EUGENE, Ore. (Video above: KEZI via CNN) —

A 7-Eleven employee in Oregon went above and beyond her job description recently when she helped deliver a baby during her shift.

Around 3 a.m. on Sept. 6, Karin Warren said a man asked for help calling 911 because his wife was in labor.

The situation that followed was caught on the convenience store's surveillance camera.

Warren told KEZI that after she called 911, she went to be with the expectant mother until an ambulance arrived.

"That's when she stuck her legs up on my shoulders and I was like, 'woah, OK,'" Warren said.

Warren said she went into "mama mode" and helped the woman through what happened next — the arrival of her newborn son.

"I always wanted to see a baby be born other than mine," Warren said. "It was incredible."

The parents Warren helped were originally from California and trying to find the closest hospital. They were so grateful for her help in a stressful situation that they made Warren the child's godmother.

Watch the video above to see the whole situation unfold.

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — Mike Jenne takes his job as a van driver seriously; so seriously that he even lets his riders pick the music.

"I'm getting used to country music. That's not really my favorite, but I'm getting used to it," he laughed.

Every day, he drives his van more than 100 miles, helping a particular group of folks get to and from their jobs. A group that Jenne himself is a part of.

"I was having trouble finding the job because when I was younger, I did a bunch of things that I wasn't supposed to be doing, and a lot of people wouldn't accept the things that were on my record," he said.

Jenne is one of 77 million people in the country that have an arrest or conviction on their record. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, the unemployment rate for this population is 27% and 60% for folks up until four years after their release.

"I've since, I fixed those problems, and now, they're not an issue, but companies don't really understand that," he said. "That sort of hurts your pride."

These numbers are significant, but so are the statistics of our current labor shortage.

The Chamber says there are more than 10 million open jobs right now, but only 5.8 million unemployed people. Thanks to a number of factors, including pandemic-spurred early retirement and parents staying home due to a lack of child care, we're short 4 million people to fill jobs.

"It's just better to meet people where they're at and feel that they don't have to compromise their personal needs for their work needs," said Daryn Forgeron, who is a staff member at Working Fields.

It's a unique staffing agency in Vermont that helps folks with criminal records, or people struggling with homelessness, addiction mental illness, get on the right path to finding a job, with both community resources and peer support.

Historically, it's been tough work, but over the last year, they've noticed more employers asking for help.

"We've seen it kind of on the large scale in terms of just employers are more ready to partner with us. I think in the last year alone, we signed 35 new clients, which is incredible," she said. "There's more willingness to understand what we're talking about. There's a more openness of mind in terms of, 'Oh yeah, of course, there are people who are ready to work. I need them right now.'"

Tapping into a once-shunned workforce is good for business. The Center for Economic and Policy Research says that refusing to hire people with criminal records shuts the country out of up to $87 billion in annual GDP.

Eighty-five percent of HR leaders say second-chance hires perform the same or better than other employees.

"They'll show up as better work workers. They will be loyal, they will be punctual, they will be the things that you want when they can also be individually fulfilled," Forgeron said.

Jenne not only drives people who got a job through Working Fields to their jobs, but he also got back on his feet because of them. To him, it's way more than being about a company's bottom line, having someone take a chance on you is about building back up.

"I told them my situation and where I'm coming from, and they encouraged me and actually helped me recover," he said.

"We see you as a human being and not just the story that's been told about you... and employers are more willing to see that and employers are more willing to support that, and when they do, that person can build the life that they want and that is enormous," said Forgeron.

Our past is a part of our story, but for the people who believe it shouldn't always dictate our future, they hope that this pattern of employers taking chances on more folks continues well past the current worker shortage.

"Don't just look at the bad things. Look at their accomplishment, you know, just look beyond the mistakes," said Jeanne.

More New York state Starbucks locations are now set to vote to decide if workers there want to unionize. Many see the effort as having the ability to possibly pick up steam in other parts of the country.

As Bloomberg reported, Nancy Wilson, an acting regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ordered ballots be sent out to Starbucks employees by Jan. 31, and be returned by Feb. 22. Employees at the three additional stores will vote to decide if they would like to join Workers United which is affiliated with Service Employees International Union which won elections recently at two other Starbucks sites in Buffalo.

