Turnover, complaints to EEOC ebb as recession swells industry labor pool

James “Chip” Ricker recently received a job offer in a late-night call, putting an end to his hunt for a general manager’s position and the need to start dipping into his 401(k) retirement fund to cover his family’s living expenses.

An Applebee’s franchisee picked up Ricker, a resident of Savage, Minn., in early June after he was laid off in April from another Applebee’s where he had been the GM for 14 years.

Ricker, 46, who has some 30 years of industry experience, may be considered one of the lucky ones to have found a new position after only two months. After a decade of high turnover and a chronic need for workers, the restaurant industry is experiencing a flooded labor pool, lowered turnover and a smaller number of discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—all thanks to the recession.

At the same time, the economic downturn has turned the worlds of experienced workers upside down, as they suddenly find themselves looking for a job in an environment where technology has changed job hunting markedly.

Ricker, who hadn’t had to look for a job since he was 16, made a 30-second interview clip of himself with the help of a recruiting firm.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever used a recruiter,” he said. “I also applied online and was able to get a few interviews.”

The number of unemployed people in the United States was up to 14.5 million in May, and the national unemployment rate hit 9.4 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, 7 million people have lost their jobs.

According to the BLS, the unemployment rate for the leisure and hospitality industry was 11.9 percent in May, up from 8.4 percent a year earlier.

Not only are more older people out of work—the unemployment rate is 6.8 percent for those ages 45 to 54, compared with 3.8 percent in May 2007—the jobless rate for teenagers was 22.7 percent. The industry’s favorite employee demographic has long been 18- to 24-year-olds. According to the National Restaurant Association, more than 40 percent of those in food-preparation-and-service jobs are under 25.

Discrimination claims against restaurant companies dropFilings, by category, for fiscal years 2007 and 2008

Given that the labor market is teeming with applicants, those people who are employed are clinging to their jobs and not making waves. Turnover has slowed down. At least 15 percent of surveyed restaurant companies did not actively pursue management employees in the first quarter of this year, according to the People Report Workforce Index released in April. People Report is a Dallas-based firm that tracks the personnel-related actions of member restaurant companies.

Discrimination complaints against operators also fell in every category in 2008 compared to 2007, the EEOC reported. The total number of complaints was 3,122 last year, compared to 3,907 in 2007. Even the category that historically has had the highest number of complaints from industry members, sex discrimination, managed to drop from 1,654 in 2007 to 1,321 last year.

David Grinberg, an EEOC spokesman in Washington, D.C., said he only can speculate on reasons for the decrease in complaints and one may be the economy.

“No one wants to lose their job during a severe recession,” Grinberg said. “Some may say to themselves, ‘It’s not worth it to come forward to complain and risk retaliation or losing my job,’ so they put up with the situation.”

He added that the EEOC has been working with the industry to improve training and awareness to prevent discrimination through programs like its Youth at Work Initiative and partnerships with the NRA.

Industry recruiters are advising job seekers to be patient and network like crazy. They also encourage veterans to downplay their age and learn to use social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook.

“It used to be that job seekers had the upper hand, but now they don’t know where to start,” said Amanda Hite, founder of the Talent Revolution recruiting firm. “I had one person who hadn’t had to look for a job in 15 years. The last time he looked for a job, you looked in the newspaper. The tools and resources to find jobs are drastically different than when they went to look for their first job.”

However, Web searches can be exasperating, said Dean Runyan, a 49-year-old in Los Angeles who has been searching for a general manager’s position for the past nine months. He had managed and opened Bamboo Club restaurants near Phoenix before moving to California in 2002 to get into real estate. He has wanted to return to restaurants for some time.

“I was good at it; I enjoyed it,” he said. “If you manage restaurants at one time you can manage them again. It’s not like I’ve forgotten customer service, or how to train people and manage people. But it’s frustrating dealing with stuff over the Internet and not getting a call back or interviews.”

Runyan wonders if he should downplay his years of experience. Some recruiters advise applicants to tout a positive, energetic attitude to absolve an employer’s concerns about a candidate’s ability to handle demanding restaurant jobs.

Often industry veterans think they need to put all their experiences on a résumé, but if an unqualified person reviews the résumé, they may get hung up on dates and the candidate’s age, said David Rose, vice president of Yellow Dog Recruiting.

“I do not think someone with gray hair is going to be disqualified if they demonstrate passion and energy and enthusiasm for what they do,” he said.— [email protected]