For Retail Employers, Hiring Is A Hard Sell
To find concrete evidence of the nation's worker shortage, one need venture no farther than the neighborhood grocery store. Or the convenience store. Or the closest mall.</br></br>There's hardly a retail outlet in the Washington area that doesn't have a help-wanted sign hanging in the window, advertising a problem only too evident to shoppers whenever they need sales help or encounter an employee confounded by the cash register.</br></br>The booming economy and historically low unemployment rates have created recruitment woes for all kinds of businesses, but the hiring headache is especially acute for the retail industry, where the void can be painfully visible to customers. Though the shortage exists nationwide, Washington area retailers are feeling an especially painful pinch.</br></br>Not only does the retail industry have huge staffing requirements, it's near the bottom of the worker food chain, offering some of the most mundane and lowest-paying jobs. The result is that retailing is losing many potential employees to technology companies and other businesses, which are experiencing their own employee shortages and can lure workers with more money, better benefits and more interesting work.</br></br>"The tech companies are being more creative in who they're willing to hire, taking people and training them in technical skills. Before, these people might not have been able to find work anywhere else besides retailing," said Bruce Van Kleeck, vice president of member services for the National Retail Federation.