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- [Reporter] Across the country, help is wanted,
and businesses can't fill positions fast enough.
- I'm in a war for talent.
If you do not jump to make an offer to an applicant
at the end of the interview, they are lost.
- [Reporter] And increasingly, it takes more than an offer.
- [Announcer] Wawa is growing!
- [Reporter] Many jobs now come with incentives
like sign-on bonuses.
- [Announcer] A $500 new hire bonus.
- [Reporter] And freebies have been offered
for just showing up to an interview.
But with more than nine million people still out of work
and a record number of jobs available,
why are these additional offers needed,
and are they working?
- What we're seeing in this unusual labor market
is a resurgence in leverage for lower wage workers.
And we really haven't seen that in this country
for at least 50 years.
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- [Reporter] Before the pandemic,
the labor market was tight,
with the jobless rate near a 50-year low.
Then, millions lost their jobs.
Hourly restaurant, retail, and hotel workers
were hit particularly hard.
Now, as quickly as the economy has reopened,
those employers are trying to staff back up,
but many workers remain on the sideline
for a variety of reasons, including COVID concerns,
childcare, and extended unemployment benefits.
- Employers right now are frantically trying
to make sure that they can take advantage
of the opening up of the economy and salvage
what has been an impossible last 14-15 months for them
by ramping up their businesses very quickly.
But it's hard to do that
if you don't have all your workers in place.
- [Reporter] That's something Omni Hotels
and Resorts knows well.
- In February, I had 200 jobs open.
Today, I have 2,800 jobs open,
and I've hired 5,000 since February.
So we are having explosive demand.
- [Reporter] To get those roles filled,
the company, like many others, has turned to incentives,
including free housing for summer workers
in certain markets, a $250 signing bonus,
three free nights at an Omni hotel,
and a set of knives for new culinary hires.
Workers who stay past Labor Day get another $500
and enter into the Omni's management development program.
- We're used to interviewing people
and having several applicants for a role
and taking our time and having them come back
for a second interview.
You can't do that anymore.
- [Reporter] For its hard-to-fill culinary roles,
Omni recently decided we'll add two trainers
to help give inexperienced applicants on-the-job training.
- I think a lot of companies would say,
"Oh, you've never cooked, you've never been in a kitchen,
we don't need you," and I'm like, look,
if I have people that wanna work for us,
bring 'em in.
We'll find a way to make it work.
- [Reporter] Omni's incentives
come on top of wage increases.
The company says hourly wages were up as much as 20%
from a year ago in some markets.
That bump isn't just to compete with other hotels.
Both Target and Walmart have agreed to raise wages this year
and Amazon is offering $1,000 signing bonus
in some locations.
- They're going after the same labor I'm going after,
and I think that was the big wake-up call
for the hotel industry.
- [Reporter] Labor Department data show average weekly wages
in leisure and hospitality have increased 10.7%
since the start of the pandemic,
outpacing the private sector overall.
- And that's not always the case, right.
A lot of times it's higher tech, higher educated workers
that see the bigger pay increases.
Right now, we're seeing the reverse
and that's why you have all this activity around bonuses.
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- [Reporter] But are wage increases and job incentives
actually drawing workers back into the workforce?
It's a mixed bag.
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Omni has hired about 3,000 people
since it began offering incentives.
Labor Department data show that the sector overall
added the most jobs in June,
suggesting the incentives may be helping.
- We still have a lot of job openings,
millions of job openings in these sectors,
so I'd suggest that either some employers
are gonna need to have to do even more
or they're gonna have to wait it out
and see if the labor market finds its level in the fall.
- [Reporter] One reason the fall is important,
that's when the federal government's
expanded unemployment benefits are set to expire nationwide,
though more than 20 states have already stopped paying
the extra $300 a week payments.
Some economists point to that benefit
as one reason why workers aren't rushing to fill open jobs.
- Many people on unemployment benefits
are earning the equivalent of working full-time
for $15 an hour.
So if you're offering less than that or about that,
it's pretty hard to attract workers.
- [Reporter] A recent study from Jefferies
found that people are leaving state unemployment rolls
more quickly in the states that have already cut off
the federal expanded benefits,
suggesting more are reentering the workforce.
But some economists say the benefits
are giving people time to find the right job
and maybe even hold out for a better offer.
- When you look at the data, the states that have had
the biggest decreases in unemployment are also states
that have very generous unemployment benefits.
So there's not a direct correlation
that higher unemployment benefits
are meaning people aren't getting back to work.
- So today, I'm pleased to announce an incentive program
that I feel is a positive step
towards getting some people off unemployment
and back into the workforce.
- [Reporter] Recently, states have started offering
their own cash incentives to residents
rejoining the workforce.
Colorado's program, which had more than 18,000 applicants,
paid up to $1,600 to people returning to work full time.
Still, for many, it's not about the money.
Concerns about the pandemic remain,
specifically in face-to-face work.
And childcare is keeping millions of parents,
particularly women, at home.
- And frankly, I think people are kind of weary.
This has been a really hard period of time
that we've gone through,
and people are sort of taking a moment
to think about, "Well, what are my priorities?"
- [Reporter] Whatever the reason,
it's likely we'll continue to see signing bonuses
and other incentives for as long as businesses compete
to fill these jobs.
The increased wages, economists say,
will stick around even longer.
- If things are working, we're gonna keep doing that,
but if they're not solving our problem,
we're gonna have to come up with new ways
to skin this cap because we cannot just post the jobs
and assume people are gonna show up.
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