John Pritchard, executive chef for Pure Kitchen, says his struggle with labour shortages over the past year has forced him to re-evaluate how his business runs and what he will be able to take on next year. He says a lot of other food and beverage businesses will likely do the same in the future.CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Many of P.E.I.
Despite offering $30-35 an hour – a jump up from the $20 an hour he usually pays out – Pritchard said no one took up his offer. Jim Sentance, an economics professor at UPEI, said this is due to a few key factors, one of which is a retiring generation. “It’s not as if there’s a lot of people out there sitting on their butts at home not working who are capable of working. The participation rate is right back up or pretty close to, where it was before,” he said. “I think some of it is probably because those are areas that during the pandemic – they shut down. People lost jobs and people moved on. People got in somewhere else, and they don’t necessarily want to go back.
“The people are back in the labour force, they are back participating, they are back working, it's just they are working somewhere else,” he said. “It’s the shock of basically whole sectors largely shutting down, laying people off. Yes, there was government support, but people want to work, people want to have jobs, people want to have careers. The reality in most cases like that is people are going to find something better.