(WOLF STREET) – In an interview a few days ago that aired locally, the owner of an Italian restaurant in San Francisco – the restaurant scene is now vibrant in a different way than before – put her struggles with hiring on the table. The kitchen staff had come back, she said, but she had trouble hiring back the staff for the front of the restaurant, the wait staff, who are normally fairly well paid via tips.
She said that many of these people have other dreams. They were artists or writers or students or entrepreneurs, or whatever, and waiting tables wasn’t their career, it was just a way to make ends meet. And many of them had moved on during the pandemic or were using their unemployment benefits to push their dreams forward, rather than returning to restaurant work.
Employment in food services and drinking places rose by 186,000 in May from April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. In the leisure and hospitality industry overall – which also includes hotels and casinos – employment jumped by 292,000 in May, and has been gaining all year as restaurants and hotels reopened, but was still down by 2.5 million people compared to the peak in February 2020.
