By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A worker shortage continues to drag down the greater St. Joseph economy, though Chamber of Commerce President Natalie Redmond says it is beginning to ease.
“It is starting to ease,” Redmond says. “I’ve had a couple of organizations tell me they are actually fully staffed with all of their shifts as of maybe the last month. So, it is starting to ease a little bit. I don’t think that we’re ever going to get out of that. I think the workforce issues are still going to continue to be a challenge.”
A big problem facing the area is the number of adults who simply are not working. The University of Missouri Extension Service issues a report called Missouri Grand Challenges and says one of the biggest challenges for Buchanan County and a little bit in Andrew County is that a third of working-age adults, from 24-to-53, are not in the workforce.
Redmond says a portion of those adults are stay-at-home Moms, but only a portion. She says the Chamber must concentrate on removing the barriers that keep them from entering the workforce.
“That may be day care. That may be housing,” Redmond says. “Rental housing has gone up significantly in our market. So, maybe they don’t have a place to live. Maybe they’re living on someone’s couch that makes it conducive for them not to work. Maybe they don’t have transportation. Maybe they don’t have day care. So, I think we have to continue to look at how do we help with the barriers to get people to work.”
Redmond says the figure has the attention of chamber officials.
“That’s a big number,” Redmond says. “And so, if we can do our part to help get a percentage of that back to work and helping them with the resources they need then we feel like that’s a win.”
MU Extension says three big challenges face the Buchanan-Andrew County area. The first is workforce participation. The extension service says the American Community Survey finds that of the nearly 83,000 people of working age, 61% participate in the labor force, short of the state average of 62.82%. Buchanan County has a participation rate of 60.56% according to the survey with Andrew County at 63.55%. A lack of education also hurts area residents with more than 10% of the Buchanan County population never graduating from high school and 22.52% of adults having a least some college education, but only 16% with bachelors’ degrees. Mental health is the third challenge facing the area, including alcoholism and drug addiction.