There’s a large group of hardworking individuals who’ve been ignored. Media reports covering corporate plans for the return-to-work are nearly exclusively focused on white-collar professionals, particularly marquee names, such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. I’m guilty of this too.
Bankers, accountants, lawyers, software developers and big-shot corporate executives worked relatively comfortably from home over the last year. At the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, the world applauded and gave nominal bonuses to frontline workers who did our shopping, food delivering and other risky face-to-face jobs. After a while, we lost interest and the wage increases ended.
Another forgotten group consists of all of the people who kept the offices clean, safe and in good shape. These are the janitors, cleaners, maintenance workers, security guards, mailroom clerks and other relatively lower-paid workers that most office professionals don’t think too much about—unless there is a problem that needs to be taken care of right away.
Oftentimes, they are contractors, paid by outside third parties. Many of these folks lost their jobs or had their hours severely cut to nearly nothing. It was a tough time for them. With over 80 million Americans out of work, there weren’t too many jobs available and these workers relied upon unemployment benefits.
Now, the tide has turned. The people who make the office buildings run are in high demand. The economy has started booming, as vaccines have been delivered to millions of Americans, states reopened, the trillion-dollar stimulus packages made its way into the hands of people and businesses and companies set forth their return-to-work plans.
According to Indeed, the large job aggregation site, job postings have increased rapidly in low work-from-home sectors, like cleaning and sanitation. A quick search for “janitors” on Indeed shows listings for 60,423 jobs and “cleaners” 130,061 listings.
As a society, we’ve learned the hard way that it’s important to focus on health-safety and cleanliness. This newly emerged focus may be a boon for blue-collar workers, such as janitors and cleaners.
PeopleReady, a division of publicly traded TrueBlue, specializes in quick and reliable on-demand labor and a wide range of blue-collar industries. A corporate spokesperson said that PeopleReady is seeing a “high demand for temporary cleaning workers right now,” as companies are starting to bring back workers. It’s mission critical for management to ensure the health and well-being of their employees, as they’re required to return to an office setting. Although Covid-19 cases and deaths have substantially fallen, a large number of people are still leery and concerned about contracting and spreading the virus.
The vast number of jobs posted online for cleaning, maintenance, janitorial and related positions has skyrocketed, in correlation with the calls for companies to open up. According to labor analytics firm Emsi, in the last 30 days, there were roughly over 158,000 active jobs posted in the U.S. related to jobs involving keeping workplaces, offices and companies clean and safe.
The jobs most in demand include housekeepers, custodians, janitors, general cleaners and cleaning technicians. On average, the jobs are paying about $14 and roughly $28,000 annually.
- Cleaning crew member jobs saw an increase of 1,620% in the last 30 days.
- Housekeeping associate jobs for retail spaces soared 300%.
- Custodial assistant jobs rose 200%.
- Building cleaner, janitor and general cleaner jobs jumped 80%.
Another hot related sector is the job market for security guards. In light of the chaotic, sometimes violent year we’ve had, in which tensions ran high, it’s understandable that companies would want to also keep their staff physically safe. LinkedIn, the social media platform geared toward middle and upper-level professionals, saw a 60% year-over-year increase for in-office security jobs posted.
Taryn Owen, president of PeopleReady said, “As both companies and employees look to resume in-person work, enhanced cleaning services are a vital part of the new business as usual, and it’s helping to fuel an area of job growth.” Owen added, “For those who are seeking work or need to earn some extra income, as they get back on their feet, there are jobs available—but you have to know where to look. Cleaning-related jobs are one of those key sectors right now.”
Source: Forbes
