“There are still a lot of unfilled jobs,” added Joe Pawlak, managing principal at Chicago-based hospitality-industry consultant Technomic. “You’re seeing tuition assistance, 401 plans and continuing education [contributions]. They’re trying to get the younger people that they typically employ within the restaurant industry and who are really the foundation of entry-level positions.”
Texas workers, however, may have even more leverage because of the state’s economic growth. The state’s economy grew 1.8 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, marking the country’s highest growth rate among states, according to the Department of Commerce.“We’ve seen strong [jobs] growth across Texas, probably due to in-migration and the growth in the state’s economy,” said Sandra Torchia, vice chair of talent and culture at consultant KPMG.
“People are out there spending, eating and traveling. Texas is past the [pandemic] recovery stage and is now in the expansion stage,” said Christopher Slijk, associate economist at the Dallas Fed. “So there’s still quite a bit of upward wage pressure.
Houston’s unemployment rate didn’t fall below 7 percent until April 2021. It was 4.2 percent in September.Since then, there’s been a split in the job recovery between lower-wage, frontline workers and salaried employees. Slijk said that companies in the hospitality industry have struggled to claw back staff, while Pawlak said that many food-service companies have tweaked operations to reduce staffing requirements.
“We learned that we could operate remotely during the pandemic,” said KPMG’s Torchia. “Many of us enjoyed that flexibility.”