Labor Shortages Leading To Deceitful Hiring Practices

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

It's no secret labor shortages are affecting companies worldwide. As the economy opens back up after a tumultuous couple of years, so do millions of job openings. Job openings that businesses are struggling to fill.

A survey from the U.S Labor Department shows record-setting job openings not seen since the end of the 1990s. With conditions returning to almost pre-pandemic levels and pandemic-augmented federal unemployment benefits ending, the thin stack of resumes adorning their desks baffle business owners.

Why Does No One Want To Work?

Signs continue to pop up on social media feeds from businesses forced to shutter their doors due to worker shortages. Even with promises of sign-on bonuses, nominal benefits, and ostentatious titles, employers are still finding themselves manning their own registers and sweeping up the bathrooms.

To put it simply, Americans who can work, do want to work, but are not working. Why is that?

Even with rising costs of goods and services due to inflation and the slow economic recovery, employers are steadfast in only offering insultingly unlivable wages to potential employees.

In short, job searchers are starting to understand their worth. Why accept a medical receptionist position at a busy healthcare clinic for a pre-pandemic wage of $9.25 an hour when the clinic had record earnings because of a public health crisis? Many fast-food establishments understand that attracting workers means increasing wages, offering better benefits, and even dangling lofty hiring bonuses.

Instead of increasing wages, employers are getting crafty.

Employers have always used the underhanded technique of withholding salary on their job advertisements to lure curious job-seekers into unwinnable salary negotiations. However, instead of attracting potential workers with livable wages, employers have skirted illegal hiring practices by standing knee-deep in the morally gray end.

Advertising Higher Wages

Withholding salary information on job advertisements is one thing, but flaunting much higher wages than what is actually being offered is another. Employees are experiencing the heart dropping, followed by the split-second decision-making after hearing a much lower salary than the employer advertised. Companies hope they're able to retain quality employees with everything but the advertised wage.

Advertising A Salary Range With A Huge Gap

Instead of asking what a potential employee's desired salary range is, employers hope to lure a worker by advertising the maximum end of the salary range with no intention of paying such. A quick search through Indeed.com shows hundreds of companies offering a wildly varying salary between $11 an hour to $22 an hour.

Companies claim this range helps potential employees to estimate how much they're worth. Employees walking in wanting close to the maximum salary of $22 an hour are met with job offer closer to the minimum of $11 an hour.

Advertising Positions That Don't Exist

The classic bait-and-switch job offer is nothing new to our new post-pandemic normal. The job advertisement may say one thing, but the job they offer employees has much more work and responsibilities than advertised. Employers hope to bait workers into their service and switch everything from the compensation to the job description.

Some of the common bait-and-switch job offers a less impressive title, more job duties, and different hours than advertised. Unfortunately, there is very little legal recourse for the company, even after the employee is hired. It's very important to read over the contract wording and request written confirmation of everything listed before the bait-and-switch offer.

Unfortunately, employers would rather find ways to bait employees and guilt them into staying instead of offering what potential employees would want in the first place. Fortunately, employees understand their worth and aren't lining up and taking whatever they can get anymore.

The consensus among potential employees from various social media platforms, such as Twitter, agrees, "It's not a worker shortage, it's a wage shortage."