Though the supply crunch is driving up prices, companies now have an opportunity to begin figuring out solutions, given the vulnerabilities that recent supply chain crisis has exposed, including the deepening cargo ship gridlocks at the world’s busiest ports. The federal government, specifically FEMA, had no clear guidance on the distribution of supply to the states leading to an oversupply of goods in some portions of the country while others experienced severe shortages. "So, I think we're going have to go through the peak seasons with this bottlenecks, and although the bottlenecks may actually move from the ports into the inland, but the delay is, I do anticipate to be continued through the holiday season."ĭisruptions to the supply chain at the pandemic’s onset, which caused months of shortages in PPE including N95 respirators, gloves, cleaning supplies and other critical care hospital equipment took nearly a year to resolve. "We are in for at least four to six months for it to actually catch a break,” said Nick Vyas, executive director at the Kendrick Global Supply Chain Management Institute at University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. The American Trucking Association in 2019 estimated that it would be short some 60,000 drivers, but those shortages have increased due to retirements, and new truck drivers needing to be trained due to COVID-19 closures. With growing inflation jitters, many large retail employers are increasing their wages to keep up with rising prices, intensifying the competition among companies to make their most compelling job offers amid the pre-holiday rush to hire workers. Companies such as Walmart, Target and Amazon are going to great lengths to attract warehouse workers with attractive benefits, including free college tuition. The Labor Department in July reported that the warehouse industry had a record 490,000 job openings. "You have a bunch of sectors that just pay minimum wage and labor is just going to veer over to where it finds the most profit," said Vidya Mani, an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. A record 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August - the most since the Department of Labor started tracking this data in 2000.
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