COMP NEWS – The supply chain industry has growing concerns over the upcoming holiday season. Many crucial infrastructure job positions remain empty.

Supply chains across the country and in Middle Tennessee are facing many challenges when it comes to both rising prices and shipping delays. I’m very concerned. There’s a surge that usually happens during the holiday season. So your package delivery, retail folks, that’s when they do a lot of their supplemental hiring. And they need those folks just to handle the holiday purchases,” said Syracuse University Professor Patrick Penfield. “So if there’s any advice I’d give your viewers is this is to buy early for the holiday season because there will be a lack of availability and a lack of choices as the holiday season progresses.

Due to a lack of truck drivers, prices of goods around the country have begun to rise. Around 70% of all goods in the U.S. are transported by trucks. The time of year where demand is the highest is just around the corner, and suppliers will struggle to meet this demand.

I don’t think people realize how reliant we are on truck drivers and we already had a truck driver shortage probably for the past 15 years. When COVID hit, a whole bunch of truck drivers retired. And then when things started to reopen, we found that we again, couldn’t find truck drivers. So this has really been kind of the big issue,” Penfield said. “When you don’t have truck drivers, it’s really difficult to get the stuff that you want. And again, that causes shortages and availability issues. And that’s some of the things that we’re seeing absolutely — other labor issues, supermarkets, retail change, package delivery, everybody is really struggling to find labor.

UPS is hiring 1,500 people In Nashville, USPS needs 200 mail handler assistants, and Amazon is aiming to hire 6,600 new hires in Tennessee.

Based on strategies implemented by other companies to combat the labor shortage, these three companies will need to offer pay benefits to fill these positions. The labor market is more competitive than ever right now, and companies will have to fight hard for new hires.

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