Help Wanted! Employers of all types still seek workers following turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic

 

By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews

A new state economic report lays out two clear themes in describing workforce challenges on Oregon’s central coast — and both are very much on employers’ minds these days as they craft new approaches to finding the workers they need.

The first is that it’s a great time to be out looking for a job, due to the overwhelming number of openings that need to be filled.

The second is that, due to a variety of factors, employers are having a tough time finding qualified employees to claim those spots.

The report, titled “Help Wanted in Northwest Oregon,” was recently released by the Oregon Employment Department. It details results of surveys sent to local business owners last year, and makes amply clear that workforce issues that cropped up during the pandemic are by no means over.

“A key takeaway is that there are just more job vacancies than unemployed people across Oregon,” said Shaun Barrick, a state workforce analyst. “It’s tough to fill vacancies when there aren’t enough people to fill them.”

Northwest Oregon, an area comprising Lincoln, Tillamook, Clatsop, Columbia and Benton counties, had roughly 6,600 job vacancies at any given time in 2022, according to the 20-page report. While that’s a 9 percent drop from 2021, it is still nearly double the number of vacant jobs in 2019 and 2020.

 

The region also had the highest percentage of positions that employers listed as “difficult to fill.” The 79 percent of jobs considered “difficult to fill” compared with 76 percent in southwest Oregon, 72 percent in Lane County and 65 percent in the Portland area.

High housing costs on the coast, as well as the area’s relative remoteness from larger population centers, are partly responsible for the phenomenon, Barrick said.

“What we know is that most of the people who left their jobs early in the pandemic have now returned to work,” he said. “There’s not some glut of people sitting around collecting unemployment. But there’s a faster turnover as people move into higher-paying jobs and businesses are all competing for the same people.”

Leading the way, in terms of most vacancies by occupation group, are food preparation and serving, health care support, sales, building maintenance workers and office and administrative support.

New challenges, new approaches

The gaping disparity between job openings and employers’ need to fill them has prompted many businesses to completely re-examine how they go about attracting new applicants.

At Samaritan Health Services, for instance, a variety of approaches unheard of even a few years ago are now becoming standard practices moving forward, said Dr. Lesley Ogden, chief executive officer of Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport and Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City.

“We are really trying to figure out how to be innovative and thoughtful, while looking for new ways to integrate technology into how we find potential employees,” she said. “If the pandemic showed us anything, it’s that if we don’t change as an organization, we won’t be able to serve our communities in the ways we want.”

The organization’s innovations are getting enough attention to land Ogden a recent invitation to address workforce issues at the American Hospital Association’s Rural Hospital Leadership Conference in Texas.

The new twists she focused on include Samaritan’s first-ever decision to start recruiting for people across the nation, and even internationally, to do permanent remote work.

“Some jobs, such as coding and curriculum development, allow people to work from their own homes, where ever they live,” Ogden said. “Prior to the pandemic, we were all local. Now, we have 57 out-of-state workers and even more in-state remote workers. It’s made a huge difference.”

Samaritan has also started using both online job platforms and professional recruiters to attract potential job applicants, she said.

The organization, which employs about 1,000 people at its Lincoln County facilities, is also working to increase apprenticeship programs, “train up” existing employees to get the most out of their professional licenses and use new, in-house surveys to learn issues are most important to their workforce.

“All of this has been a very dramatic and purposeful change on our part,” Ogden said. “This is now the name of the game for at least the next handful of years.”

A ways to go

Lincoln County government, with 500 full and part-time workers, is one of the largest employers in the county. It is also facing many of the same challenges other agencies and businesses are when it comes to finding enough people to fill its ranks.

The county currently has an average of 35 job openings, a number that is far higher than in most pre-pandemic years, said David Collier, the county’s human resources director.

Of those, roughly half are slotted in the county’s Health and Human Services Department, many involving work in clinical settings.

“In behavioral health care alone, we have a shortage of over 30 percent,” he said. “It’s definitely an area we struggle with.”

In one effort to turn that trend around, the county is now sending representatives to the type of career and job fairs that were almost entirely shut down during the pandemic. The most likely places to get new applicants are at job fairs held in areas with far higher populations than those along the coast.

“We seem to have gotten some good leads with those,” Collier said. “We’ll have to see.”

The county is also advertising positions on online jobs platforms, which ensure that its message reaches audiences nationwide.

It is also doing things like working with Oregon Coast Community College to help develop practicums and internships and letting all-comers show up at a sheriff’s office recruitment event, where they can have their times recorded on an obstacle course that is mandatory for all deputies.

“It’s obviously nice to get 30 or 40 applications for any one opening, which is a standard that’s been very tough for us to meet,” Collier said. “But we’re also mindful that it takes only one good one.”

Lessons from school

Lincoln County’s public schools are being hit with vacancies in just about every category imaginable, from a shortage of substitute teachers, bilingual tutors and bus drivers to the classified staff needed to run the district’s day-to-day operations.

“We need custodians, accountants, administrative assistants in the district office and in our school buildings,” said Tiana DeVries, the district’s human resources director. “It’s everywhere.”

In responding to the shortage, the district has started posting job openings on Facebook and other online sites. Staff members also put together a podcast featuring incoming superintendent Majalise Tolan, which DeVries said netted extensive exposure.

The district has also started sending representatives not just to education-oriented job fairs, but events aimed at all occupations.

“Many folks out there may be thinking of switching careers, but haven’t necessarily thought about how their skills could fit into an educational setting,” DeVries said. “We are trying to get in front of as many of those people as we can.”

However, naggingly high job-vacancy rates also indicate that a less-than-perfect new normal may be at hand, she said.

“With a workforce shortage affecting all of Oregon, we could well be understaffed for a while,” DeVries said. “We’re not sure what the end looks like, but that’s the state we’re in.”

What’s cooking?

Food-service workers, who help drive so much of the coastal economy’s tourism sector, have been among the hardest people to attract since the pandemic shut down restaurants and hotels in March 2020. The new state report reflects that shortage, noting that 1,343 positions – more than double any other single sector — were vacant at some point during 2022.

Anthony Muirhead, general manager of the Adobe Resort in Yachats, said he continues to battle that lingering shortage.

But for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to him, what has been a near-dearth of applications for months and months has just recently expanded to at least a trickle.

“Make no mistake,” he said, “I’m definitely not drowning in applications by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m getting a few, at least, which is far better than in the recent past.”

Noting that the lack of affordable employee housing makes attracting workers from outside the area almost impossible, Muirhead said The Adobe is now planning to build on-site employee housing facilities.

“But that’s probably at least two years away,” he said. “In the meantime, we are in the same boat everyone else is in, and we’ll just have to be creative as possible to get through this.”

• Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com