With higher unemployment, one would think that there would be quite a few people looking for jobs, but that does not seem to be the case. What is happening around here is that anyone who has been laid off from a good paying job can make more money by drawing their unemployment than I can pay them to plant for me. Plus people drawing unemployment can do it for longer now.
We hired five different people to fill one position. After telling us that they wanted the job and could start the next day, they did not show up. We did this all last week until the last one finally showed up.
It’s not like what we do is hard. Yes, it is physical in that you have to lift, carry, set down, pull small plants for a tray and stick them into a larger pot and stuff like that. We’re not a salt mine or would even rate a visit form Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs.
Yes, there are a lot of other industries that pay better if you want to work in a cubical or on an assembly line, but they aren’t hiring.
I’m not against unemployment. I think that it provides some people a lot of help in hard times. But it just seems counter productive to the economic recovery when people have more incentive to draw their unemployment than to get a job.
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On the farm front, this week we moved our fern baskets to their final production house and gave them a lot of space to fill out and get big. We planted a small planting of begonia baskets along with some other odds and ends. We are waiting on this weeks cutting and liner shipments to get here. They’ll probably all show up at the same time on Friday afternoon.