An already heightened demand for online shopping has warehouse and logistics operators scrambling to fill jobs ahead of the busy holiday season, dangling signing bonuses and higher pay while calling on robots to fill the gaps.
The labor shortage has smaller operators trying to compete against eCommerce giants like Amazon and Walmart, which have bigger payroll tills and richer perks to draw from.
“When companies are looking ahead to peak season … the word I’m hearing most often is ‘terrified,’” Dan Johnston, CEO and co-founder of WorkStep, told The Wall Street Journal.
See also: Supply Chains Could Be the Grinch That Steals Retail’s 2021 Holiday Season
An overall tight labor market is hitting the logistics sector particularly hard, with exponential demand triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic compounded by the return to work and school as well as the upcoming holiday shopping season.
“There is a huge amount of demand for jobs and people, and we have not shifted people across into our industry at the rate that demand has changed,” Kraig Foreman, president of eCommerce for DHL Supply Chain North America, told WSJ.
Read more: Retailers Fight Supply Chain Woes Pre-Holiday
To help meet demand, DHL Supply Chain expects to hire 20% more seasonal workers this year over last, is offering higher hourly pay and is adding collaborative robots to assist with order picking.
Larger retail outlets are also pulling potential workers from the ranks to meet increased online demand, a shift from the traditional addition of more in-store staff for the holiday shopping season. Walmart, for example, is expecting to hire 20,000 people for its supply chain operations, while Target is looking to hire 100,000 seasonal workers.
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Some warehouse operators went beyond pay increases and other monetary perks and started offering shorter shifts to help people meet childcare obligations, Brian Devine, senior vice president of logistics staffing firm ProLogistix, told WSJ.
Devine said the labor shortage has been the “most frustrating thing in my 26-year career,” adding that the cost of recruitment has doubled as the company turns to radio ads and billboards to attract workers.
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