So far, only two out of 9,000 of Starbuck's corporate-run locations are unionized, which comprises over 230,000 employees, the New York Times reported.

Reggie Borges, a spokesperson for Starbucks was quoted in the Times using a little different language, saying that the company was not anti-union, but instead was “pro-partner,” with its employees. Borges says that the company has historically listened to its workers' feedback and made changes that make unionizing unnecessary.

In early January, unionized Starbucks employees in upstate New York staged a walkout citing fears over COVID-19 safety amid a surge of virus cases. As the Associated Press reported, six of those employees formed a picket line outside of one of the stores in Buffalo causing it to decide to close for the day, after around a third of the staff did not report to work because of safety fears.

Borges said that Starbucks had met and exceeded CDC and expert guidelines and offered vaccine and isolation pay to employees.

“Over and above that, all leaders are empowered to make whatever changes make sense for their neighborhood, which includes shortening store hours or moving to 100% takeout only, which is the case in Buffalo,” Borges said.

Starbucks workers at various cities across the U.S., in cities including Knoxville, Tenn., Tallahassee, Fla., Seattle, Chicago, Boston and Denver, have reportedly been seeking to follow the model of Buffalo in seeking to vote to organize unions, according to the New York Times.

In a 2006 statement on Starbucks' corporate website, the company addresses its long-held perspective on unionizing writing, "While Starbucks respects the free choice of our partners, we firmly believe that our work environment, coupled with our outstanding compensation and benefits, make unions unnecessary at Starbucks. We respect our partners’ right to organize, but believe that they would not find it necessary given our pro-partner environment." 

John Logan, a labor studies professor at San Francisco State University told the New York Times that unionizing has traditionally been effective when aimed at companies with a small number of large workplaces, as striking at one of less than 20 large factories can cause a disruption. But, striking at one or a few out of 9,000 Starbucks stores across the country would likely make little to no difference to the profits of a company as massive as Starbucks.

IRVING, Texas —

Major League Baseball plunged into its first work stoppage in a quarter-century when the sport's collective bargaining agreement expired Wednesday night and owners immediately locked out players in a move that threatens spring training and opening day.

The strategy, management's equivalent of a strike under federal labor law, ended the sport's labor peace after 9,740 days over 26 1/2 years.

Teams decided to force the long-anticipated confrontation during an offseason rather than risk players walking out during the summer, as they did in 1994. Players and owners had successfully reached four consecutive agreements without a work stoppage, but they have been accelerating toward a clash for more than two years.

Talks that started last spring ended Wednesday after a brief session of mere minutes with the sides far apart on the dozens of key economic issues. Management's negotiators left the union's hotel about nine hours before the deal lapsed at 11:59 p.m. EST, and players said MLB did not make any new central economic proposals this week.

MLB's 30 controlling owners held a brief digital meeting to reaffirm their lockout decision, and MLB delivered the announcement of its fourth-ever lockout — to go along with five strikes — in an emailed letter to the Major League Baseball Players Association.

This stoppage began 30 days after Atlanta's World Series win capped a complete season following a pandemic-shortened 2020 played in empty ballparks. The lockout's immediate impact is to banish players from team workout facilities and weight rooms while perhaps chilling ticket sales for 2022.

The union demanded change following anger over a declining average salary, middle-class players forced out by teams concentrating payroll on the wealthy and veterans jettisoned in favor of lower-paid youth, especially among clubs tearing down their rosters to rebuild.

"As players we see major problems with it," New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer said of the 2016 agreement. "First and foremost, we see a competition problem and how teams are behaving because of certain rules that are within that, and adjustments have to be made because of that in order to bring out the competition."

Eleven weeks remain until pitchers and catchers are to report for spring training on Feb. 16, leaving about 70 days to reach a deal allowing for an on-time start. Opening day is set for March 31, and a minimum of three weeks of organized workouts have been required in the past.

Management, intent on preserving salary restraints gained in recent decades, rejected the union's requests for what teams regarded as significant alterations to the sport's economic structure, including lowering service time needed for free agency and salary arbitration.

Many clubs scrambled to add players ahead of a lockout and an expected signing freeze, committing to more than $1.9 billion in new contracts — including a one-day record of more than $1.4 billion Wednesday.

