US just lost 500,000 hospitality jobs, but Myrtle Beach could soon face worker shortage
Looking at tourism and hospitality around the nation — 500,000 lost jobs in December, restaurants closed to indoor dining, movie theaters without movies — it’s easy to wonder if the industry will ever recover.
Myrtle Beach itself after New Year’s has been a ghost town.
Yet, there’s reason to hope that the tourism economy’s downturn, at least in South Carolina’s “redneck riviera,” will be temporary. In fact, it’s even likely that the region could face a shortage of workers in the spring and summer.
Winter was a time some business owners in the Grand Strand feared for months. Cold weather and fewer things to do often drastically reduce the number of visitors in the visitor-dependent region.
So when the federal government’s jobs report came out last week, painting a stark picture of the hospitality economy, it looked like the economic fears of industry leaders had come true.
Myrtle Beach — much of South Carolina’s tourism economy, for that matter — loses hundreds of jobs naturally during the fall and winter each year. It’s supposed to.
Many restaurants, shops and entertainment venues close their doors in the fall, some after Labor Day, others not until December. They don’t reopen until March or even May. If they don’t close, they still reduce the size of their staff to accommodate the natural decrease in visitor volume during the off-season.
Many of those workers, like students, are not in town anyway or don’t want to work. Those here full time are used to the ebb and flow of tourism employment.
“Going into the first of the year, it’s probably the slowest time for us for the entire tourism season,” said Stephen Greene, CEO of the Myrtle Beach Hospitality Association. “So, we’d already been shedding jobs, probably have already shed jobs (before December), maybe more than what you’re seeing on the national level.”
These jobs always bounce back.
After disappearing in the fall, tourism jobs return each spring in full force, right as the tourists themselves are starting to fill the Grand Strand’s small beach towns once again. Local hospitality leaders are hopeful the same pattern will emerge this year, too, even as the coronavirus pandemic persists.
A worker shortage
With millions unemployed nationwide during the coronavirus pandemic, the concept of an employee shortage can seem far-fetched.
However, Greene said there’s plenty of evidence that it will happen in Myrtle Beach.
Prior to the pandemic, the hospitality industry, especially in Myrtle Beach, struggled to find workers. Unemployment was at record lows across the country, especially in South Carolina.
“Before COVID-19, it was the biggest issue,” Greene said of the industry’s struggle to find workers.
Last March, Myrtle Beach shed thousands of jobs at the start of the pandemic as hotels shut down and restaurants closed to indoor dining.
But South Carolina businesses quickly reopened, and hundreds of thousands of people flooded into Myrtle Beach, one of the only places on the East Coast that people could go for leisure and entertainment. New York and much of the northeast remained shut down.
This created the opposite problem: a shortage of hotel, restaurant and retail staff to handle the volume of visitors, Greene said. Many businesses couldn’t find people to work, the Sun News reported this summer. Some laid-off employees feared exposing themselves or their family to the coronavirus if they did go back to work, and federal unemployment protections ensured they didn’t have to go back if they didn’t want to.
The beach also didn’t have international workers it normally depends on, commonly students with temporary visas, last summer due to federal restrictions on travel from other countries during the pandemic. Even if those restrictions are completely lifted by this summer, people still might not want to travel to the U.S. because of its handling of the pandemic, many news outlets reported last year.
Myrtle Beach would see a few more ups and downs of employment, from tourists running away after the area was labeled a “hot spot” for coronavirus spread in June to some of the highest tourist volumes ever for October and Thanksgiving. Greene called it a “roller coaster” — businesses always either had too many or too few workers.
In a few months, though, as vaccines become more widespread and the weather warms up, Greene expects the Grand Strand to see another flood of visitors.
“Right now, for instance, we would have been having a lot of Canadians that would be in the marketplace that can’t, obviously, come here because the borders are still closed, which is obviously having an impact,” he said. “In the same sense, Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand are well positioned because of the fact that we’re a significant drive market and we have significant air travel access, domestically.”
Those factors — combined with South Carolina’s insistence on keeping businesses open compared to other popular tourist destinations like New York or California — will make Myrtle Beach a target destinations for stir-crazy tourists, Greene said.
“We’ve been fairly consistent with what the government” restrictions are, Greene said. “We’re not we’re not up one day, down one day. Open one day, closed one day. A lot of these other states across the country are. One minute outdoor dining is open, one minute outdoor dining closes, one minute you can stay open. We’ve not really had to deal with that. We’ve had a much more steady year.”
As a result, “our community is well positioned to garner some of this pent-up demand,” Greene said.
It’s impossible to know when this will happen. For Myrtle Beach, some of the highest tourist volumes didn’t arrive until Memorial Day last year, nearly a month after beaches, hotels and restaurants reopened. Memorial Day is the “official” start to tourist season, but tourists normally start filling up bars, restaurants and hotels as early as the middle of April.
Factors including coronavirus fatigue, how widespread the vaccine is, the weather and restrictions on return travel for out-of-state visitors could all affect when the flood arrives, but Greene said he and other members of the hospitality industry are sure that it will.
Not knowing when the surge of tourists will come to town, however, is the reason Myrtle Beach could end up facing a worker shortage, Greene said. It’s difficult to plan to have staff for an event on the horizon you can’t see.
Visitors also could arrive before the majority of workers feel comfortable working. The positivity rate for coronavirus tests in South Carolina has been above 25% for weeks, sometimes even reaching as high as 34%. Horry County also has been running dangerously low on available hospital beds, according to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.
As of Monday afternoon, the county had only 48 hospital beds available. Nearly one-third of the more than 600 hospital inpatients were coronavirus patients. Neighboring Georgetown County, with a much lower total hospital capacity, had only 28 beds available out about 200.
Horry has two ICU beds available, while Georgetown has just one.
While unlikely, a sudden influx of visitors could easily overwhelm hospitals in the event of an outbreak.
That’s why major medical providers like Tidelands Health have been urging both locals and tourists to stay home and reduce their risk of exposure to the virus for months.
Timed well, however, a quick rush of tourists coming to Myrtle Beach could be the antidote the region needs to recover from the economic effects of the pandemic, Greene said.
“We have an opportunity,” Greene said, “for summer of this year (to) have a significant spike in travel and tourism. People are ready to get out there.”
Stimulus could save struggling businesses
Nevertheless, the absence of tourists during the winter and slowdowns of last year could still serve a death knell to small businesses who didn’t have the cash to survive until spring. But because so many businesses normally slow down or close altogether during this time of year, it could be months before anyone can tell how the coronavirus pandemic truly affected the Myrtle Beach economy.
While he remains hopeful, Greene says, “Don’t get me wrong, our industry is the hardest hit industry in the world, flat out. And we have lost a significant amount of revenue, money, resources, taxes, staff, everything along those lines.”
Outside factors like additional stimulus packages from a Democratic presidency and Congress could save those struggling businesses. Congress’ Paycheck Protection Program loans saved many businesses around the country from complete failure, and a third round of money just came through for it.
For right now, “it’s so early in this game,” Greene said, to know what will happen.
“Will a number of them possibly not come back online next year?” he said. “Yes, I mean, that’s the reality. But do we know if there’s any additional stimulus packages and this latest round of PPP? I mean, I was talking to restaurants earlier in the year, and even the first round of PPP just allowed them to survive through the end of the year. So, what else is coming?”
This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 3:18 PM with the headline "US just lost 500,000 hospitality jobs, but Myrtle Beach could soon face worker shortage."
