New White Paper: The Chasm Standing Between Job Seekers and Employers

Express Employment Professionals is announcing the release of a new white paper focusing on the disconnect between job seekers and employers who are desperate for workers to come off the sidelines.

With long wait times at restaurants, major shipping delays on products and staffing shortages affecting businesses at every turn, how can the 11.6 million people in the U.S. who currently want a job struggle to find a placement?

Part of the answer lies in the labor force participation rate, which only takes into account those who are actively looking for work. This statistic is a better metric for assessing the health of the labor market and the size of the active workforce.

After peaking at 67.3% in 2000, the labor force participation rate has steadily declined, landing at 62.4% in August 2022. In February 2020, pre-pandemic, labor force participation stood only a point higher at 63.4%.

Roughly 11.2 million jobs are open today, revealing something, or a multitude of factors, is clearly standing in their way. Jobs are not in short supply, and companies desperately need people to fill them.

The new white paper, titled “The Great Divide: The Chasm Standing Between Job Seekers and Employers,” explores 10 of these common barriers:

1. Child care
2. Elder care
3. Unpredictable business needs
4. Job training and skills
5. Work history and criminal history
6. Transportation and geography
7. Health issues and concerns
8. Communication issues
9. Workplace culture expectations
10. Wage expectations

Drawing from the real-life experiences of Express Employment Professionals franchise owners and the companies they serve, as well as exclusive survey data prepared by The Harris Poll for Express and recent economic data, this paper examines who is struggling to rejoin the labor force and why.

“It is often assumed that people who aren’t working can’t find an open job. But in an economy where there are far more available jobs than people counted as unemployed, we know the situation is far more complicated,” Express Employment International CEO Bill Stoller said. “There are barriers standing between jobs and those who want to work. All of us need to understand these barriers so we can eliminate or overcome them as a society.”