"It did feel like at least certain groups of free agents were moving more quickly the last few days," Pittsburgh general manager Ben Cherington said.

Two of the eight members of the union's executive subcommittee signed big deals: Texas infielder Marcus Semien ($175 million) and Scherzer ($130 million).

"This is actually kind of fun," Scherzer said. "I'm a fan of the game, and to watch everybody sign right now, to actually see teams competing in this kind of timely fashion, it's been refreshing because we've seen freezes for the past several offseasons."

No player remains active from the 232-day strike that cut short the 1994 season, led to the first cancellation of the World Series in 90 years and caused the 1995 season to start late. That stoppage ended only when a federal judge — future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — issued an injunction forcing owners to restore the work rules of the expired labor contract.

The average salary dropped from $1.17 million before the strike to $1.11 million but then resumed its seemingly inexorable rise. It peaked at just under $4.1 million in 2017, the first season of the latest CBA, but likely will fall to about $3.7 million when this year's final figures are calculated.

That money is concentrated heavily at the top of the salary structure. Among approximately 1,955 players who signed major league contracts at any point going into the regular season's final month, 112 had earned $10 million or more this year as of Aug. 31, of which 40 made at least $20 million, including prorated shares of signing bonuses.

There were 1,397 earning under $1 million, of which 1,271 were at $600,000 or less and 332 under $100,000, a group of younger players who shuttle back and forth to the minors.

Union head Tony Clark, a former All-Star first baseman who became executive director following Michael Weiner's death in 2013, said players are united and understand the need to stick together to achieve common goals. The sides are still litigating over the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, sniping over how to long the season could have been and taking their positions before a neutral arbitrator.

The union has withheld licensing money, as it usually does going into bargaining; cash, U.S. Treasury securities and investments totaled $178.5 million last Dec. 31, according to a financial disclosure form filed with the U.S. Department of Labor.

"We have a pretty big war chest behind us of money that we can allocate to players," Scherzer said.

Some player agents have speculated that management's credit lines already may be pressured following income deprivation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but the clubs' finances are more opaque publicly than that of the union, making it difficult to ascertain comparative financial strength to withstand a lengthy work stoppage.

Rob Manfred, who succeeded Bud Selig as commissioner in 2015 following a quarter-century as an MLB labor negotiator, made clear last month that management preferred an offseason lockout to a midseason strike.

"We've been down this path. We locked out in '89-'90," he said. "I don't think '94 worked out too great for anybody. I think when you look at other sports, the pattern has become to control the timing of the labor dispute and try to minimize the prospect of actual disruption of the season. That's what it's about. It's avoiding doing damage to the season."

Scott Boras, who negotiated Scherzer's deal and shortstop Corey Seager's $325 million contract with Texas, has pushed for the union to insist on change to decrease the incentive for lowering payrolls during rebuilding.

"Sometimes the rules of the game require them to do things that are not in the best interest of the game," Boras said, "for them to be a better competitor for next year, they have to do things that the rules direct them to do."

Thursday's unemployment report from the Labor Department shows claims dropped closer to pre-pandemic levels.

It was also the lowest level for initial claims since early March 2020. Initial claims decreased by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 268,000 for the second week of November.

“For the unemployment claims numbers, we definitely have seen a drop in recent times and that could be positive to the degree that it’s reflected of more people either not losing their jobs, or moving from the unemployed category to the employed category,” said John Quinterno, a visiting professor of practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

Quinterno said the numbers reflect the pandemic.

“The economy’s trajectory is intertwined with the pandemic trajectory,” he said.

Unemployment claims are trending down, yet a lot of jobs in certain industries like hospitality and travel are still going unfilled.

“The jobs that are open are in a place where the labor doesn't want to move. And I think that is the reason why we are having some disequilibrium in the labor market,” said Kishore Kulkarni, an economics professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Kulkarni said workers have changed what they want out of a job.

“The labor is not really interested in doing the on-site job. They are more used to doing work from home. They understand that the cost of going to the onsite job, they have to have vaccination, they have to have a mask on all eight hours of the day,” Kulkarni said.

And there are fewer workers to fill the roles in the first place.

“Going back to February 2020, there are still about 4.5 million fewer workers in the labor force than there were when we started, so folks have exited,” Quinterno said.

