Remote and warehouse jobs contribute to Omaha’s labor shortage

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – Over the past two years, the labor shortage seems to be a never-ending topic.

“I’ve already had a cook come for tomorrow night. It’s just that I don’t have much hope that it will get better,” said Kevin Culjat, owner of Rocco’s Pizza.

From hotels to restaurants, employers are struggling to fill jobs and keep businesses going.

“Yet there are simply no staff to be found, from people in front of cooks to hostesses to busses, it is simply extremely difficult to find staff.”

A new report in Business Insider examines where all these people went.

They point to warehouse gigs as part of the change and said places like Amazon suck in workers from other industries.

Culjat said he ran into another problem, people want to work remotely.

“People these days want to stay home, work from home, stay on their computers and do lots of other things.”

At the Magnolia Hotel, owner Tim Darby says he and his staff have had to do a bit of every job to look after guests.

“In our industry, you can’t work from home, you have to be there cleaning rooms, driving guests and serving meals,” Darby said. “It was a big change.”

Another reason people quit their jobs is salary. Business Insider says warehouse jobs pay an average of $21 an hour and more.

Darby says he wants to do everything he can to retain and win more employees.

“We’re going to make sure we pay market and above for our associates,” Darby said.

For Culjat, he said it was going to be long.

“There’s not much you can do, you have applications popping up and applications you send out to companies, there just aren’t people out there who want to work in the service industry,” Culjat said.

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