Some of America’s largest companies are struggling to secure enough staff to handle a surge in consumer demand, despite raising wages to levels that are prompting them to push up prices to protect their profit margins.
Earnings announcements this week spelt out the difficulty that employers from ecommerce warehouses to fast food restaurants are finding in recruiting and retaining workers as heightened consumer spending collides with a historically tight labour market.
Starbucks spoke of “rapid” increases in its wage costs, McDonald’s described a “very challenging staffing environment”, and Amazon predicted that “labour inflation” would add $2bn to its cost base in the fourth quarter.