Restaurants, hotels and other businesses in St. Helens continue to face employee hiring challenges. The tight labor market has been making headlines for months across Columbia County, the state and the nation.
The conversation around having a difficult time filling job vacancies has been most acute among restaurants and hotels, the businesses hardest hit by COVID-related layoffs. The Oregon Employment Department’s quarterly job vacancy survey revealed that 71% of job vacancies in spring 2021 were difficult to fill with a particularly high share of those difficult-to-fill vacancies for maids and housekeeping and cooks.
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