers in today’s economy should be facing an easier time getting hired.
The disconnect stems from mismatched expectations on both sides, labor experts and recruiters say. With some businesses unwilling — or unable — to pay competitive wages, and some workers overestimating their skills or holding out for all-remote work, the result is a stalemate in the labor market that has left many employers wondering if workers have gone missing.
The Island’s unemployment rate hit 3.4% in August, making it the lowest rate for the month since 2000, and putting it well below the 4% benchmark many economists consider to be "full employment" — theoretically, an economy in which nearly everyone who wants to work has a job. Still, that left 52,500 Long Islanders counted as unemployed.
Federal data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released this month show that there were 10.1 million job openings, compared to 6 million people counted as unemployed.
There were 39,465 active job postings — each advertising at least one opening — during September on Long Island, according to Labor Insight, an aggregator of hundreds of millions of online job postings run by labor analytics firm Lightcast.
"I can’t fill temp positions and that’s in our title,” said Janis Zamier, director of operations for Hicksville-based staffing agency Long Island Temps.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Zamier, who's been in recruiting for 18 years.
An estimated 64% of small businesses nationwide reported that they were hiring or trying to hire workers in September, according to monthly survey data from the National Federation of Independent Business.
Of those hiring or trying to, 89% reported few or no qualified applicants.
Businesses in the leisure and hospitality sector were hit particularly hard by the pandemic and are still wrestling with hiring challenges more than two and a half years after businesses were mandated to close to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“Whether it's restaurants, catering venues or hotels, there is still a labor shortage in the hospitality industry,” said Dorothy Roberts, president of the Long Island Hospitality Association. “It’s getting better than it was but it’s still there.”
Despite those unfilled openings, not all jobseekers are necessarily reaping the benefits of a tight job market.
“While headline numbers are really important, they mask what’s going on for some populations,” said Erica Groshen, senior economics advisor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
She said for the more than 50% of American workers without college degrees, the number of jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree or more has created a barrier to higher-paying employment. An estimated 45.6% of Long Island adults had at least a bachelor's degree as of 2020, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“An average never tells the whole story," said Groshen, a former Great Neck resident who served as the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2013 to 2017.
Statistics may show that 80% of the population is happy, but that doesn't matter if you're part of the other 20%, she said.
Groshen said it’s also important to acknowledge the limitations on labor market data collection and how it’s possible for both workers and employers to struggle in the current job market.
Unemployment rate data and job creation numbers, which are both published each month at the national, state and local level, are estimates calculated using two national surveys of households and employers.
The employer survey is taken during the pay period that includes the 12th of each month, and the household survey is taken the week of the 12th every month. The surveys use information collected from 60,000 households and from around 131,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 670,000 individual worksites.
For some, the tight labor market they keep hearing about hasn’t translated to more job offers.
“Employers keep saying they cannot find workers, but workers are out there looking for employment,” said Harry Neasse, a jobseeker living in Massapequa Park.
Neasse has been trying since early this year to get a job working in IT, but despite his certifications in computer networking, cloud computing, and electrical work, the 48-year-old said nothing has worked out.
A recent interview with a London-based company with offices in Plainview went well, and the company was recommended as a potential fit for Neasse by a recruiter, he said. Two weeks later, Neasse still hasn’t heard back from either the company or the recruiter.
“I’ve [been] to so many recruiters, go to job interviews, and I get no response,” he said. “I find it strange.”
The nation’s labor market does indeed find itself in a strange moment, more than two years after a global pandemic flipped the economy on its head and now with inflation spiking and a possible recession looming.
While hiring challenges have been most pronounced in the service sector, some employers with higher-paying salaried openings are struggling to fill them, too.
“It’s been really hard,” said Erika L. Calderon, partner with public accounting firm Brinster & Bergman in Rockville Centre. “I’ve spoken to some of the headhunters and they don’t have a lot of resumes for us.”
Calderon said the company has been using online job boards like ZipRecruiter and Indeed, as well as staffing agencies, but has gotten few applicants. And the ones they do get often have no certifications or experience in accounting.
“Tax preparers in particular are minimal,” Calderon said. “I don’t know where they are. It’s kind of crazy.”
One of the hurdles to hiring has been the firm’s requirement that employees work in the office.
