Wendy Marcus was halfway through a recent meeting with senior leaders at Newell Brands Inc. when word came that she had to leave immediately.
The Newell factory that makes Yankee Candles was again short of workers, and the factory needed Ms. Marcus, an R&D manager, on the assembly line to pack the famously fragrant trinkets into gift baskets.
“I said to them, ‘I have to work overtime,’ and they just said, ‘Okay, thanks and go ahead,’ ‘Ms. Marcus recalls.
American manufacturers have gotten better at protecting their factory floors and curbing infections from Covid-19 in their workforce. Despite the progress, they still struggle to find enough people to man their factories. Shortages of workers are choking supply chains and slowing the supply of everything from auto parts to candles just as demand increases.
One of the strange effects of Covid-19: Despite the high unemployment rate, many employers struggle to hire enough employees. The unemployment rate remained stable at 6.7% in December. Weekly initial claims for unemployment benefits from state programs, a sign of layoffs, have also remained stable at around 790,000. That’s down sharply from a peak of nearly 7 million in March, but still about four times the pre-pandemic average.