Suddenly Amtrak is hiring alot of mechanical persons. Note on this link. NOTE: Some of the openings are for more than one person. It often cannot be determining by the listenings how many openings.
I worked for the PRR in the '50s. They made me an offer. I chose to not accept it. I think I’ll pass on this oportunity. PRR is NO more. Amtrak looks a little like PRR.
I disagree, the normal cycle for a Calendar Year based business is to discuss and allocate budgets for the 1st Quarter. Interviews to fill positions do not usually start until March with a target date to fill of April or later. They typically only hire prior to April if they had the position open for a while or it’s backfill for unplanned departures.
There is another possibility about CLT. Since these positions have been advertized at NOL as well maybe the CLT hires will supplement the ones that originate at NOL?
The California Zephyr is the only Western Train that carries it’s own restroom cleaning crew…not sure why. Would be interesting to find out if it is an old work rule that predates Amtrak.
I suspect that this hiring streak will continue. With almost 1/2 million new or repeat cases a day and a 7 day average 2250 deaths a day there are going to be places where there will not be C-19 free crew. These numbers do have a few break thru cases per 100. This is going to have an effect on T&E crew availability. Fortunately the few that will have to go to the hospital quickly recover by being vaccinated. For the next few weeks then expect more cancellations which are in the cards.
The Feds already did research on this, labor shortage is related to pandemic but not to people getting sick. They found basically three large deficits among many of folks leaving the workforce for good or changing jobs…
Women not returning to the workforce in the numbers they left. They are attributing this to cuts in Child Care as well as home schooling requirements.
Retirees no longer hanging on past retirement age or seeing another job or career to start. They attribute this to earlier robust equity markets making nest eggs larger than they were.
People that wanted to switch jobs before the pandemic but there was not enough opportunity at their skill level. Some went back to college and others found positions opening at lower skill levels and just upped and quit their current job to search for something they liked better either via changing career fields or going back to school.
Conclusion is the labor shortage is not going to correct itself anytime soon.
I suspect there was a LOT of that in the restaurant and hospitality business. Certainly forced closures of the same gave a lot of people the impetus to look for greener pastures elsewhere and to never look back.
The labor situation will straighten itself out eventually but obviously it won’t happen overnight.
The Piedmonts all overnight at Capitol Yard in Raleigh. The Carolinian overnights in Charlotte and is first train out in the AM at 6:45. (Northbound Crescent is out at 5:20 AM, but takes a different route north of Greensboro)