HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — Even for a long-time business owner like Ken McCall of McCall's Sandwiches in Warner Robins, the pandemic served up some new challenges. He had to sacrifice his own income to make ends meet at times.
"I was just paying employees for several months," he said.
Many employees stuck it out with him, but some did not. He says filling those voids hasn't been easy.
"I'm currently looking for an employee, and I've gotten four applications over the last week. Usually, I get quadruple that," he said.
He's afraid he's now losing potential workers to larger businesses, many of which either already pay higher wages or recently pledged to up their salaries. Employees at Buc-ee's, Target, and Amazon all start out making $15 an hour. Walmart raised wages to $11 and Hobby Lobby pledged to pay $17 an hour.
Meanwhile, many of McCall's employees make at or near minimum wage.
"That's all I can afford to pay at this point," he said.
With talks in Washington D.C. about raising the minimum wage to anywhere from $10 to $15 an hour, McCall says he fears the consequences that would have for his business.
"That also affects what we match to the federal withholding, that will double. Also, our workers comp insurance," McCall said. "I would have to raise my prices to remain stable."
However, he says raising his prices too much could keep customers away.
"In time, if we can't sustain ourselves we're going to have to close," McCall said.
"What it's causing is locally owned small businesses as well as large corporations to go back to the drawing table and see how they can increase their pay structure," Nicole Crofutt with Spherion Staffing and Recruiting said.
She says we're already getting a glimpse of the possible effects as many businesses like McCall's struggle just to compete with unemployment benefits.
"If you have somebody that was making $11 to $12 an hour, and then they went on unemployment and they were able to capture all of the benefits of the extra stimulus put on top of that, that took their pay rate up to $16 plus an hour," she said.
She says even with many businesses in central Georgia offering close to $12 an hour along with other incentives and bonuses, they still can't fill positions.
"Right now I have 499 jobs available," Crofutt said.
She says people used to line up at their door looking for work, but now she has to actively recruit people to fill positions.
McCall says he's not giving up that easy, though.
When the minimum wage increased from $5.85 to the current $7.25 an hour between 2007 and 2009, he made it work.
"I would just have to talk with my employees," he said.
Crofutt says, for anyone looking for work, Spherion hosts job fairs at their location in Byron every Wednesday from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.
She says they have found ways to use people's previous job experiences to place them in new careers. For example, she says former hospitality and restaurant workers have customer service experience and can stand long shifts on their feet. She says those skills easily transfer into light industrial work jobs.
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