Students hired for custodial, cafeteria jobs at Missouri schools amid labor shortage
Some Missouri high school students will be paid to work for their district as administration struggles to find other applicants amid a nationwide labor shortage.
Earlier this month, Northwest School District in Jefferson County hosted a job fair to hire students, according to an announcement from Northwest R-I High School. Students could interview for jobs in food service, child care, custodial services and maintenance.
“Some of the positions have been short-staffed since last year,” district chief operating officer Kim Hawk told KTVI. “We just have struggled to find any help at all, and if you drive around and look at the help-wanted signs everywhere, you know the competition is stiff. So, we knew we had to come up with some other plan.”
The Missouri district was hiring for nine open positions during the Nov. 3 job fair, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported, and about 25 students showed up to interview in the school cafeteria.
Hawk said the district is hiring more students than they had open positions for, KTVI reported, so it can be flexible with student hours.
Each hired student can work a maximum of 19 hours and will be paid the staff rate ranging from $9.75 to $14.68 an hour as they get “real-world experience,” according to the Post-Dispatch.
“I want to get into the workforce,” 15-year-old sophomore Mason Follett told the newspaper. “I don’t want to rely on my parents for things.”
As of Nov. 9, the students who were hired are in the onboarding process, according to KTVI.
Industries across the country say they are facing worker shortages amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and many are offering signing bonuses and increased wages.
The unemployment rate for Jefferson County was 2.5% in September, which is the last monthly data set available. That’s lower than the state’s rate of 3.8% that same month.
Jefferson County is part of the St. Louis metropolitan area in eastern Missouri.
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 12:57 PM.