Unemployment rates decrease, but a Scott restaurant owner is having trouble hiring after COVID

LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) -- In the last two years, unemployment rates in Louisiana have greatly decreased since the pandemic. However, the decrease in unemployment rates has a downside for some employers.

In 2020, just one month after the pandemic hit Louisiana, the state's unemployment rates tripled, skyrocketing to 13%. Now, two years later, Louisiana is seeing some of its lowest rates, as low as 4.3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Department of Labor.

Although the decrease means more citizens are back to work, the owner of Super Taters and More restaurant in Scott, Jerry Bobb said it's creating challenges.

"At any point in time we didn't necessarily [have to] participate in these job fair events. It was more organic," Bobb explained. "But now over the course of the last few years, we are finding that we've got to get a bit more creative in having to find employees now."

For many, the pandemic offered the convenience of working from home or became an open door for entrepreneurship.

"People found new ways to make a living. Online, they don't necessarily have to show up to a job or put in the amount of hours that they once had to put," Bobb said. "As employers, we've had to change with it."

Bobb said although people have found more convenient ways to make money. It's a repeated cycle.

"For every action, there is a reaction. Even if you decide to become an entrepreneur you go from being someone who is looking for a job to now having an establishment. But you still need people to work for you," Bobb said. "The same struggle that you feel that you had, now you've got to take and put someone else in that position and they are asking the same thing as you."