'Still a pretty hot market': 2023 seen as a more mild 2022 for Akron-Canton job seekers
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One of the best years in memory for local job seekers is rapidly receding in the rear view mirror, heading for the 2023 onramp with the pedal only slightly dislodged from the metal.
In the Akron-Canton area and nationwide, private and government employers spent much of 2022 adding to their ranks — if they could find the help they needed — often raising wages and padding benefit packages.
That frenzy, national and local organizations forecast, is over. With the U.S. economy slowing down and expected to show negative economic growth to start the new year, some of the pressures on employers will ease, depending on industry group.
Jobs in Akron:5 things you need to know about the Akron-Canton job market in 2023
But 2023, economists say, will continue to be a good year for people entering the workforce. Open positions will continue to outpace the number of potential workers, although that gap will shrink.
Ohio continues to trail rest of nation in jobs recovery, unemployment
In the Akron-Canton area, as in any region across the U.S., the mix of businesses, the workers they require, and the individuals available for those jobs all differ from the national blend.
University of Akron economist Amanda Weinstein, an associate professor in the college of business, said Ohio has lagged behind other states and the nation in its jobs recovery from the pandemic tsunami. That comes despite an ongoing bounty of available jobs in the state. Trouble is, there aren't enough workers to fill them.
"We're working hard to introduce more people into manufacturing careers. It's not your grandfather's manufacturing job."
Barbara Bennett, vice president of education and workforce at the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce
The state also lags in its unemployment rate, which was 4.2% in October, compared to the national rate of 3.7%. And fewer workers in Ohio are working or looking for jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationally, 62.2% of people in the labor force are employed or looking for work; in Ohio, that measure falls to 61.5%.
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Still, there are more job openings in the state than jobless Ohioans to fill them. The BLS, in a Nov. 28 report, found 387,000 job openings throughout the state in September, with only 231,923 unemployed Ohioans to fill them, or 0.6 potential workers per job.
In many other states, that gap between workers and jobs is much smaller. Minnesota, for instance, has only 0.3 workers per open job. On the other end of the spectrum, New York posted the highest ratio at 0.8 workers per open position.
Akron-Canton region offers job opportunities in health care, education
Weinstein said demand has been especially strong for workers in health care and education in Summit and Stark counties, and she expects it to remain so next year, even if the economy takes a downturn.
"What we see in a tight labor market is that an employer will have to lower standards to hire, or pay a lot more," she said.
BLS preliminary statistics for the Akron and Canton-Massillon metropolitan areas show a 4% unemployment rate in both regions, besting the state's 4.2% rate.
Weinstein said the area misses an opportunity by not stressing the availability of high-demand education and health care jobs.
"(W)e don't talk about education and health care when we have Akron Children's and the Cleveland Clinic, which are world-class hospitals," she said. "We've seen drops in enrollment in teaching programs in Ohio. (We) need young people to be more excited about these (careers)."
Employers get creative to fill open jobs
The Barberton City School District is trying to generate some of that excitement.
The district recently held a walk-in job fair for substitute teachers and substitute bus drivers. Districts throughout the Akron-Canton area made news in recent years with driver shortages, with many scrambling to keep the buses running. Some struggled to keep and hire teachers.
Jason Ondrus, assistant superintendent of the district, said Barberton schools are fortunate because they've been able to fill most of their full-time slots — a situation some districts have had great difficulty achieving.
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Like Weinstein, Ondrus said fewer young people find teaching an attractive career option. The trend has created a chronic shortage of teachers nationwide and in Ohio, with the looming prospect of an even smaller pool of teachers in coming years. That could make it even more difficult to keep and retain teachers at the same time creating opportunities for education majors.
"I do see in the future it could be very difficult," Ondrus said. "The enrollment has gone down."
School bus drivers also are in short supply, as are cafeteria workers, Ondrus said. To help get drivers behind the wheel of the yellow bus, the district offers help with CDL — commercial driver's license — training. It also works with the University of Akron to stoke the interest of potential educators.
With funding from Ohio Department of Education grants, the district is helping several teachers aides interested in making the classroom a career, Ondrus said.
"(It's) an initiative to kind of grow our own (teachers)," he said. "…We're trying to stay ahead of the game. We're trying to be proactive."
'Not your grandfather's manufacturing job'
Barbara Bennett, vice president of education and workforce at the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce, said she expects local job openings to remain at an elevated level next year even in an economic downturn.
"The national economy shows potential recession, but we still see high demand for products, which means high demand for workers," she said.
Bennett said Stark County manufacturers are clamoring for workers to fill entry-level positions on up.
That demand may ease a bit in a 2023 economic downtown, but she doesn't expect it to go away.
"I would say right now it's still a pretty hot market for job seekers," she said. "I work pretty closely with manufacturing employers (and) they still need people at all levels of employment."
Bennett said big projects like Intel's $20 billion investment in two new chip factories and Honda's $4.4 billion joint venture to manufacture hydrogen fuel cells generate headlines and bring a lot of jobs to Ohio, but existing manufacturers do, too. And they need workers.
That need has been strong enough in Stark County and beyond that employers have taken a hard look at job requirements and adjusted them to widen the pool of potential employees, she said.
"I know the expectations of employers has changed since COVID," she said. "Manufacturing employers, they are much more open to work with people from non-traditional backgrounds such as those who may have criminal backgrounds. They're not as rigid on basic attendance policies."