Quinterno said that could be due to a number of factors like retirement, health risks, and childcare.

So what can people expect moving forward?

“We need to first get the public health side, the pandemic side, under control. Otherwise, we’ll just continue to be riding these waves of a few months of progress when case numbers go down, and then we’ll have more hardship when the case numbers go back up,” Quinterno said.

Kulkarni said it’s impossible to predict, but the progress of the pandemic will be a good indicator.

DENVER, Co. — Sean Holland has driven the same route for work every day for more than 20 years. He says it hasn't gotten boring yet.

"It's not your 9 to 5 job," Holland said. "If that's what you're looking for, this isn't it."

Holland is a UPS driver in suburban Denver. He took the job in the early '90s, and since 1995, he's been driving the same truck: Bertha.

"I've had her, next month, it will be 26 years," Holland said. "The old girl, she comes out full to the gills every day. I get rid of all that, and then we do another pickup run in the afternoon and fill it back up. There's a sense of accomplishment that goes along with that."

Holland and delivery drivers across the country were deemed essential workers at the height of the pandemic. Stay-at-home orders forced people to use delivery services at a higher rate. U.S. parcel volume went up 37% from 2019 to 2020.

UPS is hiring 100,000 seasonal workers this year to keep up with the demand as the holidays approach. But they are competing with other major companies in nearly every industry.

"We have a very robust recruiting approach," said Jeff Bloedorn, director of human resources at UPS. "We are heavily into the social media and making people aware of what UPS offers."

The company is starting some new hires at $23 an hour, with a $2,000 signing bonus. Bloedorn says there are other incentives, many of which can't be measured with dollars and cents.

"It’s a great teamwork atmosphere," Bloedorn said. "[People] like the hustle and bustle of moving all the packages... It’s a career that allows a person to take care of themselves and their family."

The pandemic has shifted a younger generation's opinion of work. A UPS survey found 9 in 10 millennials are "more open" to the types of jobs they'd accept.

But experts warn the life of a truck driver is still a difficult sell.

"I always ask my students this," said Dr. Robert Novack, a professor at Penn State University. "'How many of you would like to grow up and be a truck driver?' None of 'em."

Dr. Novack says the under-35 crowd is looking for fulfillment and purpose from a potential career. That can be tough to find from the driver's seat of a delivery truck.

"You see the rigs on the road, and as a car driver, they're an annoyance because they're big, they get in the way," Dr. Novack said. "We're working with some companies on trying to make the job of being a driver a little bit more suited to their needs. You know, treating them almost like an asset."

Holland agrees that the job can be tough.

"It's long hours, but like I said, it's rewarding," he said.

"I actually met my wife on my route out here," Holland said. "She was one of my customers for a couple years before we started dating, and ultimately got married, and now we’re married 21 years. You know, I've had dead-end jobs. And, yeah, I've been doing the same thing for almost 29 years now."

Holland smiled.

"But I love it."

About 10,000 members of the United Auto Workers union went on strike against farm and construction equipment maker John Deere early Thursday morning.

The UAW had reached a tentative agreement on a new six-year contact with the company two weeks ago, only to see 90% of the rank-and-file members of the union reject it in a ratification vote that concluded this past Sunday. Union and management negotiators talked into the night Wednesday trying to reach a new deal but were unable to do so.

This is the nation's largest private-sector strike since the UAW waged a costly six-week strike against General Motors two years ago. And it continues a recent trend of workers flexing more muscle as the dynamics of the labor market tip more toward them and away from employers. Businesses have been struggling to find the workers they need to fill a recent record number of job openings. There has also been a record high number of workers quitting jobs.

Last week, 1,400 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union went on strike against Kellogg, shutting plants where cereal brands such as Rice Krispies, Raisin Bran, Froot Loops, Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes are made.

And earlier Wednesday, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — which represents technicians, artisans and craftspersons in the entertainment industry — announced it had set a strike deadline for early Monday morning if they could not reach a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for 60,000 film and television workers. The union said that 98.6% of members had voted to authorize a strike if there is no new deal by then.

Video below: Kellogg addresses strike in new vide

However, the U.S. Labor Department reports that the number of strikes so far this year is actually down compared to the same period of 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic riled labor markets.

