Patrick McCutchan’s family has overseen five hot dog carts, off and on, since the early 1980s. He says a fast-talking hot dog vendor in the right location can pocket as much as $25 per hour. Even so, the family business is mostly on hold. His problem? He can’t find workers.

“It’s a job,” said McCutchan, of St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood, “but nobody’s willing to work.”

Most millennials balk at the prospect of spending their midmornings to midafternoons on a downtown street corner, spreading sauerkraut. McCutchan’s younger contractors have sometimes shown up to work under the influence of a controlled substance, if they show up at all.

With the Nov. 8 presidential election just days away, employers such as McCutchan say they’re disappointed that the political candidates have focused more on creating jobs and less on worker shortages — an issue that looms large nationwide, and especially in Minnesota, where unemployment (4 percent) is well below the national average (5 percent). It should be noted that the official unemployment rate counts only as a percentage of people who are actively seeking work and not those who have dropped out of the job search. But no matter to employers, who say the jobs are out there.

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U.S. adds 156,000 jobs, unemployment rate 5% “You’re seeing a big growth in the economy, and not necessarily the labor supply to keep pace,” said Kathy Harrell-Latham, director of public policy for the Minnesota Recruiting and Staffing Association. Skilled freelancers in the “gig economy” are moving from project to project and employer to employer, she said, while less-skilled applicants are demanding higher wages despite limited experience.

High-profile skilled-labor shortages in the high-tech, medical and health-science fields have been well documented. But these areas are far from alone in feeling the labor crunch. Both nationally and locally, some restaurant positions, such as line cooks, already are difficult to fill. The story is the same in industries such as truck driving, construction and prison work. At some point in the not-too-distant future, fewer workers could mean fewer companies opening new stores, restaurants, offices and factories in Minnesota and elsewhere throughout the U.S. — and, ironically, fewer jobs.

Recent surveys indicate that by the year 2020, the Twin Cities metro area alone will be short 120,000 workers — assuming everyone of working age (16-65) is in the workforce, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). The problem is, they’re not.

And the reasons — which could range from generational attitudes toward work to stagnant wages — aren’t entirely clear. “It used to be prime-aged males were either in school, or they worked, period,” said Christopher Phelan, an economics professor at the University of Minnesota. “Labor force participation rates of prime-aged males has gone down. It’s a bit of a puzzle.”

Meanwhile, training and recruiting workers that are historically underrepresented in a particular industry — such as women in the sciences, or people of color in finance — could help fill the void. “In order to compete and meet our needs, we need to identify and engage untapped, well-trained talent in our community,” said Shane Delaney, a DEED spokesman. “That means all Minnesotans regardless of background or ability.”

‘MILLENNIALS WON’T WASH DISHES’

Experts say even slow-growth, factory-based industries bringing in increasing automation will experience shortages in skilled labor because of a high number of retirements and limited interest from younger workers. Millennials — generally thought of as workers born between 1980 and 1999 — now represent the largest segment of the U.S. workforce, and their skills, interests and workplace habits are far different from those of their boomer parents.

Analysts with the Conference Board, a national business research group, recently forecast that over the next 15 years “few trends, if any, will have as much impact on businesses as the tightening labor markets.” Noting wide variation from state to state, the eight-page report, titled “Help Wanted,” lists the industries most likely to suffer the worst labor shortages: the health care industry (therapy aides, surgeons, physicians and nurses); “STEM” jobs (mathematical sciences, engineering and computers); and skilled labor (plant and system operators, rail transportation and machinists).

Meanwhile, several Twin Cities restaurateurs say they’re already feeling the pinch when it comes to finding kitchen help. “I see applicants whose pay expectations don’t match up with their performance,” said Steve Lott, owner of Big River Pizza in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood. “They might want $14 or $15 an hour, but when it comes down to it, they can’t do the job. You have to pay your dues. … The employees I do have now are exceptional.”

Steve Hesse, who opened the Libertine restaurant in Minneapolis’ Uptown, said it’s been difficult finding qualified candidates to work the kitchen at Pajarito, a restaurant he’s opening next month in the old Glockenspiel spot on West Seventh Street. “It’s been an ongoing issue for the last year, maybe two years,” said Hesse, noting the Twin Cities restaurant boom is sucking up talent. “There’s a lot of restaurants out there.”

Downtown St. Paul bar manager Jon Cole was willing to pay experienced kitchen staff up to $15 per hour to flip hamburgers at Bedlam Lowertown, a St. Paul theater-bar that recently announced it will close Nov. 2. Even before the restaurant’s money woes were widely known, he got precious few takers. “Three or four years ago, if I had put up a ‘help wanted’ sign, I’d get 50 to 100 applications in a week,” Cole said. “Millennials won’t wash dishes.”

McCutchan’s main problem, meanwhile, is less with feelings of entitlement and more about finding honest workers who have a strong footing to staff his hot dog carts. Some stole cash or equipment. “This year, our main worker was in government housing. For a while, he was homeless. He’s been with us for five years. But you have to be very flexible with who we have. We take chances on people.”

WORKPLACE GENERATION GAP

It wasn’t always this way. The post-World War II population boom filled American factories and corporate offices alike with workers born between 1946 and 1964. That “baby boom” generation today ranges in age from 53 to 70.

