Butler County’s jobless rate sits a full percentage point higher than it was before COVID-19 arrived in the United States.

Despite that, employers are scurrying to find workers in a manner not seen in some time.

The response from businesses has been to increase wages, diversify benefits and become creative with recruiting employees, said Jordan Grady, executive director of the Butler County Chamber of Commerce.

There’s not one universal solution. Some companies already offer competitive wages and benefit packages, needing only to better advertise openings, while others may have “help wanted” signs but need to better entice applicants to choose their company, Grady continued.

And much as there isn’t one solution on the business side, there isn’t one cause for workers to be pickier, hold out longer or leave their current employer for another.

The numbers

In August, Butler County’s unemployment rate was 5.6%, the lowest in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, and the third lowest it has been since April 2020, when COVID-19-related shutdowns led to mass layoffs.

A deeper dive into those numbers, however, shows the picture isn’t as simple as it may seem.

The county’s labor force — which includes people working and looking for work — fell below 100,000 in April 2020. Before then, it was steadily between 100,000 and 102,000 workers, with some level of fluctuation.

Now, the size of the workforce fluctuates in the range of 96,000 workers, according to state Department of Labor and Industry data. In June 2021, for instance, the labor force was roughly 96,100 workers; its 2021 peak has been 96,800, reached in July.

In fact, during several months since COVID-19 struck Pennsylvania, the total labor force is lower than the number of employed workers in early 2020. In January and February 2020, a total of 96,300 and 96,700 county residents were actively employed; now, those numbers are similar to the total number of county residents counted in the labor force.

It’s not as though more county residents are claiming unemployment benefits and abstaining from the workforce, however. Not only are such workers counted in the labor force, there are actually fewer county residents filing unemployment insurance claims than there were pre-COVID-19.

Data from the labor department shows an average of 2,045 residents per week filed either an initial or continued unemployment claim between the weeks ending Sept. 4 and Oct. 16; in a similar, seven-week period from Feb. 1 to March 14, 2020 — before COVID-19 restrictions closed many businesses — more than 2,480 residents filed a claim each week on average.

Unemployment benefits

The expanded unemployment insurance available to county residents as a result of the first 2020 COVID-19 relief package — an additional $600 per week on top of typical unemployment benefits, and the expansion of insurance to otherwise ineligible workers — no longer exists.

The additional $600-a-week payments ended in August 2020. It was supplanted by a $300-per-week supplement from August 2020 through Sept. 6, 2021.

Despite the end of both unemployment supplements, Grady hypothesized they have a continued effect on workers’ mindsets.

“What that did is, even as organizations started bringing jobs back, in order to get some of the jobs filled they had to inflate the wage to get people to come to work,” Grady said. “Now that that is over, it seems there has been a new market value set for each job, based on what the pandemic wages were for some of these companies.”

Such issues have prompted the installation of signs outside fast-food restaurants advertising wages twice as high as they were prior to the pandemic, Grady said.

“A place like McDonald’s who, prior to this pandemic, definitely had some full-time, salary workers at the management level but targeted younger, high school kids or young adults who were looking for a job before starting a career, those same companies will start you at $20 or more an hour,” Grady said. “And I’m seeing that everywhere.”

Quality of life

Jack Cohen, director of the Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau, said another issue affecting employment is the quality of life a worker can expect with a job.

“Because of COVID, a lot of people have changed the way they live,” he said. “It’s a big difference today. A lot of people have left the workforce due to the circumstances of the pandemic ... and have made it pretty difficult for businesses.”

One example, he said, is an increasing number of workers who want to work fewer weekends or nights in hospitality industries. Cohen said those industries rely on night and weekend business, and thus employees.

“I think a lot of people are looking for that quality of life,” he added. “The pandemic told everybody, it’s a reset. Think of quality of life not in terms of work, but as a human being.”

Cohen said he can’t fault workers for reprioritizing what they want from life. He said while he’s heard from employees about what they see as important, and has heard myriad answers, there’s a thread: Time is of the utmost importance.

This includes time spent with family, to pursue interests and free time.

“That’s the backbone of who we are,” Cohen said. “If we can’t put our own house up and take care of our families, we’re making a huge mistake. And when you do that, think about the effects of having a strong family. We really want to make sure that people have the opportunity to have a strong family, to teach their children about the importance of quality of life.”

Grady said such issues are not the only factor important to an employee’s quality of life.

