Hiring crunch is boosting pay for restaurant workers

The difficulty many restaurants are having finding workers as businesses try to turn the page on the pandemic is benefiting one group: restaurant workers.

The swift U.S. economic recovery, fueled by the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, is at least temporarily empowering people in the notoriously low-paying leisure and hospitality industry to demand higher wages and better working conditions. In another boon for workers, businesses scrambling to fill positions are dangling cash bonuses and other incentives in front of job applicants. "Leisure and hospitality was obviously one of the top markets adversely affected by the pandemic, and now it's climbing back very rapidly and everyone is trying to hire at the same time," said Ioana Marinescu, a labor economist at the University of Pennsylvania. "So competition for workers is very intense compared to normal times, and there is a lot of congestion — just like a traffic jam."