BETHLEHEM, Pa. - With Pennsylvania's unemployment rate below 5%, competition for workers is steep.
Randy Pedretti, owner of the Bethlehem-based staffing agency PrideStaff Lehigh Valley, helps recruit workers for the region’s manufacturing, warehouse, and logistics industries. He said before the pandemic, they used to have qualified employees coming to them for help finding companies to work for.
But now, that’s flipped.
“Now we have a lot of companies coming to us with good jobs and asking us to find them qualified people,” said Pedretti.
Some companies have turned to advertising their open jobs and wages on billboards along local highways.
“If you think of the big companies – Amazon, Walmart – you'll see billboards with signs advertising $25 to $30 an hour and significant sign-on bonuses,” he said.
Pedretti pointed out that those sign-on bonuses, which can take six months to a year to qualify for, can be $5,000 dollars or more.