GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY, Mich., (WPBN/WGTU) -- Unemployment is nearing record lows, but northern Michigan businesses still can't hire enough workers to handle to load.
"The situation is dire," said Rob Dickinson, the regional director of businesses services at Northwest Michigan Works!
"There are help wanted signs, you can see them all over the place and it doesn't matter," Dickinson said. "The industry, everybody has been affected."
Drive though almost any northern Michigan community and you'll find them. Everyone seems to be hiring.
Dickinson says the it's been a job seeker's market lately.
"We have employers calling in every day, 'where's the talent?,' 'I need people,' 'where's the workforce,'" Dickinson said.
And that's the big question, where are all the workers who use to have to compete for jobs?
"The biggest thing really that we're dealing with, is a smaller workforce," said Warren Call, with Traverse Connect.
"The pandemic kind of opened people's eyes and they are retiring early, and that's the single biggest driver of why we have less people in the workforce," Call said.
Aging baby boomers retired early, leaving a void in the overall workforce. On top of that, Call says younger workers my have lost their jobs during COVID, or were part of the so-called "Great Resignation," and over time, realized they didn't need to work.
"Some of the families have decided, you know they made it work with one income, and they've decided to stay that way either because it doesn't make sense with childcare [being] so expensive," Call said. "It doesn't make sense to go get a second job just to pay for childcare, when you could just stay home with kids."
From executives, to entry level, there are simply too many jobs available for the number of workers.
"I do think that as you see inflation spike up and the cost of goods go up, the cost of gasoline go up and people are depleting savings that they may have built up over the pandemic, I think you will see some of those people return to the workforce," Calls said. "So even if employment rates stay low, the total size of the workforce may start to creep up again"
That may force some current non-workers back for a short-term fix. Addressing childcare, housing and transportation costs may be a mid-range fix and a long-range fix may be a matter of numbers.
"Like I said, there is hope at the end of the tunnel... that we have generations that are maybe having more kids," Dickinson said.