Unemployment figures for March show Wyoming held its own at 5.9%, the same as the February rate. The lowest rate in the nation was a tie between South Dakota and Nebraska, at 2.9% unemployment, with Hawaii coming in with the highest rate in the nation, at 9% unemployed. 

Year-over-year, Wyoming employment is up 0.2% from March 2020.

But employers are dealing with another problem: More available jobs than applicants. According to the U.S. Labor Department’s numbers, the March number of open jobs — 8.12 million — is the highest in more than 20 years. There were 7.53 million vacant jobs in February, the report shows. The national trend holds true in Park County.

The problem could have multiple causes, according to economists. An increased demand for employees is emerging as states slowly reopen from the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. There is also a shortage of child care — keeping parents out of the job market — and a fear of contracting the novel coronavirus. 

Also part of the consideration is the $300 a week bump in federal unemployment payments. Last week, Gov. Mark Gordon said he would end the state’s participation in the continued assistance, effective June 19. That reduction, he said, will incentivize people to work and help companies that are desperately seeking employees.

Locally, business owners and managers are also feeling the pinch. There are multiple entries on social media pages everyday looking for employees, but not everyone is blaming the help shortage on the pandemic’s aftermath and the increased unemployment payments.

Jerry Jackson, store manager for Ace Hardware in Powell, said it has been tricky to fill openings at the store for the nine years it has been in its current location. He said his openings don’t get a lot of applications and some of those applications are incomplete or illegible. 

“You can barely read it or they don’t put a phone number on there so we can reach them, stuff like that,” Jackson said. The store has heard a variety of reasons employees leave, too. They move, get a better-paying job or just don’t want to work anymore. 

Wyoming at Work, the state’s employment service, shows almost 600 job openings listed on that site for Park County and 7,186 candidates with resumes. However, those candidates could be from anywhere around the state or even in other states. Other state data showed 868 Park County residents searching for employment in March, the last month for which figures are available.

The openings are largely in retail, sales and related jobs, cashiers, motel and hotels, office clerks, bartenders and customer service representatives, as one might expect in a community on the outskirts of America’s first national park. There are also a large number of openings in healthcare, cooking and banks. 

Denise Wiegand, owner of Bubba’s Bar-B-Que in Cody, said the labor shortage in the restaurant industry is nothing new, but it has gotten worse.

“There has been a labor shortage in the restaurant industries in the last three, four, five years,” she said. “It has been exacerbated, though, by several factors.”

One of those factors is employees decided to leave the industry during COVID. “They decided it was time for a change. It was a high risk job,” Wiegand said.

But there are deeper, underlying problems getting good help as well.

Wiegand thought the added unemployment payments were given too much weight in causing the labor shortage. “It increased it some, but not that much,” she noted.

A larger problem is the housing environment in Park County. The cost of housing in Park County has gone up and residents can’t afford housing while they work in lower-paying jobs. 

“And workers between 17 and 22 just aren’t working like they used to,” Wiegand said. “I don’t know why.”

She offered that perhaps students are living on their school loans, parents are more able to help support them or that they are attending summer sports camps and can’t work around those camp schedules.

“Everybody wants to complain about the added unemployment [payments] and its been a factor, but there has been a problem for years,” Wiegand said. “But this year, retail, fast food, everyone is seeing an extreme shortage.”