With 72 hours ’til opening day, the Minnesota State Fair is short of workers
On Aug. 16, the Star Tribune reported that, with just a week until the state Fair opening, vendors were having a hard time attracting workers.
With the Minnesota State Fair opening next week, perennial top vendor Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar is still looking for 100 workers to help serve heaping buckets of chocolate chip cookies.
Hot Indian Foods’ executive chef Janene Holig has bumped up wages to $17-$20 an hour, borrowed staff from her regular restaurants, and “called in a lot of personal favors” to get some chef friends to pull double shifts at her State Fair booth. But she still needs 18 more workers.
Last week, Mark Andrew, a vendor at the fair for 49 years, blasted out an e-mail to about 60 friends pleading for people who might be willing to work. “In all my decades as a biz owner at the Minnesota State Fair, I have NEVER had a shortage of help,” he wrote. “Until now.”
Two days after this announcement, officials announced that the fair would not have a universal mask mandate. Reason? There were not enough workers to enforce the mask mandate.
“We’re having enough of a time finding people to do the fun jobs at the fair to find what would be hundreds to do an effective mandate — is just something that’s not going to happen, can’t,” he said.
With the fair just a few days away, reports are coming in that numerous vendors have opted out of the fair, partly because they cannot find workers.
A worker shortage is squeezing businesses
Minnesota State Fair vendors are not alone in this.
According to Bring me the news, “Duffy’s Bar and Grill in Osseo recently decided to close on Mondays and cut its menu by about 50% due to ongoing staffing shortages.”
“Due to the extreme labor shortage, we are going have to make a couple very temporary changes to our hours and menu. This is the last thing that we wanted to do,” Duffy’s said on Facebook last week. “We have amazing people working in our kitchen and it would be unfair to them to continue to ask them to work 6-plus day weeks or 11 days in a row. We love our staff here at Duffy’s and want them here for years to come!!”
Duffy’s had previously posted about the need to hire a couple of line cooks who could start right away. Duffy’s told FOX 9 they’re offering $15 or more an hour to start — no experience necessary, but they can’t find anyone interested in back-of-the-house positions.
Other businesses, like Chipotle, have cut hours, citing a worker shortage. Even the Minneapolis Airport, which has jobs starting at almost $15 per hour, is missing workers. Currently, the airport is looking for 750 full-time, part-time, and seasonal positions. At Pizza Hut, receipts now include a “HIRING NOW” word box.
Why you should be worried
In 2018, the Minnesota fair contributed $268 million to the Twin Cities, of which $127 million was “operating revenues and resulting local expenditures”. The shortage of workers at the state fair is a loss not only to the businesses involved but to Minnesota’s economy.
Of course, there is no denying that COVID-19 still presents a threat and that attendance was likely already going to be reduced this year as people take precautionary measures. However, government action is still to blame for some of the losses. Specifically, generous unemployment benefits have discouraged people from looking for jobs.