Where Are the Workers?

The good news is that employers don’t have to wait for an exit interview to explore reasons people are leaving—the data we collected can inform strategies to improve retention and strengthen their workplaces.

Examples include employees working from home or part-time, returning to school or enrolling in job training programs, or quitting jobs to take gig work. 

“Flexibility is a baseline factor of being competitive for talent,” she explains. “Thinking about this up front will help employers in the long-term.”

As job growth slows and the potential for a recession looms, how much longer will employers care about what workers want and need? My answer: There is no labor market in which being a bad employer is a competitive advantage.

Educators in the report — broadly, people working in education, but not just teachers — were more likely on average to say they had too much to do at work, Addison said. More educators had reported calling in sick due to burnout in the past year. And while educators weren't leaving the field en masse during the pandemic, Addison said she thought they were more likely to leave this year.

The organization Bethia Burke leads, the Fund for Our Economic Future, recently has surveyed thousands of workers and hundreds of employers. And those surveys make it clear, Burke said, that beyond competitive wages, businesses that want to be an employer of choice need to create workplaces with better communication and more flexibility.

The Fund For Our Economic Future has a report looking at what workers are quitting, why they’re leaving, and where they’re going to.

While there are many anecdotal answers, Bethia Burke, president of Fund for Our Economic Future, says her organization went looking for the real reasons here in northeastern Ohio.

Paying attention to what workers say matters. Even with concerns about a coming recession, talent shortages persist.

"What we're seeing in the results is that there is a sizable number of people who have shifted their perspective about what matters, and it is showing up in the choices they are making," she said.

Contributed by Ethan Karp to Forbes Manufacturers are not alone in wondering what has happened to the shrinking base of American workers over the last two

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Where Are the Workers?, a multiphase project delving into the labor shortage in Northeast Ohio, has created a new website to share its findings.

Bethia Burke, president of the Cleveland-based Fund for Our Economic Future, was the guest speaker at the meeting. She shared insights from her fund’s “Where are the Workers” analysis.

The work initially focused on Summit, Medina and Portage counties, partly funded by the Summit and Medina Workforce Area, but it eventually expanded into a broader regional 11-county research project, led by the Fund for Our Economic Future.

...workers want employers to include salary information in their job listings, freelance and contract work is a growing part of the job landscape, that COVID-19 has had a big impact on people looking for work, there are mixed feelings about vaccine mandates in the workplace, and workers have a high interest in job training and education. 

Fund President Bethia Burke moderated a panel of human resources leaders who discussed the role's evolution in the wake of recent workforce changes.

And this was a survey of nearly 5,000 working adults across 11 counties in Northeast Ohio. And basically it shows that the great resignation is far from over.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Despite the all the turnover during the “Great Resignation,” 1-in-5 workers in the Northeast Ohio are still thinking of quitting in the next year.

Thanks to the Great Resignation, caused in part by the pandemic, many employers are facing a talent shortage, with a new survey from the Fund for our Economic Future finding that four of five companies surveyed in Northeast Ohio say they have been increasing pay

“Our goal is to create an environment for candid conversations that produce actionable insights for employers and practitioners in Northeast Ohio and beyond,” said Bethia Burke, president of the Fund for Our Economic Future.