You've probably heard of businesses around the US complaining of staff shortages, especially for hourly work. In the post-pandemic world when businesses are reopening doors and doing everything to attract customers in uncertain times, job vacancies are accelerating like crazy. Or so we are led to believe.
But if there are more vacancies and those willing to fill them up, getting a job should be a matter of seconds. Joey Holz decided to test if that’s the case and submitted 2 applications a day in September. “It was 60 applications, 16 responses by email, 4 emails turned into phone calls, and 1 interview,” Joey told Bored Panda about the underwhelming results his experiment has brought.
On a more solid account, there was 1 interview with a construction company that offered a full-time position on site to clean up for $10 an hour. But according to Joey, the company tried to offer him Florida’s minimum wage ($8.65) to start with, with full-time availability on the worker’s part, although he was scheduled for part-time only.
Scroll down below to see the eye-opening insights of Joey Holz’s experiment that sheds light on this alleged “nobody wants to work anymore” problem, showing that not everything is what the employers would like us to believe.
Businesses around the country have been complaining of staff shortages, creating an illusion that people just don't want to work anymore these days
Image credits: ABC15Patrick
Image credits: Flickr
37-year-old Joey Holz told Business Insider that he first became aware of the complaints about a labor shortage last year. It was when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida. He recounted: "The guy went on this rant about how he can't find help and he can't keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the stimulus checks. And I'm like, 'Your medical professionals quit over $1,200 checks? That's weird.'"
The former food service worker and charter-boat crewman found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. All expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states—including Florida—ended them early in June and July.
So, Joey Holz did the smart experiment, sending out two job applications a day in September and his results were pretty... shocking
Image credits: Mohawk Joey
So in order to find out what’s up, Joey ran a smart experiment. Targeting restaurants that were openly desperate about their staffing shortages, he sent job applications willing to land a position there.From September 1 up to the end of the month, sending two applications daily, Joey had already handed in 60 applications.
Joey's experiment has gone viral for exposing businesses that openly insist they're desperate for workers
Image credits: Mohawk Joey
Incredibly, all this work didn’t actually pay off as much as one would expect with desperate businesses seeking staff members. From 60 applications, Joey received 16 responses by email, 4 emails that turned into phone calls, and 1 interview.
He then shared an illuminating pie chart that sums up the results from #JoeyHolz' experiment, although he addressed the fact that the results may not be representative of the larger labor challenges in the country.
Image credits: SandDollar04
Image credits: SandDollar04
After going viral on social media, #TheJoeyHolzExperiment didn’t end just there. In fact, he’s up and ready for yet another step. “I am now opening the data collection to submissions by anyone who has a personal experience like mine,” he told us. Joey’s goal is getting a full look, not just his, at what’s really happening in the labor market.
“This is how we fight back!” says the slogan of his new campaign. In this form, the respondents are asked to submit details on their most recent job search, the amount of applications submitted, the percent who responded, and the interviews attended.
“There’s no way my story is going to tell it for everybody, but to move the Joey Holz experiment forward, I set up a Google form asking for anyone who wants to submit job search information in a way that we can quantify the data. That’s going to give us a more comprehensive picture of what’s really going on," Joey explained.
He is planning to collect responses throughout a month and review the data at the end of November. Let’s wait and see what he tells us about the state of the job market right now, which should finally debunk the infamous “nobody wants to work anymore” we have all been hearing a lot lately.
And many people had a lot to comment on this whole situation
