ECONOMY

It's getting harder to fill summer jobs

Paul Edward Parker
pparker@providencejournal.com
Matthew Duval, center, is a recent hire at The Mooring Seafood Kitchen and Bar in Newport. [The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo]

Everyone loves summertime, but for a growing number of Rhode Island businesses, it has become increasingly difficult to find enough workers to fill summer jobs.

While employers in some parts of the country have complained that federal immigration policies have hampered their ability to import foreign workers for summer jobs, Rhode Island employers and industry representatives told The Providence Journal last week that myriad factors have lined up against them.

Those include diminishing numbers of people pursuing certain lines of work and teenagers eschewing traditional summer jobs for experiences that will make a bigger splash on their college applications.

If they're already having trouble finding help, summer can bring extra challenges to employers in industries that pick up in the warmer months, including construction, hospitality and recreation.

Part of the problem is the state's booming economy, according to several of the people who spoke to The Providence Journal.

"When the economy is healthy, as it seems to be, people are less likely to take seasonal part-time jobs," said Martha Sheridan, president and chief executive of the Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Karsten L. Hart, director of restaurant operations for the Newport Restaurant Group, agreed. "It's been very challenging to find a skilled, trained saute cook who wants to work seasonally." His company runs 13 restaurants, including Castle Hill Inn and The Mooring, both in Newport, and Hemenway's and Waterman Grille, both in Providence.

Dale J. Venturini, president and chief executive of the Rhode Island Hospitality Association, said that the good economy and a dearth of teens getting jobs has made it hard to fill summer positions.

"We've notice a downturn in teenagers seeking summer employment," said Venturini, whose association has more than 800 members, about two-thirds of them restaurants and the rest hotels and hospitality industry suppliers.

"Everyone we talk to, they're seeing a labor shortage," Venturini said. "We have a lot of open jobs."

That has been particularly challenging for industries traditionally staffed by young people.

"We are having a really hard time filling lifeguard positions and other summer jobs," said Michael J. Healey, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Management, which runs eight state beaches on the ocean, plus several state parks with swimming areas.

"This is not a new thing," Healey said. "There's been a shrinking percentage of youth — particularly teens — that are going for summer jobs. For a whole segment of youth, summer jobs are just not where it's at anymore."

Another problem: "Summer" can be a lot more than just June, July and August, the hospitality association's Venturini said. "It's really now a 9- or 10-month season."

Hart said that's been his experience also.

"The seasons are longer now," Hart said, adding that from the end of August through October, students and foreign workers — many of them also students — leave, but the customers keep coming, forcing him at times to turn to temp agencies to fill positions.

And Healey said that can become a scheduling problem for lifeguards in mid-August. "Schools do start earlier now."

For Hart, in the restaurant business, and John Marcantonio, in the construction business, it's not just a question of finding summertime help. Year-round, fewer people are entering their industries.

"The No. 1 issue we deal with right now is workforce development," said Marcantonio, executive director of the Rhode Island Builders Association. "What's really caused the chronic problem now is no one is going into the trades."

As a generation of high school students has been told their highest destiny is going to college, fewer of them have been pursuing careers in the building trades. This has been reported in other industries, too, such as automotive repair and manufacturing.

Marcantonio said the worker shortage is year-round, but more acute in the summer when outdoor construction peaks.

Hart said that restaurant owners are facing competition for their workers, both from the burgeoning number of restaurants in the good economy and from other careers luring people who, not long ago, would have been heading into restaurant kitchens.

"There's so many new things out there," Hart said, noting that students who would have become line cooks in restaurants now can choose from other careers, including nutrition, wedding and event planning and hosting, and working in wineries and breweries. "There's less skilled and trained line cooks in the work force than there was 20 years ago."

In addition to hiring college students, Hart has turned to foreign workers — students and non-students — when he ramps up his work force of 600 to 800 year-round workers to 1,400 summer workers. "It's to supplement our staffing," he said. "It takes us four to five months to get staffed for a season."

Foreign workers, primarily students, are also key to the summer economy on Block Island, according to Kathleen Szabo, executive director of the Block Island Chamber of Commerce.

"I don't know what an island can do without these students working here," said Szabo, adding that workers this summer come from a number of countries, including China, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Romania and Serbia.

When the Social Security Administration went to Block Island near the beginning of summer to process foreign workers, nearly 200 of them got work papers. "And that's not all of them," said Sazabo, adding that more arrived later and had to apply on the mainland.

The shortage of summer workers has employers contemplating their hiring strategies.

"We're already thinking about what are we going to do different next year," said the DEM's Healey. "For sure, there's no question. This is a big, big issue for DEM and Rhode Island."

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