Narrowing Down the Issue
The equine industry may not know it, but the labor market has changed and left it far behind. Everywhere, barn owners, managers, trainers, and those who don’t get to make the hiring decisions, but none-the-less live out its consequences, know that good help is hard to find, and harder to keep. But is it? Or is the entire equine industry out of touch and no longer competitive in the labor market?
However you see the core of the issue, we can at least agree on the problem: there is a lack of good job candidates and there is a high rate of turnover in much of the equine industry. If you see the problem as being that no one wants to work, that people are innately lazy, or there are no more honest, skilled, or knowledgable people out there, then unfortunately your solutions are limited. You can have a one-man-rodeo, continue your business as usual and struggle to find help, or quit. If you are willing to look elsewhere to understand the labor market, however, there is more to learn.
According to the December 3 2021 Employment Situation Summary, the unemployment rate in the U.S. is 4.2%, down from a high of 13% in the second quarter of 2020. So clearly people have been going back to work and business have been hiring. To drill down a little further, lets look at wages and wage trends across the economy. Now, you don’t need me to tell you that seemingly everywhere is hiring. You can drive down any main drag, whether that’s in rural Iowa, metropolitan New Jersey, or small town America, and you can see it. Signs taped to store windows, banners fluttering in the breeze, or flashing digital display signs, all proclaim “Now Hiring”, or “$2,000 Sign On Bonus!”, or “Come Join our Team”. Wages have gone up too, as common sense supply-and-demand economics tell us they should. In fact, wages are increasing in many sectors across the whole economy, but the increase is highest in blue collar and manual service jobs. This is attributed several things, including a shrinking working-age population, specifically the working-age population without a bachelor’s degree, as well as low unemployment rates.
Many working-age adults have also been slow to reenter the labor market because of pandemic related factors. Among them: lack of child care, fear of infection, or fear of infecting at-risk family members, or occupational changes due to pandemic layoffs. And, although the working age population was a relatively small percentage of the U.S. COVID death toll, the U.S. did still lose hundreds-of-thousands of people to COVID who would have otherwise been in the work force. It has been pointed out that those who died made up a relatively small percentage of the overall work force, however, due to the inequities of poverty, race, and geography, many places in the U.S. were hit harder by COVID 19, and therefore experienced a loss that was higher than the national average. In less politically correct terms, if you were black, brown, poor, old, or lived somewhere with an overtaxed healthcare system and an underserved population, you and your loved ones were more likely to become infected or die from COVID 19. Why mention this particularly uncomfortable fact? Because agriculture and manual labor at large, and the equine industry in particular, rely on a workforce that is primarily made up of individuals who are often black, brown, poor, old, or live in an undeserved rural area. All of this is significantly compounded by the fact that the U.S. is seeing a historically high rate of people voluntarily quitting their jobs to take a job elsewhere.
Now, after my economic preamble, you can ask the question: So what? Why does this matter to the equine industry? Why should these economic statistics matter in the least the to average barn manger, groom, trainer, stall mucker, owner, or working student? First, it is no accident that I point out the wage hike in blue collar and manual service jobs. This is the pool of workers that include agriculture, farm and livestock workers, of which the equine industry is a small part. With wages rising in this sector specifically, the equine industry is really starting to feel the squeeze. Let’s come right out and say it, the equine industry is not known for great wages, actually quite the opposite. This is not the time to debate why and if that should be the case, suffice to say that it is. Now, add to that there are jobs inside and outside this sector that are significantly increasing their incentives and offerings for new employees, and the reasons behind the up-tick in employee turn-over become a little more clear. Thus, we see that it really is harder to find and retain good employees, not just for the equine industry, but for most sectors of the economy. This is not because the vast majority of the U.S. population has decided not to work, but rather because so many people already have jobs and there are still more jobs to be filled. Thus the equine industry has fallen behind many other sectors of the economy in its ability to incentivize workers to stay in their current position or to apply to a job in the first place. Maybe it’s time we do something about it.
For more on employment and economic data, refer to:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics: Occupational Employment and Wages:
The USDA Economic Research Service Farm Labor Data
The St. Luis Federal Reserve Agricultural Unemployment Rate