A recent survey of 1,275 jobseekers conducted by the state Labor Department showed that 33% of those looking for work were searching for fully remote work opportunities.
“I’m finding a lot of it is people want to work remote,” Calderon said. “In our industry it’s really hard to be remote. We do have some capacity for remote work, but it’s not a lot.”
Exactly why workers are in such short supply is a little hard to pin down, economists said, but several factors working in conjunction have made good help harder to find.
The impact of long COVID, lack of access to affordable child care, reduced immigration, uncompetitive wages, and accelerated retirements have all played a part in creating the current environment.
“Workers took a long hard look at risking their lives for low pay and they’ve gotten much more demanding,” said Gregory DeFreitas, Hofstra economics professor and director of the university’s Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy.
More than 40% of adults have caught COVID, and it’s estimated that one in five of those have experienced long COVID symptoms, according to CDC data. As a result, nearly one out of every ten U.S. adults may have experienced ongoing symptoms that might require missing work or other accommodations.
According to economists at the University of California, Davis, the nation had an estimated 2 million fewer working-age immigrants at the end of last year than it would have had if trends prior to the pandemic continued. COVID-19 travel restrictions and other federal policies have chipped away at a labor pool important to filling many service industry and health care jobs.
In addition to those factors, experts said that many of the labor market conditions seen today stem from preexisting trends.
“This whole idea of labor shortages is not a new thing and it’s not totally related to the pandemic,” said Jason Bram, economic research advisor of urban and regional studies for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Bram said in previous years he would visit parts of the state to get a better sense of what businesses and employees were experiencing in different markets. Prior to the pandemic the Island’s tight labor market was already creating challenges, he said.
“One of the things we would hear over and over in 2018 and 2019 on Long Island is ‘We can’t find enough qualified workers,’ ” Bram said.
Bram added that the changes in the job market today are partly the result of years of wage stagnation.
“My underlining point is that it’s been such an employer's market for many years,” he said. “Companies in the '90s and early 2000s and especially around the recession got used to an excess supply of labor. All of that has changed.”
Some elected officials have complained that the employee shortage is the result of Americans not wanting to work due to extra stimulus dollars received during the height of the pandemic.
While enhanced unemployment payments and stimulus aid ended early last year, as recently as July Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested that many of the unemployed nationwide were “sitting on the sidelines because, frankly, they're flush for the moment."
In response, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in July took to Twitter, writing that McConnell was “blaming Americans for not wanting to work. It’s absurdly out of touch,” adding that investments in affordable child care would do more to help parents return to work than blaming enhanced unemployment and stimulus checks.
Between 2020 and early 2021, three separate stimulus payments were issued to taxpayers, totaling $3,200.
“I get very frustrated when I hear people say that people don’t want to work,” said one 32-year-old jobseeker living in Bayville who asked that her name not be used to avoid potential retaliation from former employers. “I don’t want to wake up every day and spend hours sending out a resume.”
The single mother said she was let go from her job two months ago after she said her employer could no longer accommodate her need to work remotely two days a week in order to lower the cost of child care for her 6-year-old son.
Since then, she’s been applying for roughly 20 jobs a day on Indeed without luck. Given the rising cost of food and gas, finding something that pays well enough to cover child care or allows the freedom to work from home is paramount, she said.
Many of the positions she sees offer maximum pay of $20 an hour and wouldn’t provide her the time at home she needs to cut down on child care costs.
“I’ve tried for two years to balance single motherhood in a pandemic,” she said. “It’s clear to me that the price of life is not going to go down soon.”
Zamier, of Long Island Temps, said she’s increasingly seen a mismatch between what employers and jobseekers are expecting — with unrealistic expectations on both sides.
On the employer’s end, she said she’s constantly having conversations with clients about what wage rates will and won’t work in today’s competitive environment.
“It’s almost like some employers have not caught up to the times or don’t want to accept" the reality of rising wages, she said.
On the other side is what jobseekers are bringing to the table.
Some Long Island employers said they're seeing an elevated number of applications, sometimes in the hundreds for a single opening. But many said what they’re getting is a wave of unqualified candidates.
Twenty-two percent of small business owners reported “labor quality” as their top business operating problem in September, according to data from the National Federation of Independent Business.