Overall wages are up, as it appears that employers — both unionized and nonunion — are more willing to give workers what they want to keep them on the job.

Good times at Deere

The strike at Deere & Co., the formal name of the company popularly known as John Deere, shuts operations at 11 factories in Illinois, Iowa and Kansas, and three distribution centers in Georgia, Illinois and Colorado. The company makes both agricultural and construction equipment. Demand for its products has been strong.

The company said in August that it sees growing orders through the rest of this fiscal year that runs through Nov. 1, and into the first fiscal quarter of next year.

The rejected contract for UAW members at John Deere would have given them immediate raises in their base pay of 5% to 6%, and additional wage increases later in the contract that could have increased average pay by about 20% over the six years of the rejected deal. It also eliminated a second lower tier of pay for some more recent hires of the company, bringing them up to the pay of other UAW members.

The average production worker at Deere made about $60,000 last year, and could end this contract earning about $72,000.

Among the features of the rejected contract was the return of a cost of living adjustment — once a common feature of union contracts that has become rare in recent years. But it could have been lucrative at a time that inflation is running at levels not seen for decades. It also included improvements in benefits, including an enhanced retirement bonus of up to $50,000.

But unlike the last two UAW contracts at Deere, which were negotiated during difficult times for the company, these negotiations took place at an especially good time for the company.

That might have made reaching an agreement that membership would embrace more difficult. The current financial success at Deere may have led some of the union members to believe they deserved an even better package than the one that was rejected, especially after less lucrative deals in the past.

Revenue for the first three quarters of Deere's fiscal year rose to $32.7 billion, up 11% from the same period of 2019 ahead of the pandemic. Net income soared to a record $4.7 billion, up 84% on the same basis. The company was able to do so while dealing with many of the supply chain issues dogging the auto industry, and it was able to raise its outlook for full-year profits to as much as $5.9 billion.

The company has been hiring during the last year as well, as union-represented jobs at Deere climbed 19% since Nov. 1 of 2020.

Shares of Deere are up 23% year-to-date, although Wednesday's close was off 16% from where shares stood in early September.

The National Nurses Union applauded President Joe Biden's proposal to require that companies with more than 100 employees vaccinate their work force. The American Federation of Teachers once said vaccine mandates weren't necessary, but now embraces them. In Oregon, police and firefighter unions are suing to block a mask mandate for state workers.

The labor movement is torn over vaccine requirements — much like the country as a whole — wanting to both support its political ally in Biden and protect its members against infection but also not wanting to trample their workers' rights.

"Labor unions are a microcosm of the society we live in," said Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of Cornell University's The Worker Institute. "The same political divide we have right now exists within the rank and file of unions."

Video above: Biden announces sweeping new vaccine rules

That divide complicates matters for Biden as he tries to get the delta variant under control. Unions are a key part of the Democratic Party, and Biden has embraced them to burnish his blue-collar, middle-class image. Dissent in Biden's own coalition may make it especially hard for him to implement new vaccination requirements. Some unions representing federal workers already objected to his push for inoculation among the U.S. government workforce, saying such matters involving new workplace requirements and discipline need to be negotiated at the bargaining table.

In a sign of the importance of the issue to the Biden administration, the White House reached out to union presidents before Biden announced his new policy Thursday and will continue to check in with labor leaders, said an administration official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss forthcoming plans.

Biden will require companies with more than 100 workers to give their employees shots or test them weekly. He will also mandate shots for executive branch workers and federal contractors with no testing opt-out. The new requirements could cover 100 million Americans.

Momentum seems to be on the side of mandates. The AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization over much of the country's unions, praised mandates and Biden's plan in a statement released Friday. "The resurgence of COVID-19 requires swift and immediate action, and we commend President Biden for taking additional steps to help put an end to this crisis. Everyone should be vaccinated — as one step in stopping the pandemic," the organization's president, Liz Shuler, said in the statement.

The AFT two weeks ago mandated that its employees in its offices be vaccinated and has become a strong advocate of workplaces requiring vaccinations. "Safety and health have been our north star since the beginning of the pandemic," said Randi Weingarten, the union's president. The union's support for mandates, she added, "creates great cheer among two-thirds of our people and will create agita in one-third of the people."

