The summer landscaping season is getting underway with a shortage of workers caused by low unemployment rates and the cap on seasonal immigrant workers, according to companies in Ohio. On Sunday, Sandy Munley, executive director of the Ohio Landscape Association, told the Akron Beacon Journal that attracting seasonal workers in 2018 has become an issue.
The unemployment rate in the US, which has fallen to 3.8%, the lowest in 18 years, has cut the number of people looking for work. But a much bigger issue for employers in the industry is the changes to the H-2B US visa program, which has reduced the number of seasonal immigrant workers permitted to come into the US, according to the paper.
The number of immigrant seasonal workers allowed to come to the US per annum is capped at 66,000 for the country via a decades-old law, but previously returning workers were not counted against the cap. That exception is no longer the case this year, resulting in a shortage of workers despite the limit being waived by the US government to enable 15,000 extra workers to enter the US.
In 2018, demand was almost three times ahead of supply, according to the Virginia based Seasonal Employment Alliance’s executive director, Gray Delany. Many companies in the US have turned to workers from Puerto Rico this year, as they are US citizens and can thus work as long as they wish with no travel restrictions, but it is not enough to fix the problem.