Zamier said she often sees online job listings flooded with applications from jobseekers who don't have any of the preferred industry experience or required skills. The skills most sought after by employers include intermediate-to-advanced understanding of Microsoft Office programs, specifically Excel; experience using QuickBooks accounting software; customer relations experience; familiarity with accessing the internet; strong communication skills, and years of experience in the given industry.
She said it appears that “sometimes they’re really just applying everywhere,” which can make the process of sifting through candidates time consuming and frustrating.
“I think what’s going on is the jobseekers are hearing there’s a shortage of candidates and thinking ‘Here I am,’ and yes you are, but you still have to be a fit for the position,” she said. “The jobseeker is thinking they have the skillset when they really don’t.”
Amid that crowded field of applications, credentialed candidates with relevant experience and education can get lost in the mix.
At a recent job fair in Deer Park, Marcella Perez-Chinapen, 32, said she spent the last eight months looking for work online.
“I have management, supervisory and support clerical experience and I wasn’t really getting the attention that I hoped for in the fields [where] I was looking,” said Perez-Chinapen, of Deer Park, who moved to the U.S. from Belize early in the pandemic.
“I have 10 years in business financing,” she said. “I was looking online but I wasn’t getting much feedback from places that I was applying for. I’m not sure why.”
Employers on Long Island say they can't find workers, and yet many local jobseekers say they can’t find work.
It’s a disconnect that has become maddening for many actively on the job hunt, given the number of headlines over the last two years announcing the American workforce’s newfound leverage. Data, too, suggest that workers in today’s economy should be facing an easier time getting hired.
The disconnect stems from mismatched expectations on both sides, labor experts and recruiters say. With some businesses unwilling — or unable — to pay competitive wages, and some workers overestimating their skills or holding out for all-remote work, the result is a stalemate in the labor market that has left many employers wondering if workers have gone missing.
The Island’s unemployment rate hit 3.4% in August, making it the lowest rate for the month since 2000, and putting it well below the 4% benchmark many economists consider to be "full employment" — theoretically, an economy in which nearly everyone who wants to work has a job. Still, that left 52,500 Long Islanders counted as unemployed.
What to know
- Long Island employers say they're having a hard time finding workers, and yet many local jobseekers say they can’t find work.
- The disconnect stems from unrealistic expectations on both sides, labor experts and recruiters say.
- The Island’s unemployment rate was 3.4% in August, well below the 4% benchmark many economists consider to be "full employment" — but that still leaves 52,500 Long Islanders unemployed.
Federal data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released this month show that there were 10.1 million job openings, compared to 6 million people counted as unemployed.
There were 39,465 active job postings — each advertising at least one opening — during September on Long Island, according to Labor Insight, an aggregator of hundreds of millions of online job postings run by labor analytics firm Lightcast.
Few qualified candidates
"I can’t fill temp positions and that’s in our title,” said Janis Zamier, director of operations for Hicksville-based staffing agency Long Island Temps.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Zamier, who's been in recruiting for 18 years.
Janis Zamier, center, director of operations at Long Island Temps in Hicksville, speaks with a colleague about prospective job candidates on Tuesday. Credit: Danielle Silverman
An estimated 64% of small businesses nationwide reported that they were hiring or trying to hire workers in September, according to monthly survey data from the National Federation of Independent Business.
Of those hiring or trying to, 89% reported few or no qualified applicants.
Businesses in the leisure and hospitality sector were hit particularly hard by the pandemic and are still wrestling with hiring challenges more than two and a half years after businesses were mandated to close to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“Whether it's restaurants, catering venues or hotels, there is still a labor shortage in the hospitality industry,” said Dorothy Roberts, president of the Long Island Hospitality Association. “It’s getting better than it was but it’s still there.”
Despite those unfilled openings, not all jobseekers are necessarily reaping the benefits of a tight job market.
Data masking reality
“While headline numbers are really important, they mask what’s going on for some populations,” said Erica Groshen, senior economics advisor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
She said for the more than 50% of American workers without college degrees, the number of jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree or more has created a barrier to higher-paying employment. An estimated 45.6% of Long Island adults had at least a bachelor's degree as of 2020, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“An average never tells the whole story," said Groshen, a former Great Neck resident who served as the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2013 to 2017.
