Drive-through job fair set for Thursday in west Olympia aims to fill 50 jobs
A socially-distanced drive-through job fair is set for Thursday at Express Employment Professionals, a longtime staffing business at 1120 Harrison Ave. NW in west Olympia.
The job fair runs 1-4 p.m., owner Reid Bates said.
“We are hoping to attract candidates for some of the 50 openings we have in Thurston County in warehouse, manufacturing, health care, administrative and professional positions,” he said in an email on Tuesday.
Bates, who also owns Express Employment locations in Aberdeen and Centralia, said the supply/demand gap in the workforce is one of the largest he has ever seen.
“There is strong demand for talent at all levels in a wide variety of industries. But we are seeing a very small pool of available talent to match to those jobs,” he said.
Over the last four weeks, employers have requested more than 200 people for work through Express, Bates said. A year ago the business had more than 200 people to fill those jobs, compared to 74 this year, he said.
Bates said there are three reasons for the shortage: fear of COVID-19, the lack of childcare, and the $600 supplemental jobless benefit from the federal government, which he acknowledges was beneficial, but he also believes created “less incentive to work.”
The lack of childcare is at “crisis levels,” he said.
Bates said he has made his employers aware of these challenges. “We have encouraged them to make themselves as attractive as possible to the job seeker,” he said.
Raising wages has been part of that conversation, and there have been other considerations, Bates said.
“A flexible schedule and a supportive work environment definitely help with retention,” he said.
