Taco Bell joins the ranks of restaurants working to increase their minimum wage. The company plans to implement the hike to $15 an hour by mid-2024.
In addition, employees will receive benefits such as complimentary therapy for corporate employees at restaurants and its headquarters. High turnover and a shortage of labor have plagued the foodservice industry, partially driving wage increases.
Budget for compensation is forecasted to increase a bit but not enough to match inflation. Such budgets are to rise 3.3% for merit budgets and 3.5% for total budgets in 2022. (this is a bit of an increase from the 2.8% and 3% respectively, seen in 2021) As for one-time cash payouts, those incentives will increase more, with 1 in 4 employers saying their bonus pool is more than 10% higher than last year.
Bonuses are on tap to attract candidate to critical, hard-to-fill roles. In a recent survey 52% of respondents “have offered sign-on bonuses to win candidates over in the past 12 months”. The sign-on bonus was leveraged 79% of the time (compared to the other options of referral, spot, and retention). A paltry 7% of organizations stated they “use none of these bonus programs”, 2% offer higher referral bonuses for candidates in under-represented groups, and 12% said they were considering doing so.
Wage hikes adopted by big brands may have an impact on wage increases across the board. Smaller employers are keeping up with the increases set in motion by their larger counterparts such as Amazon, Target, and Costco.
As of November, manufacturing production saw its 18th straight month of expansion as hiring rose and supplier deliveries improved a bit. In addition, production and employment levels increased at a quicker clip in November than in October. Demand still outpaces supply, though as companies sort through a hefty backlog of orders.
Almost half (41%) of workers plan to look for a job in the first two quarters of 2022, an increase over the 32% six months ago. Reasons for moving on include salary increases (54%), better benefits (38%) and the option to work remotely permanently (34%).
Top reasons for seeking new jobs are to secure a salary boost, cited by 54%, better benefits and perks, 38%, and the ability to work remotely permanently, 34%. Those most likely to start job searching are:
In addition, the survey found that 28% of professionals planning to look for a new job would quit without another one lined up.
The current hiring outlook is the most optimistic on record. Say what? Yep, for the first time in decades (since this data was captured 60 years ago) all 40 countries surveyed reported “positive employment outlooks for the first quarter.” As well, the majority (36 of 40) of countries reported they would be increasing their hiring. Almost 60% (57% to be exact) of employers expect to increase their payrolls in Q1, 16% anticipate laying off workers, 25% expect no change, and 2% are just not sure yet. We’re looking at a seasonally adjusted net employment outlook of 41%, which is a 26% increase over last year (but 5 percentage points down from the Q4 outlook).
Employers in all 11 US industry sectors expect to grow payrolls during the next three months:
Freelance work continues to have a strong foothold in the U.S. workforce with 59 million Americans performing freelance work in the past year – that accounts for 36% of the whole U.S. workforce. Freelance work has expanded to highly educated workers and is decreasing within less educated workers. Over half (53%) of freelancers supply services such as computer programming, marketing, business consulting, and IT – that’s up from 50% in 2020.
Until next week,
Erin and Team BountyJobs