Amid worker shortage, these Tucsonans show up for hard-to-fill jobs

Your favorite restaurant has reduced hours of operation, and the service is slow.

A note in your hotel room says daily room service is now an add-on and there is no bellhop to help with your luggage.

The move-in date for your new office is delayed because contractors are behind schedule.

Everyone is touched by the labor shortage in the country.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows there were over 11.2 million job openings in the first half of the year.

The biggest shortages were in the hospitality and food service industry, with 1.4 million job openings; the retail industry had 1.1 million openings and the construction industry had 434,000 openings in that time.

“The younger generation is more interested in getting into the tech industry, leaving construction with a smaller pool of workers to perform manual labor,” said Russell Higgins, a carpenter and superintendent for Tucson-based Barker Contracting Inc. “Because construction is such a physically demanding job, it already doesn’t interest the younger generation.”

He laments that some don’t understand the pleasure of working with their hands.

“I love the physical appreciation of it,” Higgins said, “being able to look at what I’ve built and accomplished.”

A mix of factors led to the worker shortage, which existed before but was exacerbated by the pandemic.

Following nearly a year of lockdown, employees found their savings had grown because there had been no splurging on dinners, movies and travel.

That, combined with federal stimulus checks, gave these workers the ability to be more discerning about their jobs, and there was more demand for flexible schedules, better benefits and pay.

Many decided it was time to be their own boss.

The Census Bureau reports more than 4.4 million new business were started just in 2020 — a 24% increase from 2019.

And, a lot of day care facilities increased rates because of their worker shortage, and some parents found it less expensive to stay home a while longer.

But, many Tucsonans continue to show up for what have become hard-to-fill jobs each day. In honor of Labor Day, we’d like to introduce you to a few of them.

Building opportunity

Ron Boveington doesn’t ascribe to the notion that young people don’t want to swing a hammer.

The lack of vocational training in public schools means they never got exposed to such career choices.

“In my time, we had trade school in high school,” said Boveington, 65. “You took different disciplines and learned different stuff, and now they don’t teach that.”

A cross-trained construction worker since 1984, he has worked as a welder, mechanic, carpenter, electrician and tile worker.

Boveington currently works for Castle Construction and teaches at Idea’l Trade Institute.

“It’s changed a lot since I started,” he said. “When I started, the older guys weren’t very nice to the young guys until you learned to do stuff correctly.”

Now, the goal is to motivate students to pursue a career in construction.

“When I see these young people, they are having fun,” Boveington said. “Hopefully they’ll see there’s a lot of opportunity after they get trained and get their license.

“They can pick any job or do it themselves and go out and start a business.”

The median pay for construction workers is about $40,000 a year, but specialized work, such as elevator installation and repair workers can earn more than $85,000 a year.

The best part of the job, Boveington said, are the hours.

“Yes, you start at sunrise. But then you get off early.”

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A lifetime of service

Rosa Martinez learned the ideals of service and helping people from family and her time in the military.

And after retiring from the Army as a sergeant, she returned to her native Tucson and more than 10 years ago found a new career, keeping guests comfortable at the Westward Look Wyndham Grand Resort and Spa.

Martinez works as a public-space attendant at the historic resort on East Ina Road, mainly taking care of the pool and fitness areas and making sure guests at the 241-room resort have everything they need.

She sometimes helps out the bell staff and with the laundry.

“I’m a multi-tasker chick — whatever they ask me to do, I go above and beyond. That’s my military ethics,” she said.

Martinez enjoys sharing the history of the Westward Look — built in 1912 as a hacienda-style family home before it became a dude ranch in the 1940s and later, a resort that hosted the likes of John Wayne and Dean Martin.

Martinez also likes sharing the history of her family, which traces its roots to Southern Arizona from the 1800s and includes a Civil War veteran, and her military service including her stints in Japan, the Philippines and Korea.

“I look forward to coming to work every day,” Martinez said, adding that she likes working weekends so she can attend to personal business and help her elders with their appointments.

Martinez said the Westward Look offers an excellent package of employee benefits. She said she makes over the state minimum wage of $12.80 per hour and recently got a pay increase.

Nationally, average hourly earnings for non-supervisory hotel workers rose from $15.06 in May 2020 to $19.44 per hour in June, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Martinez said working conditions can be challenging amid staffing shortages, but her supervisor is flexible and manages to work things out.

“We make it easier for other people, to make people comfortable, and to come and work, it’s pretty flexible,” she said. “My supervisor works with each person, according to their abilities and what they can do, and there’s no peer pressure — they look forward to coming to work.”

Restaurant family

Marana native Kalie Engen spends a few days a week serving grilled steaks with a side of how-do-you-do to diners at Marana’s storied Li’l Abner’s Steakhouse on North Silverbell Road.

Even during the pandemic, when the restaurant whose history goes back 80 years had to close its dining room, Engen never left. She snagged what hours she could to help with the restaurant’s takeout service before jumping back on the schedule once the restaurant reopened in May 2021.

“This was my first job, and I worked through high school, and I just never left,” said the Marana High School alumnus, who started working at the restaurant when she was 16. “Everyone here is a family. … I can’t leave.”

Engen, a single mother of two, including a newborn, works around 20 hours a week as a server. She also fills in on occasion as a bartender and shift manager when the managers are gone. Between her hourly wage and tips, she said she makes the equivalent of someone working 40 hours a week at minimum wage ($12.80 an hour).

“The money is good,” said the 27-year-old, who rents a house in nearby Gladden Farms.

Abners pays its servers the state minimum cash wage of $9.80 an hour and pays its cooks between $15 and $17 an hour, said longtime manager Connie Gilbert.

But she knows plenty of restaurant workers who took different paths after being sidelined during the pandemic. Some got used to the enhanced unemployment pay, and others decided to take full-time work in other industries.

“We had the lockdown for two months, and I think a lot of people at first just didn’t know what to do; they didn’t know how not to work,” Engen said. “And then they got comfortable being at home. They didn’t want to come back.”

Nationwide, restaurants and the food service sector lost more than 2 million workers between February 2020 and May 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the state, the hospitality sector, of which restaurants make up a large portion, reported a drop of nearly 43,000 employees over the same period, the statistics showed.

Many of those jobs have rebounded, although the National Restaurant Association reports that staffing levels nationwide are still off by 9% — by more than a half million jobs — over pre-pandemic levels.

Engen said she has seen an uptick in interest in restaurant jobs among some of her friends.

“I have friends asking me if Abner’s is hiring, and I tell them to wait,” she said. “We’re almost in our busy season.”