This staffing trouble has ramped up labor costs and forced restaurants to trim operating hours and menus, putting pressure on bottom lines.
Sixty-five percent of operators had to reduce their business hours in the past three months because they were short on staff, the National Restaurant Association’s State of the Industry 2022 report finds. Another NRA survey estimates 80% of full-service operators and 73% of limited-service operators do not have enough labor to meet customer demand.
“When people working in leisure and hospitality are more than twice as likely to be unemployed, it’s hard to argue the economy is thriving. More than 90,000 restaurants have closed during the pandemic, taking hundreds of thousands of jobs with them,” Independent Restaurant Coalition Executive Director Erika Polmar said in a statement.