Still, many labor leaders are hesitant to wade into the mandate issue. Many of the employers of the workers of the Laborer's District Council of Western Pennsylvania, like hospitals, have begun requiring vaccinations. Whenever members complain, the council's business manager, Phillip Ameris, tells them it's not the union's call.

"What we have said is, 'we encourage our members to the get the vaccine,' but what we're telling everyone to do is to go to your physician," Ameris said. "We're trying to keep it nonpolitical. ... Go to your doctor and ask your doctor what is best for you."

Some of the most heated opposition has come from law enforcement unions. In Newark on Thursday, police and fire unions from across New Jersey protested against the mayor's vaccine mandate outside city hall. Police unions from Chicago to Richmond have pushed back against mandates in their cities. In Portland, Oregon, the local police union got its members exempted from the city's vaccine order and a group of police and firefighter unions is suing Gov. Kate Brown to block the state's vaccine requirement for its workers.

Simon Haeder, a political scientist who studies vaccine mandates at Penn State University, said it makes sense that the strongest resistance has come from police and firefighters. "The more conservative side of the labor movement, in terms of politics, are going to be the police and firefighter unions," he said, noting that response to the coronavirus has become highly polarized. "Yes, you're a union person and yes, you want the workplace to get back to normal, but the identity of being a Republican outweighs a lot of those things."

Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said police officers are reacting like most Americans. "You've got, like in the rest of the country, really strong feelings on both sides," Johnson said.

Still, police unions can see the writing on the wall — and want any mandates to be negotiated through the collective bargaining process, Johnson said. "There's a sense from the union perspective that vaccination policy is pretty much going to be mandated," he said. "We want a place at the table when we discuss implementation."

Campos-Medina said mandatory vaccination is such an obviously important public health policy that she expects unions to ultimately accept it. She compared it to bans on indoor smoking, which rankled some unions years ago but is a subject that hardly ever comes up at the bargaining table today. "We will get there," she said.

Weingarten's union had initially, like Biden, opposed vaccine mandates and said persuading workers to get their shots was a better approach. But after the delta variant kicked caseloads higher this summer and filled up hospital beds, AFT reconsidered.

She, too, thinks unions will almost all ultimately coalesce behind a pro-mandate position. But, she notes, it will take time.

"The leadership in unions I talk to know that vaccines are really important," Weingarten said. "What they're trying to do is balance between all these different services and responsibilities we have to our members."

__

Associated Press writers Josh Boak in Washington and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

Federal Labor Department statistics show there were over 4 million more job openings this May compared to last year. That's good news for people who are looking to change jobs or switch careers. And there are a lot of them.

Experts predict a huge wave will leave their employer in the months ahead. 

Jessica Brooks, from Chicago, switched careers mid-pandemic.

"The transition was because I felt kind of stuck in the place that I was in career-wise," Brooks said.

One in four workers plans to look for a job at a different company once the pandemic subsidies, according to a survey by Prudential Financial. And one in five workers switched careers over the past year.

Geleen Antonio left a health care consultant position she's held for six years.

"What's really important for me now is really location independence, the freedom to be able to work out of any city, any country, maybe a coffee shop, even that I didn't have before," Antonio said.

A different survey from LinkedIn this past April found the reason people are switching is that they’re looking for more job flexibility, be it flexible work locations or work hours.

Another top reason? Work-life balance.

Career expert Colleen Sauer says the pandemic has helped us re-prioritize what's important to us.

"COVID put everything into perspective for people," said Sauer. "And what they're overwhelmingly asking for is flexibility. Many employers didn't approach the pandemic in the best way possible for a lot of different reasons. Employees are burnt by that." 

Entrepreneurship is also on the rise. More than half of professionals surveyed by LinkedIn (51%) see themselves either starting a business or freelancing. That includes Andrew Dvorscak — who decided to open a coffee company in Denver. 

 "The pandemic — it was definitely something that pushed me to do it. If I didn't get laid off, I probably would still just be sitting on my hands. Just, oh, it'd be so cool to own a coffee business someday," said Dvorscak.

Haluthai Inhmathong quit her 9-5 marketing job to start her own food pop-up Basil Babe. She says, "working from home kind of puts pressure on a lot of things and you're left alone with your own thoughts. I knew I was unhappy; a job should never make you cry." 

