“Can't find people to hire? Pay them more." This is what American President Joe Biden spoke a few days ago, and someone is starting to listen to him. For example Disney, which after a year and a half of forced closure can finally reopen the amusement parks in Florida and California, from which he had fired as many as 32.000 employees. Now, however, he is struggling to re-hire the staff necessary to restart at full capacity (he has re-hired only 75% for now) and to complete the workforce he has seen fit to follow the Biden doctrine and offer a one-off $1.000 bonus to each new employee. Even in the United States, therefore, the labor market is experiencing a paradox similar to the Italian one: public subsidies which discourage the search for a job; fear of exposing yourself to Covid by accepting jobs in contact with the public; difficulties of families in finding people who can take care of their children in case of return to work.
In particular, in the US it has happened that the substantial aid launched by Biden for the middle class has meant that today the unemployment allowance is more advantageous than in the past, and even more advantageous than some employment contracts. “All of this makes many potential workers prefer to stay at home,” Bloomberg goes on to admit. To overcome this obstacle, Disney has therefore decided to recognize something more, also because missing the restart would be a big problem given that Mickey's company has already paid dearly for Covid: 2020 was the first financial year in the red after 40 years, due to the closure of parks around the world and especially cinemas, which still account for a third of turnover. The launch of the Disney+ streaming platform was of little use, which did good numbers but not enough to avoid operating losses of almost $3 billion (after the 10,4 billion in profits in 2019).
Obviously Disney is just one of the cases, but in recent weeks there have been other similar examples in the field of tourism, commerce and catering. The first company to line up was none other than the giant Amazon, which has always been accused of underpaying its employees and not giving them adequate rights, but which already in the spring announced 75.000 new hires between the US and Canada, with a wage increase of between 50 cents and 3 dollars more per hour. So today the average salary of a new hire is $17 an hour, and if the employee is also vaccinated against Covid, he receives a one-time $100 bonus. Also Mc Donald's has decided that in the 650 outlets it directly owns wages will be increased by 10%, i.e. 11-17 dollars an hour for an employee and 15-20 dollars an hour for a manager. However, there are another 14.000 franchised restaurants, which for now the fast food chain has only been able to advise to do the same.
