When the rapid spread of Covid-19 caused restaurants to shut down indoor dining last year, nearly 11 percent of the North Carolina workforce was affected. The hospitality industry in North Carolina employed about 110,000 workers before the pandemic, and as restaurants continue increasing in business, employers are finding the labor pool has shrunk significantly. Many have left the industry, according to the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association president Lynn Minges. However, business owners are hoping that this month will bring a missing piece back to their workforces: working moms.

Among the state’s 110,00 pre-pandemic hospitality workforce, around 60 percent were women. 

“There are a number of challenges and headwinds we’re facing, but among those is the fact that  many parents — and particularly women, where the responsibility often falls — are dealing with child care issues,” Minges says. “Schools have been out of school, and even if you have a second or third grader, you can’t leave them at home on the computer. Parents have had to be at home. And so largely that’s fallen to women, who have had to stay at home with those children.”

North Carolina non-profit Family Forward NC, a group that works to increase childhood wellbeing through advocacy of family-friendly workplaces, recently shifted focus to the hospitality and manufacturing industries as they recognized the heightened need for change in those areas. Family Forward provides resources to restaurants that help create a more healthy environment for working parents and their children, from paid leave policies to creating a space where new moms are comfortable asking for breaks to pump or places to store milk.

During the pandemic, many women have faced the decision to stay out of the workforce and be home with their kids, or spend their entire wages — or more — on childcare.

“It’s disproportionately women who needed to leave the workforce, and child care reasons is one of the biggest reasons, if not the biggest reason for that,” says Emily Swartzlander, Family First NC’s president. “At one point during the pandemic, we were up to four million women who left the workforce. I believe that we are still down 1.8 million women who continue to be out of the workforce in large part because of childcare. It’s data that’s being reflected nationally and being felt in a number of places, but much more so in industries and in businesses where there are lower income workers or hourly paid workers.”

That industry includes a majority of the hospitality sector. As in-person school is set to begin on August 25, restaurant owners hope many of these women will be free to return to the workforce. 

Jeff Tonidandel, who owns Supperland, Haberdish, Crêpe Cellar, and Growlers Pourhouse with his wife Jamie, says their restaurants are beginning to reach better staffing levels, but could use more employees to allow them be open for more hours. 

“I’m still hopeful that [school returning] will give us a few more percent to our labor force,” Tonidandel says. “We’ve had a few people, a few ladies that work for us today, that said they could increase their hours when school starts back up and have been asking about that, so I think it’s starting.”

Another factor that has been often debated in discussions of the labor shortage is the expiration of unemployment benefits, which will run out in early September in North Carolina. Data from other states where enhanced benefits have already expired shows the expiration of added benefits hasn’t led to much change in unemployment numbers when it comes to restaurants. 

“I do think that’s a part of the situation, but it’s not the only reason,” Minges says. “We would expect even when those extended benefits expire on September 4th, we’re still going to have a worker shortage.”

For Family Forward NC, the labor shortage is an opportunity for businesses to increase worker retention by becoming more parent-friendly employers. The increased worker loyalty that comes from offering benefits like sick leave or proactively connecting employees with resources like the Childcare Resources and Referral Council can outweigh the cost of constant turnover. According to Lisa Finaldi of the North Carolina Early Childhood Network, parent organization of Family Forward NC, they hope to give restaurants a more holistic view of offering benefits beyond the profit and loss numbers.

“I think this issue of turnover is pretty big, and it’s an area where a lot of small businesses really aren’t necessarily doing the full math about it,” she says. “So our focus is on helping businesses think differently and take small steps.”

 

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