The people Newsy spoke to say, whether it's a career switch or starting a new business, the pandemic sped things up.

Inhmathong says, "if there was no pandemic it was leading up to it. But with the lockdown, it definitely was faster."

This story originally reported by Cat Sandoval on Newsy.com.

As people return to work after historic unemployment during the pandemic, some businesses struggle to hire, leaving small businesses in an especially tough spot.

“The past 15 months or however long it's been has been incredibly surreal,” Beth Gruitch, Co-owner of Crafted Concepts restaurant group, said. “It's been this up and down of hiring and laying off.”

Now -- this restaurant is buzzing with customers again. “We’re busy. People want to go out; they are vaccinated,” she said.

But Gruitch is having trouble hiring at all the restaurants that are part of the group. “We’re having a shortage of staff. There’s like almost 100 job postings, and the amount of people that are here to work in the hospitality industry is very dismal,” she said, explaining that she’s never seen it this bad. “To the point where people aren't showing up for interviews or callbacks.”

While the pay is competitive, the labor pool that existed before the pandemic is no longer there.

“We were always an industry that counts pennies. Well, there's even less of those pennies to count these days,” Gruitch said.

The restaurant industry isn’t the only one experiencing this hiring dilemma.

“There are certain industries more impacted by others, specifically those in construction, manufacturing, transportation. But still those in the restaurant industry services, they’re also having a hard time,” Holly Wade, Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center, said.

The NFIB’s April jobs report showed a record 44% of small business owners with job openings they can’t fill. 92% of these owners report few or no qualified applicants for the positions.

“One in 5 say that they have significant problems with staffing shortages,” Wade explained. This has pushed many owners to offer more in a competitive marketplace.

“Hiring bonuses, referral bonuses, increasing pay, especially for those entry-level positions, are generally what we’re seeing as far as incentives for small business owners to try and attract talent,” she said.

Economist Victor Bennett said there are many theories as to why we see this problem.

“There's a set of people who are going to argue its exacerbated by government assistance...there’s a set of people who are going to say...that the issue is driven by unfair labor practices,” Bennett said. He said there are a few reasons he’s seeing as contributing factors. One is the skills gap, more openings for a job than qualified people. This idea is backed up by the results of the NFIB’s jobs report. Other factors relate to the pandemic.

“A lot of skilled workers had to leave the workforce to provide dependent care,” Bennett said.

And then there’s the devastating impact COVID-19 had on specific industries.

“What some people call an echo effect, of people leaving industries that were affected in the pandemic and find it hard to return. This is happening, for example, wIth people who used to work at restaurants,” Bennett said.

The skills gap is something Georgiann Jaworskyj is experiencing.

“I haven't found anyone that has the experience that could just come into the office and kind of fill those shoes of the girls that left,” she said. She owns a small business travel agency in New Jersey. “It’s been a rough year, but we’ve gotten through, and now I’m so busy I don't know what to do with myself.”

Small businesses are doing what they can to hire people to meet the rising demand from consumers. Their one request is to have patience.

“Be kind, be gentle, because everybody is working hard to try to get back up to speed from where they were last year,” Jaworskyj said.

“In the here and now, service is going to be slow,” Gruitch said.

The

Department of Labor

said Thursday that 4.4 million Americans filed initial unemployment claims in the last week. That brings the total number of initial claims filed in the previous five weeks to 26 million.

That figure marks the second straight week in which initial claims fell. However, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, initial unemployment claims never came close to topping 1 million in a single week.

Colorado and New York both saw initial claims increase by more than 50,000 in the last week. On the other end of the spectrum, California saw its number of claims decrease by more than a quarter million, and Michigan saw claims decrease by 166,000.

The department's report comes amid dire times for the world economy. Earlier this week, at least one listing for crude oil began selling in the negatives, as demand for fuel has plummeted and distributors have run out of storage space.

Though some state governors have indicated that they plan to

lift lockdown restrictions

and allow non-essential businesses to open as early as the end of the month, others have indicated restrictions could remain in place through the end of May. Earlier this week, CDC Robert R. Redfield said he expects

more outbreaks of the coronavirus into the fall,

meaning the U.S. economy likely won't be working a full capacity for the foreseeable future.