GREEN BAY, Wis. (NBC 26) — The number of Americans looking for work is shrinking by the week. But Chris Jobs, who works at Amcor in Oshkosh, says his company still needs to fill over 600 open positions.
"It's tough out there, but we have a ton of opportunities," the engineering and maintenance manager said. "We're really having a hard time finding people."
Initial unemployment claims across the U.S. dropped by 14,000 to 269,000 last week, a new pandemic low. With fewer candidates, Amcor packaging has raised its starting hourly pay to $17.
"We're really looking to build our pool," Jobs said. "So we're opening up internships, looking to reach out to youth apprentices through the high schools."
But around this time last year, almost 15,000 Wisconsinites filed for first-time unemployment. At the end of October, there were well under 6,000.
"We try to letter customers every day, and not being able to get product out the door because we don't have the people to actually produce it for us, that's our biggest fear," Jobs said.
Fighting to bring on eight new full-time workers,Great Northern Laminations in Appleton boosted its starting pay to $20 an hour.
"We increased our hourly wage earlier this year, so we got some more applicants," HR manager Lori Rausch said.
Still, it hasn't filled the need. Rausch says the current pool of applicants is scary.
"We don't have enough people to work our 24-6 shift that we have," she said. "We used to be 24-5, but the demand is high. We've had to add on extra shifts, extra crews."
After all, Rausch says the show can't go on without employees.
"Our people are our greatest resource and the people that we have there really enjoy their job," she said. "They enjoy their work."
For now, many Northeast Wisconsin companies can only remain hopeful for the future.