“The truth is, people need a higher wage to sustain a good quality of living,” he said. “I kind of feel like all of those factors have contributed to where we’re at now. Maybe it’s even fair to say that what we’re seeing now is the fair market value for wages in particular jobs, rather than it being above.”

Competition

While in the past employees have had to compete for jobs, the supply-and-demand of today’s employment market finds employers competing for workers.

That’s not unique to Butler County, nor this point in time, Grady said. It’s just been exacerbated by the pandemic and its economic impacts.

“When you look at the big picture here, workforce was a big issue prior to COVID. It intensified during this period,” he said. “It seems like a lot of organizations are fighting for the workforce that’s available here, and they’re getting creative with how to market their jobs.”

The competition comes in two forms: First, companies receive fewer applications for the same jobs as they’ve advertised in the past. Second, when a business extends an applicant an offer, there’s a higher chance they’ll receive a counter offer from their current employer.

While the first can be ameliorated by better advertising open jobs, the latter is wholly the result of fewer applicants.

“If you’ve increased your wage (offering), you’ve likely attracted a higher-level employee, and you’re going to want to keep that higher-level employee in that position, rather than losing them to another organization, particularly if they’re in the same industry as you,” Grady said.

Solutions

Grady said it’s more likely businesses will need to adapt to the new reality, rather than wait for it to pass.

“I can’t predict the future, but I would say that, (for) most jobs the wages that they are offering is probably the baseline moving forward,” he said.

So, what are some of the solutions companies have devised?

For Grady, he’s seen a more localized approach to hiring.

“Prior to this, you posted a job on social media or Indeed or one of the job forums like that, and you probably got applicants,” he said. “Now, companies are taking more of a local focus: They’re putting more help-wanted ads in the paper; they’re running more ads on the radio. You can’t go past a billboard without seeing a help-wanted ad.”

Cohen said these are prominent in the hospitality industry, which he said has historically relied on word-of-mouth and brand recognition to attract employees.

“It’s difficult, the recruiting side. Everybody’s looking at all angles, using firms, using word-of-mouth, using church bulletins, the paper, the radio,” he said. “(What) they’re going to have to do is talk about what they offer.”

In the past, job postings may have spoken generally of the requirements for applicants and the job duties, without specifying a wage or salary.

“Now, some companies that are advertising jobs are flat-out saying it: You can make up to $80,000 a year, or something like that,” Grady said.

Grady said “most companies” are also offering sign-on bonuses; sometimes they’re to attract employees to apply and sometimes to get them to stay.

“I’ve seen as high as $10,000 sign-on bonuses,” he added. “I’ve seen sign-on bonuses right away, but also another sign-on bonus in 90 days.”

Tying together the money and life-quality issues are changes to fringe benefits. Grady said he’s noticed more new and current members of the county chamber trying to purchase health insurance through the state chamber’s consortium.

In addition, Grady said, there’s a focus on other benefits such as additional paid time off, “flex time” that allows workers to split time at the office with time at home and child-care incentives.

“What you’re seeing is companies trying to combat inflation and cost-of-living increases by offering fringe benefits to try and attract workers,” he said.

In hospitality, Cohen said some of the quality-of-life issues facing workers can’t be ameliorated until businesses have more workers: It’s hard to split night and weekend shifts in an equitable way when there are few employees.

But other issues will take more change, Cohen said.

“We have to change the way we operate as a country, certainly as a community,” he said.

‘Creativity’

Grady said the No. 1 way to increase competitiveness in the marketplace is to offer higher wages. But other offerings — additional childcare incentives to combat the increase to childcare costs caused by workforce shortages — are more creative, he said.

There are major problems impeding workforce growth in the county, Cohen said, and sometimes these issues can’t be solved solely by businesses.

“One of the big issues still is transportation, where people from other communities who would like to come into our county because our businesses pay more than where they live, they can’t work here because they can’t get here,” he said.

That leaves some of the more creative decisions up to the companies.

“We’re pretty resilient in our field of business. We all understand the needs and we all understand, if we can’t continue to get the employees that we need and the staff that take care of the business that we have now, we’re going to have to create new ways to do that,” Cohen said. “I think everybody’s learning that now. You can’t always go with the tried-and-true ways. You’ve got to try everything.”

But creativity isn’t much of a roadblock for Butler County businesses, Grady said.

“I’m sure, as we get further and further into this pandemic and, hopefully, through it soon, you’re going to see some next-level creativity from some small and local companies,” Grady said. “They do a good job here in Butler County competing, and their creativity to date has been inspiring, to say the least.”