Commentary by Samuel Strait – March 21, 2022 Driving down Washington Boulevard last Tuesday, March 15th, I noticed a group of hardy souls out, what appeared to be, protesting something at Sutter Coast Hospital. Later, I was corrected in my observation, that it was not "protesting", but an informational about working conditions faced by nurses and staff while on the job. Seems the main complaint is something we are hearing with regularity through out the County. Not to diminish the informational offered by Sutter's nurses clearly worthy of consideration, it seems that employees, particularly qualified employees are hard to come by. Along with Sutter Coast Hospital's seeming inability to properly staff its hospital, the County, and the City are going through the same inability to fill vacant positions. This prompted me to do a bit of a tour around businesses in the City as well as a few out in the County. Regularly it seemed that most doors and the windows on many businesses are festooned with a sign, "help wanted", looking for employees. On the national level this has been the case for some time, but in economically suppressed Del Norte County, the unemployed always have seemed to outnumber the jobs available. Clearly something has changed as the reported unemployment figure for January 2022 clocked in at 6.1% or about 550 of the County's nearly 9000 employed are out of work. As time has gone forward that number has only gone up, where the unemployment rate is a bit over 7% or about 630 job seekers. The question I suppose becomes, "how can anyone be truthfully unemployed when so many obvious vacancies are being advertised?" It can't be all that difficult to work in a restaurant, even a fast food joint. What about a clerk in a grocery store or even stocking shelves? Surely that kind of employment does not require a PhD. I understand that there may be more difficulty hiring for jobs that require a more professional resume, but entry level positions abound throughout the County. Sutter administration claims they make up the deficiencies in their nursing staff by using traveling nurses, yet the nurses are clearly saying this is not so. The County and the City claim they can't pay enough to attract quality employees who will stay for any length of time. No one knows why the local school district is facing shortages, as it can't seem to keep up with teacher union demands for higher wages and benefits. I can only assume that Pelican Bay State Prison is facing similar vacancies. The population of workers has shrunk with the decline in population of the County? An increase in those that live here that are independently wealthy? Federal tinkering with unemployment for two years over Covid hysteria? I suppose we will never know for certain, but this change seems to have emerged with the recent change in administration in Washington. The Country has been awash with cash for the past year purportedly to make up for Covid hysteria defects in the government policies surrounding its approach to the pandemic. Is it possible that government trying to "fix" its mistakes has only made problems worse? I suspect we can count on an unequivocal "yes" to that one. Speaking to a manager of a local business, she states that her current staff can barely manage to cover opening hours. To lose one additional employee would strain her coverage. Advertising for additional employees has produced few respondents, when previous advertising would elicit thirty or more applications. Even the higher minimum wage increase of one dollar an hour in California has not produced any elevated interest from those just entering the work force. Maybe the 630 people sitting on the sidelines collecting unemployment can answer that one. Who knows how many others are no longer even part of the statistics, yet were once employed. Seems Covid has put a bad taste in the mouths of those that no longer work, or even try to be gainfully employed. Not going to the "office", is it to become the new national pastime? Seems so…….