The end of the year is quickly approaching. With it, seasonal sales and shopping are at an all-year high, and therefore, so is fulfillment. Let’s take a look at some of the trends we’ve seen throughout the year, and we expect to continue into 2023:

Ahh, Black Friday. For many companies, this is the time of year that sees the most business and can make or break your success in hitting annual targets. Earlier this season, we wrote about the benefits manufacturers could anticipate from utilizing on-demand labor to get through a peak creation season. Only a month later, the time for distributors and fulfillment centers to gear up for the busy season has arrived.

There is a lot of talk about how difficult it is for businesses to find and keep workers. Whether you call it “The Great Resignation” or another term, something is clearly happening. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is, “What’s driving this?”.

The skilled labor shortage has been a persistent problem in manufacturing for some time now. What’s causing this, and how do we fix it?

There are many reasons you might be lacking labor capacity to meet the day’s demand. Workforce burnout, sick employees, religious accommodations, PTO, and a tight labor market are all common causes of labor capacity fluctuations.

Local workforces are a microcosm of the overall state of the labor market. In a tight labor market, the local workforces often feel it most strongly. When a large employer moves into town, this often causes a shift in the workforce that can be quite disruptive. A concept known as the Dutch Disease can reveal some insights into how to deal with this issue.

On March 14, 2022, the Eastern District Court of Texas reinstated a Trump-era rule which clarifies the worker classification test used to determine whether individuals are independent contractors or employees under federal law.

If you say “we only want to hire full-time employees,” then you’ve probably been burned by temp staffing or aren’t aware of all the options for finding workers to get work done in your facility. Keeping your labor capacity at the right level is a big problem to solve, and if you expect better results, you’re going to need to change your methods.

Maybe you’re familiar with just-in-time as a concept, but what’s this about a just-in-time workforce?

Companies in the US have faced challenges finding workers for the past few years. This is partially due to the pandemic, but inflation, commodity prices, and shifting expectations about work are trends that will continue to make the labor market challenging.