Many boomers delayed retirement when their home values and investment accounts took a hit during the national recession of 2007 to 2009, but more are finally saying goodbye to jobs that, in some cases, they’ve held continuously for decades. As mid-to-late career professionals — Gen Xers born in the 1960s and ’70s — move up to replace them, employers say that’s left a vacuum among positions that were traditionally filled by younger, more entry-level workers.

“It’s not just pizza shops,” said Harrell-Latham, of the staffing association. “It’s the big-box shops, it’s the technical jobs. They’re having to work twice as hard to fill openings than they would have had to just two years ago.”

To recruit seasonal workers to its Twin Cities locations in advance of the holiday rush, Minneapolis-based Target Corp. last year had staff greet patrons at informational tables at the front of each store during evening “hiring events” on Fridays and Saturdays.

This year, Target held similar hiring events on Oct. 14 and 15 at all 1,800 retail locations nationwide. “Seasonal hiring continues to be a challenge in Minneapolis because of the low unemployment,” said Kristy Welker, a spokeswoman for the national retail chain.

Rhonda Harman, a human resources director with Edina-based grocers Lunds and Byerly’s, said her company has made a concerted effort, using everything from billboards to radio, to recruit new workers to replace seasoned employees lost to retirement. Despite the loss of talent, she’s continually impressed by the youngest teen applicants.

“The 14-year-olds — they’re not part of the millennial group — and they’re coming in with résumés,” she said.

UNREALISTIC DEMANDS, AND DEBT

So what’s the problem finding folks to hold those jobs? Some of it, say experts, has to do with worker expectations. Millennials in particular are demanding a higher quality of life and better balance between work and play than their parents did. They’re choosier to the point of seeming disloyal (64 percent of millennial workers in a Deloitte survey said they would switch employers within five years if they had the chance). They are more mobile and delaying marriage and children — key responsibilities that traditionally had convinced younger generations to take work as they could get it. Millennials want employers to provide more training and leadership opportunities. And in some cases, they expect more pay for less work.

“Everyone wants to make $20 to $25 an hour, and they would if they were good at it,” said McCutchan, the hot dog cart proprietor. “If they’re not, they’re going to make $10 an hour.”

But the increasingly outsized costs of housing and education play a likely role. Saddled with student debt and unlikely to be able to afford a home in their early 20s — on top of widespread fascination with pricey technology and $4 lattes — many middle-class young people have moved in with their parents or other family and don’t need a second job flipping burgers or washing dishes to pay the rent. For the first time in the modern era, living with parents has edged out other living arrangements for Americans ages 18 to 34, according to the Pew Research Center.

IMMIGRATION AND WAGES

But another class of workers, immigrants, must be added to the equation. They don’t necessarily have parents’ basements to live in, many have families, and many will take jobs that middle-class American-born young adults won’t. Here, some employers say the growing legal and political complexities involved in obtaining refugee and worker visas has created yet another challenge. Applications for permanent residency “green cards” and temporary worker visas (H-2B and H-1B) face huge federal backlogs. Critics counter that companies such as Disney have laid off American workers so they can bring in cheaper temporary labor from abroad, sometimes forcing U.S.-born employees to train their foreign replacements.

Immigration patterns are in flux, which affects worker availability. As the Mexican economy has grown, more Mexican-born workers are leaving the U.S. than are entering. “You see (presidential candidate Donald) Trump talking about building a wall and kicking immigrants out,” said Cole, the bar manager. “It’s like, no, we need them, man. That’s anti-small business.”

Meanwhile, like millennials, people in blue-collar jobs, or faced with taking them, are demanding higher wages — but in a different way. Largely immigrant minority populations who clean office buildings and stores in the Twin Cities have rallied recently for higher wages and unionization, echoing a movement that’s taken hold nationwide.

And it’s no wonder. After adjusting for inflation, some studies have found that average wages across the country peaked more than 40 years ago. In other words, the labor shortage could just be a market-driven wage correction.

“What markets do is they find for each category of skill level a wage that causes there to not be a labor shortage,” said Phelan, the labor economist, who predicts rising wages will help the poorest workers. “That is probably a good thing. We’ve had pretty anemic wage growth. … A tight labor market has an OK societal implication, especially on the low end.”

GOVERNMENT STEPS IN

All of this could inspire employers to raise wage rates after years of stagnation or loosen standards on hiring felons and applicants with bad credit and gaps in their employment histories.

But even employers who don’t want to offer workers more money to flip burgers or stock shelves may soon have to. Cities and states from Minnesota to Seattle and New York are mandating increases to the minimum wage. In some cases, benefits, too, are improving by fiat. Some jurisdictions, such as Minneapolis and St. Paul, recently required private employers to offer paid sick leave to most workers.

It remains to be seen whether better wages and benefits will attract more and better workers, or simply inspire employers to run leaner staffs, further embrace automation, and pass the costs on to their customers. What’s clear is that unfilled positions hurt economic productivity. In February, the Minnesota Management and Budget Office noted that “job growth is becoming increasingly constrained by the impact of an aging population on the market supply of labor.”

In other words, unless Minnesota can draw or engage more workers, and soon, fewer companies may open their doors in the land of 10,000 lakes.