Kickstart: The pandemic employment paradox

Chances are, you have jobs in your company that you simply can't fill, even with higher unemployment numbers due to pandemic layoffs. It seems like those two issues are in conflict. If people lost their job due to shutdowns, why aren't they applying for yours? National Public Radio spoke with Georgia-based plastics medical supplier M.A. Industries Inc. about the issue on Feb. 15.

The Manufacturing Institute, in a new survey of companies with 500 employees or fewer, says 77 percent of firms responding to the survey said they are struggling to find talent.

"It may seem like a paradox, but even with pandemic-induced unemployment, manufacturers are still facing challenges finding the workers they need. With about half a million jobs open in manufacturing, that need is great — perhaps even greater than before the pandemic," Center for Manufacturing Research Director and National Association of Manufacturers Chief Economist Chad Moutray said in a news release.

The survey doesn't have any solutions for the shortage, but does note that 77 percent of the companies also are investing in technology, the bulk of them so they can improve "operational performance."

You can find the summary and a download link here.

Coca-Cola Co. unveiled a prototype "paper" bottle late last year and now has announced 2,000 of them will be sold in Hungary in additional testing. But while they're touted as "paper," they actually are made with a plastic inner structure, which makes me wonder, well, what's the point?

The project, co-developed by Coca‑Cola's R&D team in Brussels and The Paper Bottle Company (Paboco), a Danish startup supported by Alpla and BillerudKorsnäs, wants to get feedback from shoppers in the next phase of testing.

"The technology developed by Paboco is designed to create 100 percent recyclable bottles made of sustainably sourced wood with a bio-based material barrier capable of resisting liquids, CO2 and oxygen ... suitable for beverages, beauty products and other liquid goods," Coca-Cola said in a news release. "The ultimate goal is a bottle that can be recycled as paper."

But a standard PET bottle is already 100 percent recyclable, of course, so, wouldn't it make more sense to invest in recycling programs for what already works?

Now that vaccines are being distributed, employers — especially those in essential industries — are trying to get their workers vaccinated.

Some companies in Illinois with on-site medical staff have been able to get vaccinations at the workplace through the state's approved procedure.

"Generally, here's how it works," our sister paper Crain's Chicago Business writes. "The federal government gives vaccine doses to the state, which distributes them to counties. County health departments then inoculate people themselves or pass out the doses to the hospitals, clinics and others that have registered with the state to be COVID vaccinators.

"Companies can register to become vaccinators if they have medical staff on hand. If not, they can partner with a vendor to give the shots on site. Some companies may already have such partners from annual flu drives."

So far, CCB writes, three large companies in the Chicago area have started vaccinating workers while 16 others, among them medical device maker Abbott, drugmaker AbbVie and medical products company Baxter International, are in some stage of planning.

It's still a complex system, however, with different states using different systems to get vaccines into arms, and the vaccine itself in limited supply. So what is working for some companies in Illinois likely won't be of use to firms elsewhere.