Statistics may show that 80% of the population is happy, but that doesn't matter if you're part of the other 20%, she said.
Groshen said it’s also important to acknowledge the limitations on labor market data collection and how it’s possible for both workers and employers to struggle in the current job market.
Unemployment rate data and job creation numbers, which are both published each month at the national, state and local level, are estimates calculated using two national surveys of households and employers.
The employer survey is taken during the pay period that includes the 12th of each month, and the household survey is taken the week of the 12th every month. The surveys use information collected from 60,000 households and from around 131,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 670,000 individual worksites.
Job offers scarce
For some, the tight labor market they keep hearing about hasn’t translated to more job offers.
“Employers keep saying they cannot find workers, but workers are out there looking for employment,” said Harry Neasse, a jobseeker living in Massapequa Park.
Neasse has been trying since early this year to get a job working in IT, but despite his certifications in computer networking, cloud computing, and electrical work, the 48-year-old said nothing has worked out.
Harry Neasse of Massapequa chats with a recruiter at a September job fair at Deer Park Public Library. Credit: Danielle Silverman
A recent interview with a London-based company with offices in Plainview went well, and the company was recommended as a potential fit for Neasse by a recruiter, he said. Two weeks later, Neasse still hasn’t heard back from either the company or the recruiter.
“I’ve [been] to so many recruiters, go to job interviews, and I get no response,” he said. “I find it strange.”
The nation’s labor market does indeed find itself in a strange moment, more than two years after a global pandemic flipped the economy on its head and now with inflation spiking and a possible recession looming.
Salaried jobs unfilled
While hiring challenges have been most pronounced in the service sector, some employers with higher-paying salaried openings are struggling to fill them, too.
“It’s been really hard,” said Erika L. Calderon, partner with public accounting firm Brinster & Bergman in Rockville Centre. “I’ve spoken to some of the headhunters and they don’t have a lot of resumes for us.”
Calderon said the company has been using online job boards like ZipRecruiter and Indeed, as well as staffing agencies, but has gotten few applicants. And the ones they do get often have no certifications or experience in accounting.
“Tax preparers in particular are minimal,” Calderon said. “I don’t know where they are. It’s kind of crazy.”
One of the hurdles to hiring has been the firm’s requirement that employees work in the office.
A recent survey of 1,275 jobseekers conducted by the state Labor Department showed that 33% of those looking for work were searching for fully remote work opportunities.
“I’m finding a lot of it is people want to work remote,” Calderon said. “In our industry it’s really hard to be remote. We do have some capacity for remote work, but it’s not a lot.”
Where are the workers?
Exactly why workers are in such short supply is a little hard to pin down, economists said, but several factors working in conjunction have made good help harder to find.
The impact of long COVID, lack of access to affordable child care, reduced immigration, uncompetitive wages, and accelerated retirements have all played a part in creating the current environment.
“Workers took a long hard look at risking their lives for low pay and they’ve gotten much more demanding,” said Gregory DeFreitas, Hofstra economics professor and director of the university’s Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy.
Jobseekers talk with potential employers during a job fair at the Wyandanch Community Resource Center on Sept. 30. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
More than 40% of adults have caught COVID, and it’s estimated that one in five of those have experienced long COVID symptoms, according to CDC data. As a result, nearly one out of every ten U.S. adults may have experienced ongoing symptoms that might require missing work or other accommodations.
According to economists at the University of California, Davis, the nation had an estimated 2 million fewer working-age immigrants at the end of last year than it would have had if trends prior to the pandemic continued. COVID-19 travel restrictions and other federal policies have chipped away at a labor pool important to filling many service industry and health care jobs.
Not a new problem
In addition to those factors, experts said that many of the labor market conditions seen today stem from preexisting trends.
“This whole idea of labor shortages is not a new thing and it’s not totally related to the pandemic,” said Jason Bram, economic research advisor of urban and regional studies for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Bram said in previous years he would visit parts of the state to get a better sense of what businesses and employees were experiencing in different markets. Prior to the pandemic the Island’s tight labor market was already creating challenges, he said.
“One of the things we would hear over and over in 2018 and 2019 on Long Island is ‘We can’t find enough qualified workers,’ ” Bram said.