Traditional assembly-line jobs remain, but many manufacturing-related jobs have transformed over the years, she said.
"We're working hard to introduce more people into manufacturing careers," she said. "It's not your grandfather's manufacturing job."
'We're seeing challenges'
Jackson Township-based Timken Co. is all too familiar with the tight labor market, said Natasha Pollock, vice president of Human Resources at the international manufacturing giant.
"The labor market, it remains tight including in Northeast Ohio, but really across our global operations and across the U.S.," Pollock said in a recent phone interview. "It is more challenging than normal to add people, to hire people."
Pollock said that the company has about 70 positions at different levels it wants to fill in Northeast Ohio, including at its headquarters, where nearly 800 people are employed.
Historically, Timken has been a go-to company for young job seekers attracted by the company's reputation and stability, she said. As a result, the company has experienced a low turnover rate for decades.
"We have always been an employer of choice, so it's unusual for us to go through what we're going through now," she said. "We're seeing challenges."
Like businesses throughout the Akron-Canton area and the U.S., getting people to the job interview has been more difficult than in the past as hiring demand exceeds the number of qualified candidates willing to apply.
"It's not in accepting jobs from the candidates, it's in having people apply for various jobs," Pollock said.
She said the company has developed strategies to shepherd new employees as they advance their careers, including apprentice, internships and co-op programs.
"My hope is the market will become a little bit easier to manage through (in 2023)," she said. "For 2022, it's … not been easy."
Restaurant industry continues to struggle to find enough staff
When COVID restrictions were at their worst, starting in March 2020, perhaps no one was hurt worse than the "non-essential" restaurant workers. The devastation was immediate, with millions of workers across the U.S. losing their jobs.
Established restaurants and newcomers to the area fell like dominoes: Louie's Bar and Grille in North Hill, Tangier, On Tap Grille & Bar's Stow location, Brubaker's Pub locations in downtown Akron and the Chapel Hill area. Twisted Grill & Grind in Copley survived only five months in the toxic pandemic environment.
More:Last call at Louie's: Owner shares memories as North Hill business prepares to close
Nearly three years later, the restaurant industry is still recovering. According to the National Restaurant Association, employment in the industry nationwide is still 4.5% below pre-pandemic levels, or 560,000 jobs.
In its most recent Business Impact Poll, the Ohio Restaurant Association found 92% of restaurants remain understaffed and a quarter of restaurants need 20% more workers to become fully staffed. The shortage comes despite higher wages and benefits employers are offering.
John Barker, president and CEO of the state organization, said that trend will continue if restaurants want to attract new employees.
“As we look towards 2023, restaurants will need to focus on total rewards packages to attract and retain talent in the industry,” he said in a news release Monday. “As owners and operators navigate rising costs across all expenditures — food, supplies and labor — they must also find a way to provide robust health insurance options, paid time off, scheduling flexibility, sign-on bonuses and more."
Returning to balance?
As employers and employees continue to recover from the pandemic's economic fallout, many economists see 2023 as a year the labor market will begin to balance out in the Akron-Canton area and across the nation. If, as expected, economic growth falls into negative territory as it did in two quarters this year, the chasm between available jobs and workers to fill them will become less imposing.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, in a Nov. 30 report, has already noted a shift. The district covers Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky and the northern panhandle of West Virginia.
"Looking forward, firms generally planned to add more workers to their payrolls in coming months, but at a slower pace," the bank reported.
And pay increases are expected to slow, the bank said.
"While wage pressures remained elevated, there were scattered signs that they were easing," the bank said. "For example, the share of contacts reporting pay increases over the prior two months fell below 50% for the first time in more than a year and a half."
Although labor demand still exceeds supply, the bank said, more employers are taking down some of the omnipresent help wanted signs that seemed to pop up everywhere this year. Others are opting not to fill open positions.
Some layoffs have occurred or been announced, especially in the tech sector. Even Amazon, where employment grew from 647,500 jobs in 2018 to 1.62 million early in 2022, has announced layoffs in some parts of the vast company.
In Northeast Ohio, however, the company recently hired about 3,500 seasonal workers. Many are expected to stay on and become permanent employees.
The Conference Board, in one forecast scenario, predicts a loss of about 900,000 jobs in the U.S. next year, a small fraction of the 22 million lost in the COVID-19 recession.
Still, the organization expects a modest increase in the U.S. unemployment rate to about 4.5%.
"There may be some temporary easing of labor shortages in 2023 as demand for workers diminishes," the organization said. "However, recruitment and retention difficulties will not disappear, with the unemployment rate projected to remain relatively low."
Forbes labor columnist David Morel expects 2023 to be a year of returning to balance, calling it "The Great Rebalance."
"The post-pandemic frenzy, when people quit on a whim and there were two job openings for every person unemployed, is no more," Morel wrote in a Nov. 21 story. "That was a one-off."
Weinstein, the UA economist, said 2023 is likely to be a year of feast or famine for local workers.
"We might see that tight labor market continue even in a recession," she said, "(with) some industries laying off workers and other industries (that) can't find workers."
Leave a message for Alan Ashworth at 330-996-3859 or email him at aashworth@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @newsalanbeaconj.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Here's what Akron-Canton area job seekers can expect in 2023