Bram added that the changes in the job market today are partly the result of years of wage stagnation.
“My underlining point is that it’s been such an employer's market for many years,” he said. “Companies in the '90s and early 2000s and especially around the recession got used to an excess supply of labor. All of that has changed.”
Two sides on stimulus
Some elected officials have complained that the employee shortage is the result of Americans not wanting to work due to extra stimulus dollars received during the height of the pandemic.
While enhanced unemployment payments and stimulus aid ended early last year, as recently as July Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested that many of the unemployed nationwide were “sitting on the sidelines because, frankly, they're flush for the moment."
In response, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in July took to Twitter, writing that McConnell was “blaming Americans for not wanting to work. It’s absurdly out of touch,” adding that investments in affordable child care would do more to help parents return to work than blaming enhanced unemployment and stimulus checks.
Recruiters chat with prospective job candidates at a job fair at Deer Park Public Library on Sept. 29. Credit: Danielle Silverman
Between 2020 and early 2021, three separate stimulus payments were issued to taxpayers, totaling $3,200.
“I get very frustrated when I hear people say that people don’t want to work,” said one 32-year-old jobseeker living in Bayville who asked that her name not be used to avoid potential retaliation from former employers. “I don’t want to wake up every day and spend hours sending out a resume.”
Factoring in child care
The single mother said she was let go from her job two months ago after she said her employer could no longer accommodate her need to work remotely two days a week in order to lower the cost of child care for her 6-year-old son.
Since then, she’s been applying for roughly 20 jobs a day on Indeed without luck. Given the rising cost of food and gas, finding something that pays well enough to cover child care or allows the freedom to work from home is paramount, she said.
Many of the positions she sees offer maximum pay of $20 an hour and wouldn’t provide her the time at home she needs to cut down on child care costs.
“I’ve tried for two years to balance single motherhood in a pandemic,” she said. “It’s clear to me that the price of life is not going to go down soon.”
Unrealistic expectations
Zamier, of Long Island Temps, said she’s increasingly seen a mismatch between what employers and jobseekers are expecting — with unrealistic expectations on both sides.
On the employer’s end, she said she’s constantly having conversations with clients about what wage rates will and won’t work in today’s competitive environment.
“It’s almost like some employers have not caught up to the times or don’t want to accept" the reality of rising wages, she said.
On the other side is what jobseekers are bringing to the table.
Some Long Island employers said they're seeing an elevated number of applications, sometimes in the hundreds for a single opening. But many said what they’re getting is a wave of unqualified candidates.
Twenty-two percent of small business owners reported “labor quality” as their top business operating problem in September, according to data from the National Federation of Independent Business.
Flood of applications
Zamier said she often sees online job listings flooded with applications from jobseekers who don't have any of the preferred industry experience or required skills. The skills most sought after by employers include intermediate-to-advanced understanding of Microsoft Office programs, specifically Excel; experience using QuickBooks accounting software; customer relations experience; familiarity with accessing the internet; strong communication skills, and years of experience in the given industry.
She said it appears that “sometimes they’re really just applying everywhere,” which can make the process of sifting through candidates time consuming and frustrating.
“I think what’s going on is the jobseekers are hearing there’s a shortage of candidates and thinking ‘Here I am,’ and yes you are, but you still have to be a fit for the position,” she said. “The jobseeker is thinking they have the skillset when they really don’t.”
Amid that crowded field of applications, credentialed candidates with relevant experience and education can get lost in the mix.
At a recent job fair in Deer Park, Marcella Perez-Chinapen, 32, said she spent the last eight months looking for work online.
“I have management, supervisory and support clerical experience and I wasn’t really getting the attention that I hoped for in the fields [where] I was looking,” said Perez-Chinapen, of Deer Park, who moved to the U.S. from Belize early in the pandemic.
“I have 10 years in business financing,” she said. “I was looking online but I wasn’t getting much feedback from places that I was applying for. I’m not sure why.”
'I haven't stopped crying' Over the past year, Newsday has followed a pair of migrant families as they navigate new surroundings and an immigration system that has been overwhelmed. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.
'I haven't stopped crying' Over the past year, Newsday has followed a pair of migrant families as they navigate new surroundings and an immigration system that has been overwhelmed. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.
